selling food past sell by date

mrcow

trevor_john wrote:

HAHA and maybe my way of saying tesco is crap the service is a joke their fruit is off the day after you buy it etc etc

Don't shop there then!

Edinburghlass_2

For what is worth my interpretation of the OP is he spotted before leaving the shop (assuming after going through the till as he said he had paid for it) that a packaged salad was out of date.

Spoke to a manager and he got a new one, fair enough. Hardly a trading standards problem when he never left the store with goods that were not fit for the purpose.

Couple of weeks ago my daughter spotted a bacon packet in Tesco that was out of date, she took it to an assistant who said thank you, end of. Now should she have been given a packet of bacon for spotting it?

However, had we bought the bacon, taken it home and then discovered it was out of date, yes Tesco would have replaced it and made some recompense for the fact that it had to be returned.

I recently bought a frozen piece of meat from Iceland that I discovered was out of date when putting it into the freezer. I returned it a week or so later, with the receipt and was given my money back as that is their policy. However I emailed Iceland to check their policy which they confirmed but they enclosed a £5 voucher for my time and trouble.

I would also like to point out that Tesco, along with any other supermarket, is staffed by human beings and just sometimes those human beings make mistakes. I personally find the staff in my Tesco to be very helpful and friendly but perhaps that is because I treat them like the human beings they are?

moggins

Edinburghlass wrote:

I would also like to point out that Tesco, along with any other supermarket, is staffed by human beings and just sometimes those human beings make mistakes. I personally find the staff in my Tesco to be very helpful and friendly but perhaps that is because I treat them like the human beings they are?

Having had the bad luck to be a shelf stacker for Tesco not so long ago I'd like to say thanks for that support. It's one of the worst jobs in the world, back breaking, thankless and not even well paid. Unfortunately when you're a mum who has to find a job around your children's schooling you don't have many choices.

The customers constantly complain because you are in their way, they take you away from your work to find things that with 2 seconds of looking they could easily find themselves but if the shelves aren't full then you get it in the neck from them too.

Then there's the managment, let's just say shove a broom up my bum and I'll sweep the floor at the same time. no matter what size, weight, or physical strength you are, expect to have to pull 3 cages onto the shop floor at a time, work 9 full cages in 3 hours including filling shelves, facing up, cleaning under racking, rotating stock and lets see how many OOD's you would miss?

Before you judge too harshly try walking in those shoes first?

chaching

OK i have just one simple piece of advice for those worried about buying food pass their useby/sellby/bestby date:

CHECK THE DATE BEFORE BUYING!!!!!!!!

It is the OBVIOUS way to make sure the food you are buying is safe for consumption (besides checking the food to make sure its not rotten or mouldy!). I'm sure staff at supermarkets check the dates but as someone already pointed out earlier: supermarkets are staffed by humans and not i-robots. AND i do not think customers should expect to get compensation unless they actually ate the food and got food poisoning for it or if they have actually suffered from it. Any compensation is just an gesture of goodwill and is probably saved for the irate and dramatic customer! Besides the supermarket will refund your money if you take it back.....but I'm sure someone will raise the point of the inconvenience of having to bring the item back.......

Im looking forward to hearing all your responses!

trevor_john

All i expected was for the salad i had paid for but was taken by the manager.Good to see some interesting answers and opinions if some what off the mark.

Maybe i should have taken it to trading standards and added to their massive list of fines/complaints like this one !!!

By Jonathan Prynn And Isabel Oakeshott , Evening Standard
15 November 2004

Source of Article: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/14726230?source=Evening

Tesco has been fined 25,000 after one of its flagship stores was found to be infested with mice and selling mouldy food.

The fine, one of the biggest ever handed out for breaches of food safety rules, will come as a huge embarrassment to Britain's biggest supermarket chain.

The store at New Malden in south-west London, one of Tesco's biggest, was taken to court by council inspectors following a series of customer complaints. Details emerged today of an extraordinary litany of failures at the 10-year-old superstore. The company was fined:

5,000 for selling a mouldy apple turnover seven days past its sell-by date.

2,000 for selling Gouda cheese past its sell-by date.

4,000 for selling mouldy Thai rice.

2,000 each for failing to store Clipper coffee and cereals "in a hygienic manner". Rodents had nibbled packaging.

5,000 for failing to keep rodents out of food storage areas. Merton council officials found "rodent faeces and food... gnawed by rodents and the existence of food and water sources within easy reach of rodents". The failings had not been put right a month later despite warnings.

5,000 for not keeping fridge cabinets at the right temperature and for not logging customer complaints adequately.
The fine for breaches of the Food Safety Act, food safety regulations and food labelling regulations was handed down at Wimbledon magistrates court last week. The company was fined ?25,000 in total and ordered to pay council legal costs of ?5,550.

