Tesco helping me diet. Or ripping me off.

rogerblack

On balance, the latter.
I ordered online, as I usually do, and for wont of having nothing better to do, I was checking weights of stuff as I packed it away.

I found a pork shoulder joint a whole kilo lighter than the weight on the wrapping.
(I doubt I'd have noticed this in-store)
Will see what tesco do after I email them.

fannyadams

isn't that a trading standards issue?

rogerblack

fannyadams wrote: »

isn't that a trading standards issue?

In principle, yes.
In practice - if tesco are willing to make a reasonable offer, ...
I've just noticed the label is damaged.
It's possible it was swapped in the shop by a bargainhunter with not enough scruples.

over_flo

I took some 25% underweight bakery items back once to Tesco.
They seemed to be taking the attitude that i was being a bit picky!
They took them off me and gave me a refund for the price I'd paid!

I wished I'd gone straight to trading standards - I wasn't expecting a six figure compensation settlement ,but I thought it was a bit mean.

rogerblack

over_flo wrote: »

I took some 25% underweight bakery items back once to Tesco.
They seemed to be taking the attitude that i was being a bit picky!
They took them off me and gave me a refund for the price I'd paid!

I wished I'd gone straight to trading standards - I wasn't expecting a six figure compensation settlement ,but I thought it was a bit mean.

Interestingly, the first can of tesco value tuna flakes I weighed was also underweight (179g/185) I need to check the accuracy of my scale, then measure the rest.

It's quite plausible that someones swapped the label in the shop.
Rather less plausible that tins have been tampered with!

cherrypies

I think you have to accept that there is no such thing as perfect service and there is always going to be the possibility of human error. Rather than raging at Tesco for 'trying to rip you off' I'd just give customer services a call/take it back to customer service desk in-store, they'll take the barcode and supplier code from you and give you a refund. The details of the error are then passed on to the meat supplier and Johnny in the labelling department will get a slap on the wrist for one of his staff putting a wrong one on.

No way Tesco would be intentionally selling underweight meat to customers, they would be dragged over hot coals by trading standards and fined a HUGE amount of money not to mention a grilling by the press if they go hold of it. It's a mistake, they'll rectify it

TravellingAbuela

[QUOTE=
It's possible it was swapped in the shop by a bargainhunter with not enough scruples.[/QUOTE]

And, believe it or not, this does happen! A while back I was watching a couple peeling the labels off smaller pieces of meat and transfer to larger joints. Fortunately a member of staff was watching them too and they were evicted from the store!

jenniewb

It's worth weighing all the things your going to eat first if your watching your weight especially.

Someone I knew loved a Tesco brand curry. She bought three of them and weighted them first before eating due to being on a diet and being what she deemed as fanatical about it.
It turned out that the curry which should have weighed 400g turned out to be anything but.

One was just 270g, the second was around 370g and the third was closer to 550g! Now that may seem like not a big deal, but if you are on a diet and what you're eating is high in calorie (a treat or a big meal) and you rely on the packaging to tell you how much your eating and you pick the heaviest or even the lightest item it could really scupper your chances, it could mean all your hard work does not pay off or that you end up too hungry and ruin all your efforts by binging due to being too hungry and then undermine your own confidence on being able to lose any weight at all.

Moral? Don't trust any brand to sell to you the exact weight they say they are, (especially Tesco it would seem!) always weigh first!

hkminca

Having worked in the food industry for many years in a Quality Assurance role, including meat factories, I can assure you that many of the items will be underweight. Companies are allowed by Trading Standards to pack a certain percentage of items to what is known as T1 & T2 weights on products marked as average weights. Basically this means that in order to keep profits high, all companies will use the T1 & T2 limits to ensure they send out stock below weight. Having said that I have also known the weighing scales to be permanetly set to below T2 (which is illegal).

Having experienced Trading Standards visits, which were always pre-arranged, they are easy to bamboozle. They are supposed to do random checks on scales to ensure they are set correctly. In practice, and in order to minimise inconvenience to the business, they would ask which scales we would like them to choose from.

Needless to say on the day of their visit, the scales they were directed to were fine.

As for packets picked up in store and tested, if they were found to be underweight by to much, we'd be requested to show the paperwork records for the day they were produced showing our own internal weighing checks had been carried out. Needless to say, no company is going to keep records showing they have knowingly packed underweight products, so again everything was deemed to be fine and the severly underweight product put down to being a "blip".

I can assure you that EVERY company I have ever worked at had the same practice, it's just most customer's don't check the weights so aren't aware they are paying over the odds.

For those interested have a look at the following link for a reasonably simplified explanation of how this works.

http://nrpwilson.co.uk/average.pdf