TESCO Personal Finance "upgrade" credit cards and cause hell

italiastar

My wife was just trying to pay our Tesco visa card, when our bank (incidentally, The Royal Bank of Scotland, who also run the Tesco Credit Card) said that the payment had been rejected - on closer inspection she saw on the statement that the account number had changed - she didn't quote this as the payment details were already with the bank. I came in midway through this when she'd found out that they'd changed the VISA account to a MASTERCARD. I got a letter about this about 2 months ago and they said I didn't have to change, so I told them not to as I couldn't see any benefit. Apparently at the end of July, they issued 2 new cards, which we haven't seen and ceased the two current cards. Oddly they still work in shops, but not on-line. Fortunately, the prime card I use abroad is the Nationwide, so I didn't have any problem in the last few weeks, whilst I've been abroad. When I phoned them, it took ages to get through and the manager's are too busy to talk to people. After several calls and much rucking, I spoke to a manager who'd just come in on his day off to find absolute mayhem. He said that they were dealing with higher priority calls - you can see what's coming ......

Apparently there are loads of people stuck abroad with dead cards because they've replaced peoples accounts whilst they were on holiday. Is anyone else having problems?

chekka

this just happened to us - sent us new upgraded cards while we were away on holiday and cancelled our old ones. argh! The first we knew of it was the old cards just stopped working with no way of reactivating the old cards either. It was embarrassing to have to put our purchases back but even worse to face the rest of our holiday with no credit.

The call cantre is farcical - everyone's a 'manager' and no one's actually got any authority... that's if you can get through to anyone...
Finally after lots of threats, begging, etc (begging? yes, no shame here as we have 4 children ages 8,4,2, and a baby - it's not cheap!) they arranged for a new card to be couriered to a bank local to where we were staying.... the earliest they could do it was Thursday (despite arranging it on sunday) and guess what? The big day finally arrived.... BUT our pin numbers were couriered, NOT the cards. I was then told the cards would arrive before weekend, but no, they didnt.

we ended up having to cut our holiday short. it couldve gone on for weeks and i did not want us to be begging on the streets....

Have spoken to one very helpful lady at the call centre who is going to launch an investigation but have also spoken to lots of unhelpful robots- some of who didn't seem to care that we were without cash and some even suggested we were stupid to have gone away with just one form of payment - as if we did that!!! its just not feasible or safe to carry large amounts of cash. how dare they?!

I was really unhappy with the customer service. It was all tied up with policies and procedures - ie 'it's not our policy to use same day couriers' - no? I'm sure it would be if it was one of the call centre empolyee's relatives....

The whole 'opt out of our new card scheme or we'll include you' is wrong. People should opt in. We never received an opt out letter! One 'manager' said "oh yes you did receive it, cos we sent it!' which is simply incredible.

BusinessStudent

italiastar, thank you for bringing this to our attention. I suggest you post this on www.tesco-complaint.blogspot.com.

uktim29

BusinessStudent wrote: »

italiastar, thank you for bringing this to our attention. I suggest you post this on www.tesco-complaint.blogspot.com.

I don't know if they'd publish it. I'm sure that blog is actually a !!!! take about people complaining about Tescos. Look at what they publish, then people take the !!!! out of it.

tracyk

Presumably Tesco changed from VISA to Mastercard because they (TESCO) got a better 'deal' from Mastercard?
In the meantime they've caused havoc for everyone else - whoever 'project managed' this hairbrained scheme wants sacking - fancy doing it smack-bang in the middle of the holiday season!!

chekka

tracyk wrote: »

Presumably Tesco changed from VISA to Mastercard because they (TESCO) got a better 'deal' from Mastercard?
In the meantime they've caused havoc for everyone else - whoever 'project managed' this hairbrained scheme wants sacking - fancy doing it smack-bang in the middle of the holiday season!!

Absolutely right, but they don't really care about leaving their customers high and dry. One so-called manager even suggested it was stupid of me to go on holiday with just one form of payment.... of course we didn't have just one form of payment but we were wanting to pay for big items such as hotel accommodation with credit.... :mad: As if its anything to do with them anyway - you'd have thought they'd WANT customers to use their credit cards as much as possible, wouldn't you???

looby75

Chekka, I hope you are planning to cancel your account with them ASAP.

italiastar

looby75 wrote: »

Chekka, I hope you are planning to cancel your account with them ASAP.

I'd love to, but like most peple who run these accounts, the points are worth a lot and I expect Chekka is in the same situation.

I was in Sainsburys earlier and I tried my Tesco visa card to see if it was still active - not surprisingly it failed, but next to me there was a person with exactly the same problem. She wasn't aware (like most other people) of the change and had no other means to pay for her trolley-load with the store closing in 10 minutes. She wasn't best pleased when I told her what the problem was.

myrnahaz

This may be why my card was rejected in Comet when I tried to buy my new TV with it. It didn't even allow me to put my pin number in - the assistant swiped the card and she got a 'reject card' message on her screen[EMAIL="REJECTED@I"]. I[/EMAIL] had to use a point-free card in the end. All those points down the pan! I was furious. I immediately wrote to Mr T to cancel the card and posted the card through my shredder. I prefer Asda, anyway!

Maisie

Tesco cancelled my original VISA card without warning and it was rejected in a shop causing me great embarrassment..

When I phoned and asked why the CSA said you had 2 weeks to activate the new Mastercard and then the VISA card was cancelled.

It would be a good idea if they checked that the new card was active before cancelling the other one.

For personal reasons I hadn't activated the Mastercard and that's what happened. I said why hadn't Tesco advised its card holders they were going to do this and she didn't know!

chekka

Maisie wrote: »

Tesco cancelled my original VISA card without warning and it was rejected in a shop causing me great embarrassment..

When I phoned and asked why the CSA said you had 2 weeks to activate the new Mastercard and then the VISA card was cancelled.

It would be a good idea if they checked that the new card was active before cancelling the other one.

For personal reasons I hadn't activated the Mastercard and that's what happened. I said why hadn't Tesco advised its card holders they were going to do this and she didn't know!

Tesco really have made a mess of this whole 'upgrade' haven't they? I love my clubcard points but any loyalty to tesco beyond this has now evaporated. And I'm telling as many people as I can what's happened to us!

We're still without our cards 10 days after an 'emergency' order was put in place by customer services. I'm even more disheartened to discover that SMS Couriers, who tesco use to deliver their cards, get a meagre 1.5 out of 10 for service from 128 reviewers. How poor is that? 1.5?!?! Couriers collect and deliver, it's not exactly rocket science.....

As for the two weeks in which to activate the Mastercard that's total rubbish. Our Visa worked for over a month before it was refused. But then I get a different story every time I speak to the Customer Services Team, so the truth is anyone's guess.