Asda price matching - when not all items available

ariarnia

I ordered 10 litres/cartons of UHT milk for delivery. the items i ordered were unavailable so asda substituted 7 of them with a more expensive brand (so 7 litres in total in 7 cartons)and didn't deliver 3.

they then 'price matched' the 7 they delivered against the 10 I ordered, meaning the individual units were a little cheaper than full price (a grand total of 3p off my bill) but not as cheap as the ones id ordered (nearly 30p a unit/litre more expensive) - do I have grounds for a complaint that they've not correctly applied their policy? 

"If something you have ordered is not available when we pick your order, we may choose a substitute. If it costs less, we charge you less. If it costs more, we won’t charge you the extra." 

10 items were unavailable. they chose to substitute 7 of them. therefore they should have price matched 1:1 by either the number of items delivered or the total volume delivered. 

NBLondon

I'd say you have grounds for a complaint that you ordered 10 items and only 7 were delivered.

Or did you get 3 "cheap" and 7 "expensive"?

Manxman_in_exile

I would complain as I don't think they have correctly applied the policy you quote.  If they only delivered 7 cartons/litres of the more expensive item (rather than 10 cartons/litres of the cheaper item) I think they should only be charging you for seven at the cheaper price.

I suspect it may just be an error or misunderstanding on their part.  Have you already queried this with them and have they refused to rectify it, or what?

bris

You know you can refuse items at the door don't you? 

If you don't like the substitutes don't accept them, simple really,

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

bris said:

You know you can refuse items at the door don't you? 

If you don't like the substitutes don't accept them, simple really,

How does that help you if you need the thing they've substituted? 

ariarnia said:

 do I have grounds for a complaint that they've not correctly applied their policy? 

OP if you message ASDA they'll very likely refund whatever you ask for, presumably the system just hasn't been able to correctly digest the substitute and 3 missing items occurring on the same line  

boobyd

What did Asda say when you spoke to them? I assume you rang when you had found the issue.

sheramber

If you ordered 10 individual cartons it probably would have compared individually.

But if you made an order for 10 cartons the system will only compare that as one unit.

pinkshoes

ASDA should have price matched the 7 cartons they delivered, and refunded you for the 3 they did not deliver e.g. items not available. 

Just email/phone them. I personally gave up with ASDA home delivery as we got so many errors and trying to get refunds was very slow and tedious!

ariarnia

thank you for the responses and sorry I've not been back to the thread. i've not used it much since the swap to the new forum and i'm having some trouble navigating. 

i was asking because i'd had the email telling me about the subs but the delivery wasn't due till about 10pm so i had a few hours to decide if i was being unreasonable or not. 

after posting here i did contact them on twitter because the actual receipt wasn't very clear about what i was going to receive (if it was 7 plus 3 of the brand i ordered making 10 total or just the 7 subs) 

They confirmed all 10 of the milk I ordered was out of stock and they had provided 7 of a different brand. they also confirmed they 'price matched' these substitutions against the total i'd ordered, which is what i was saying didn't feel right. 

i said as much to the agent and asked her to refund the price difference of the three milks they weren't delivering, she agreed, but when I checked my receipt later she refunded me all of the milk. when I contacted them to say they refunded too much, an agent said that was okay and that it was a gesture of good will for the inconvenience of contacting them. 

ariarnia

sheramber said:

If you ordered 10 individual cartons it probably would have compared individually.

But if you made an order for 10 cartons the system will only compare that as one unit.

i ordered 10 individual 1L cartons of milk, not a pack of 10. all 10 were out of stock so they substituted 7 individual 1L cartons of a different brand. my problem was that they then price matched the substitution of 7 against the order of 10 (which very coincidentally meant they only had to discount it by 3p and not the £2.45 that a direct price match should have discounted)

Manxman_in_exile

ariarnia said:

thank you for the responses and sorry I've not been back to the thread. i've not used it much since the swap to the new forum and i'm having some trouble navigating. 

i was asking because i'd had the email telling me about the subs but the delivery wasn't due till about 10pm so i had a few hours to decide if i was being unreasonable or not. 

after posting here i did contact them on twitter because the actual receipt wasn't very clear about what i was going to receive (if it was 7 plus 3 of the brand i ordered making 10 total or just the 7 subs) 

They confirmed all 10 of the milk I ordered was out of stock and they had provided 7 of a different brand. they also confirmed they 'price matched' these substitutions against the total i'd ordered, which is what i was saying didn't feel right. 

i said as much to the agent and asked her to refund the price difference of the three milks they weren't delivering, she agreed, but when I checked my receipt later she refunded me all of the milk. when I contacted them to say they refunded too much, an agent said that was okay and that it was a gesture of good will for the inconvenience of contacting them. 

Thanks for the update.

I think Asda have done well with that situation.  I think they got it wrong in the first place, but they've put it right and looks like you get a freebie too!

Can't really argue with that.

(And it goes to show that if you think a store or trader have applied their policy wrongly , then it's still worth chasing it up.  Somebody there might see sense eventually ...)