Overcharged at the pub

Wig

Either a TS officer was shopping in Tesco (it does happen) visiting Tesco, or had recieved a complaint from a customer, you know, like the complaint I was advocating the OP to do in #32. The sort of complaint you think TS don't want to hear. This case kinda refutes your assumption doesn't it.

uktim29

Wig, Those are assumptions!

Wig

uktim29 wrote: »

Wig, Those are assumptions!

Actually there's only one assumption in my post (not plural).

zappomatic

Have you not considered that maybe mogoot did not know what he was being charged until the signature slip appeared? Not all pubs have customer displays on their tills, and often tills are shared so the figure is only displayed very briefly. Add this to the common scenario of a noisy pub and a bar person who does not speak clearly and you can understand why the figure may not have appeared until the signature slip was presented. As the slip was not signed, there is the argument that mogoot did not accept the offer of £15.50 yet as he was given the wine and the bar person walked off it could be considered that the pub had decided not to bother taking payment.

Personally I would be making a complaint just to drop that bar person in it for taking a card payment without PIN or valid signature, and for being plain rude and unhelpful.

Having worked in retail myself, it's people like the barman in this story who cause misery for other staff and all too often are not held responsible for their lazy ways.

mogoot

To those who say "Its people like you who are turning the courts of this country into the US", and to those who second such accusations, I did at no point make any suggestion of legal proceedings, and quite frankly for £15, let alone £1, I have better things to do with my time. Furthermore, comments like that don't help anyone. My original post, and subsequent posts, have not sought to make out that I am entitled to anything more than the £1 overcharge. I have raised this topic to gather opinions and viewpoints.

For what it's worth, I'm not interested in 'a quick buck' from this. After all, I drank the wine and would be willing to pay the asking price for it. My issue is with the pathetic conduct of one member of staff which goes not only in the face of any sort of customer service standards, and no doubt company policy, but also against legal requirements in terms of price marking, and in terms of getting a signature/pin authorisation on any card payment.

Again, I thank those who have contributed constructively to this discussion.

taxiphil

uktim29 wrote: »

With no cases of a retailer being prosecuted for a single sel being wrong then it would seem I'm right.

How do you know there are no cases of a retailer being prosecuted for a single SEL? Because it's not on Google? :rotfl: The time my uncle went to hospital for a bee sting in 1983 isn't on Google either, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

I agree it's much less likely that TS would prosecute for a single offence as opposed to multiple and repeated offences, but that doesn't mean it's not an offence. If I get caught pinching a chocolate bar I probably won't get prosecuted and will get a warning instead, but that doesn't mean it wasn't an offence - it just means the police have exercised a degree of common sense and prioritisation.

uktim29 wrote: »

Trading Standards would not be impressed having to chase this up. They actually feel sorry for retailers that some of the public will actually contact them for things like this. As I said I know this from experience, they have actually told me this.

"They" have told you this, have "they"? :rotfl: Must be true then!
Trading Standards is not one single body, it is fragmented between dozens of local authorities. Some have different priorities and targets to others. Some are laissez-faire towards pretty much every offence, some are underfunded, whereas some are very diligent. There is a lot of politics in the way TS depts are run (we can save that debate for another day) but suffice to say there is not "one single attitude" right across the board.

You are seizing on one throwaway comment made (allegedly) by one single TS inspector once upon a time, who might have been having a bad day, or making small-talk with you, or simply not doing his job properly, and claiming this is an accurate reflection of TS nationwide policy. I don't think so.

You're almost into the realms of "a bloke told me down the pub, so it must be true".

To claim that TS as a whole "feel sorry" for retailers who are reported by the public for misleading price indications is utter codswallop. They have a statutory duty to be impartial and investigate all offences like this. It's not in their remit to "feel sorry" or take sides. They encourage the public to report all offences in order that they can investigate and make a professional decision on what action is necessary.

uktim29

This isn't just one TS officer Phil so that does give the indication it may be a general feeling, why that would be having a bad day for them I don't know. Although as one said he'd rather be chasing real crooks conning people thousands than looking at a sign, that was a bad day to him, understandably as well.
You want to think it's "the bloke down the pub" simply because you disagree. If you read my post I didn't say they feel sorry for retailers for being reported for a price mistake, it's more the attitude of some of the public.

I can't see your fathers bee sting making papers but my god if a supermarket gets fined I'm sure we'd know about it. They know it would get the winging British public winging even more, and it would sell papers, a bee sting wouldn't really though would it!

I know you don't like the fact some Trading Standards officers, perhaps more seem to have some common sense as to whats important, when just a mistake has been made but I can't do anything about that. With the complete lack of any cases of say Tescos being fined for a single sel wrong or any other retailer perhaps (which would easily come up in google) and the amount of times TS must have people complain about this then perhaps the ones I've met are an example of the way the majority of them are.

I know you'll comfort yourself and tell yourself it's "bloke down the pub stuff" but really Phil it's not is it. It's as if it's painful to you that evil (in your eyes) Tescos can have an incorrect price, then correct it, TS aware and not do anything. Why do you need to see companies taken to court Phil? Is it satisfying? Does it make you feel good? You obviously don't like it when people disagree or things don't go your way and evil Tescos carries on trading.

taxiphil

But can you see the contradiction you're making? You are challenging people like Wig and myself to find cast iron evidence to prove our points, but when you want to prove your point it becomes sufficient to say "someone told me" and if we don't accept this as evidence then we're not being reasonable.

I would question whether all prosecutions make it onto Google. You'd be surprised how many local newspapers don't have websites, or if they do they don't put all their stories online, or they don't get crawled by Google's index. For example I live in a medium sized town and much to my annoyance I have to spend 45p on the weekly newspaper because it does not have any presence on the internet, and there is no other website with news stories for my town (unless they are massive stories which make it onto the national news).

Perhaps you are right - perhaps there has never been a single prosecution over a single SEL - but I don't take the absence of such an article on Google as either proof that it's not an offence or proof that a prosecution's never happened.

uktim29

I'm not making a contradiction there. These storys will be reported on council websites, they rank very highly in search engines as they have a .gov.uk domain extention (Google see's these domains as authority sites). Your link was a local council website, all councils report these sort of things on their sites. You don't need to hope a local paper has a website.

You can disbelieve what I've said if you want. Funny though, isn't it, how many places don't get fined as I said. I think thats a big enough clue as to whether what I said holds any truth.

Bamber19

Your picking at uktim for saying TS told him something and he's relied upon this yet ignoring the fact Wig has sued the "TS told me" card aswell.

Your uncle's bee sting probably didn't set any legal precedent either, but a case for 1 SEL would most likely appear, if not on google, then on Westlaw or LexisNexis