Tesco gift card/credit card duplicate transaction check/warning

ferniephil

Hello. I'm new to forums so not sure if this is the best place for this. Just flagging to anybody who has a Tesco gift card where a transaction appears to be rejected at the checkout, then you pay by card instead, that you may have been charged twice. This happened to my wife in the Pinner store on the 10 February 2021. We always charge up our Tesco gift card via a work benefit discount scheme to get the percentage off and use it via the Scan as You Shop checkouts. We have encountered various issues with the Scan as You Shop checkouts recently - Tesco "Clubcard Prices" not being deducted even though we scanned our Clubcard to retrieve the scanner a few months ago, various coupon problems, Clubcard Plus 10% discount not working and being unable to scan the Gift Card to pay if we tapped Gift Card as a payment method (staff worked out we had to scan it without tapping Gift Card on the Pay screen!) I thought our Gift Card balance was suddenly low so called customer services on 0800 505 555, they confirmed a £189 transaction had been deducted that also showed on my wife's credit card statement. In the end they were able to confirm the duplicate and refunded my wife's credit card. It's made me think twice about the percentage discount versus the chance of any errors when there's no easy way to get a statement for a gift card. I'm lucky I noticed and could trace it back. I'll be keeping a spreadsheet record against my receipts and top ups from now on. Customer Services had heard of at least one other case where somebody had contacted them with the same problem. Keep a close on your gift card balances. Tesco really need to improve their testing of their Scan as You Shop checkout software releases to ensure Clubcard Prices, coupons, Gift Cards and Clubcard Plus etc all work properly.