Linda Kirby, Merton council's cabinet member for environmental quality, said: "All stores have a responsibility to ensure hygiene and safety standards are met and Tesco is no exception. Our environmental health officers will continue to regularly monitor the store."

The sentence is a public relations disaster. Over the past decade Tesco has overtaken Sainsbury's through aggressive

pricing, rapid expansion and

painstaking research. It is expected this financial year to become the first British retailer to push pre-tax profits past ?billion. Last week, chief executive Sir Terry Leahy was voted businessman of the year.

A Tesco spokesman said today: "Our daily procedures and checks are of the highest standards in the industry. The store in question was undergoing a major refit which led to some isolated problems that have now been dealt with."

However, a Merton spokeswoman said the local authority "was aware of a long history of problems at the store due to numerous consumer complaints and continuous problems identified by inspections".

---

chaching

YEP the stuff you listed is outrageous.

Shame on Tescos.

Nearly all (probably ALL) huge companies are just interested in profits and profits and profits. They dont look out for the customer....which just means we just have to do that ourselves.

aliasojo

Just want to clarify.

trevor_john wrote:

All i expected was for the salad i had paid for.....

Unfortunately this is not what I got from your first post.

trevor_john wrote:

I am just wondering what were my rights (if any) and what might i have expected for bringing this to his attention and not trading standards.

This sentence suggested to me that you expected more than 'the salad you had paid for'.

trevor_john wrote:

Good to see some interesting answers and opinions if some what off the mark.

My replies were based on your above statement about your rights. Whilst I accept that you wanted to point out that Tesco standards are bad, I still think that your first post seemed to focus more on 'your rights' side of things.

I shall now retire from the discussion and let you all continue in peace.

needmoney

moggins wrote:

Then there's the managment, let's just say shove a broom up my bum and I'll sweep the floor at the same time. no matter what size, weight, or physical strength you are, expect to have to pull 3 cages onto the shop floor at a time, work 9 full cages in 3 hours including filling shelves, facing up, cleaning under racking, rotating stock and lets see how many OOD's you would miss?

Before you judge too harshly try walking in those shoes first?

This is exactly the thing I mean, they expect too much from too little staff, as has been said it's all about profit.

I am always polite to the staff and at my local store the majority of staff are great as I find in most store to be fair, many of then have worked there for years and years ago I worked there as a shelf stacker too and the warehouse was the most dismal place.

Bogof_Babe

I'm afraid I also got the impression that this was a classic example of the thin end of the "compensation culture society" wedge.

It now seems that anyone who is slightly inconvenienced expects some sort of hand-out. I do wonder what jobs these complainers do, and whether they never make a mistake. Isn't compensation meant to be for actual injury or extreme mental distress suffered by an occurence, not just to shut the complainant up?

I can easily understand how this might have happened, but it was just one of those things - no-one was hurt or made ill. It's doubtful whether anyone would have been made ill by eating it even if you hadn't noticed the date - it's only salad after all!

I read the original post as indicative that a replacement in-date salad was readily supplied, so I don't understand the further explanation about "all I wanted was the cost of the salad the manager took from me" (or words to that effect - haven't got the original on screen now).

If we want Tesco to employ extra staff to continuously check every product on display, then we will have to be prepared to pay for it at the checkout.

IvanOpinion

I am with aliasojo on this one ... for anybody to expect any form of compensation for highlighting a possible issue is nothing more than pathetic ... jeez if that was the case I could go into ANY shop search for out of date stuff put it in my trolley , wheel it up to the checkout and get in date replacements for free ... see how stupid that is ????

It is how the management and staff react ... all they can do is apologise.and give you a fresh packet. Like others I too used to work in a large supermarket as a shelf packer/fork-lift driver ... I have seen some very dubious practices but that is more often staff that don't really care ... the 'not so' Great British worker has and is being discussed on several other threads ... too many people are only there to make up numbers .. no pride in their work.

I have mistakenly lifted out of date stuff ... if I have a problem I take it back and get it replaced (never been a problem so far). I don't go looking for and demanding compensation .. mistakes happen ... it may have been the supermarkets mistake for still displaying it but it was also MY mistake for not checking the packaging properly. Some people just need to take a bit more responsibility instead of blaming everyone else. Why does nobody accept that we are not all perfrect and sometimes mistakes happen?

As far as out of date is concerned ... if it looks OK, smells OK then I will taste it, if it tastes OK then it will do me just fine. What I do have a bigger issue with is the amount of perfectly good food our supermarkets dump regularly for no other reason than it has passed some arbitrary date ... there are millions of peolpe in this world that would have no problem eating the rejects from the woosie over fed westerners that have nothing better to do with their time than look for excuses to demand compensation.

Ivan