Help! Tesco coupon policy? I've been banned!

piptiddlepip

Roger_Rampant wrote:

One person suggested it was for cash refunds over £10, QUOTE]

Could be. Mine came to just under a tenner.

CrazyChemist_2

I went to a different store and was treated wonderfully - all my coupons were accepted no quibbles and at CS desk a (rather attractive) young lady happily refunded my £8 of overcharged cheese in what must be record time

Shame my local store is the complete opposite

[Deleted User]

Maybe Martin should take this up with Tesco Head Office? After all, it's his website it's being debated on - and maybe they will give him a policy statement?

Personally - I think Tesco SHOULD have a standard policy across the board where it is clear cut - no room for debate or argument and where the customer can see the same policy on display in every store.

Bennifred

CrazyChemist wrote:

I went to a different store and was treated wonderfully - all my coupons were accepted no quibbles and at CS desk a (rather attractive) young lady happily refunded my £8 of overcharged cheese in what must be record time

Good heavens! Which store was that? Stand back or get trampled in the rush! (No, seriously: where is it?!)

bylromarha

piptiddlepip wrote:

I just think loopholes are best quietly exploited...

The difference is that their "price promise" policy is plastered up all over the store. I saw it in no less than 3 places in the space of 5 minutes. The coupon policy isn't. If you broadcast your price policy all over the store in writing. I believe (though I am no expert) that it's actually illegal to go back on it. I do know that it's illegal to have two different prices on a product and to charge at the higher rate.

It's not a loophole, it's policy and Tesco share it quite freely. I have the coupon policy in writing from HO. That should be enough for every consumer who chooses to find out what this policy says. Because the policy, which exists and has been shared with consumers, isn't on display, is the situation any different? (I don't know the legal answer to this either!) If they had a poster up for every policy they have, they wouldn't have enough room behind the CS desk!

I don't know about your store, but mine replaced their price promise policy poster a couple of weeks ago to read if the price on the shelf or on the product (bold mine) is more than the price you pay..." therefore I now choose to no longer get refunds on meat which has the correct price on the product as this is going against what the policy says. I find it difficult to believe that a company as big as tesco would rewrite this policy to fly in the face of the law, though I agree its misleading to have a differing shelf price per weight to price per weight on pack.

CrazyChemist_2

That's just crooked. Complain to trading standards and they'll have to pay a £1000 fine for overcharging.

thepearce

Well, no 3rd letter from tesco - it seems there was a mix up and they were referring to the 2nd. I have however spoken to a duty manager at customer services again who confirmed that :

a) Multiple (unique) coupons can be used for products not purchased.
b) This is a national policy; Stores do NOT have any discretion over it (As you might expect for a national policy). As stated before managers have discretion over Internet coupons only.

The policy has been checked with "trade & legal" department.

thepearce

Is it time to go to ASDA? O/T

Just spoke to my mum who told me a funny story about a recent trip to ASDA. She'd done some shopping and was paying with ASDA vouchers (won from the local bingo) but she'd bought a bit too much & was about £2 short in vouchers. As she rumaged through her purse to find some coinage for the difference she was told "Don't worry about it, we'll pay the rest....we'll give you a smiley one." A what? Apparently some sort of smiley customer reward/account that can be used. My mum's a regular shopper there.

I've never heard of that one before, and neither has she.....but thought it was nice. Anyone else ever heard of it?

sellingmysoul666

thepearce wrote:

Is it time to go to ASDA? O/T

Just spoke to my mum who told me a funny story about a recent trip to ASDA. She'd done some shopping and was paying with ASDA vouchers (won from the local bingo) but she'd bought a bit too much & was about £2 short in vouchers. As she rumaged through her purse to find some coinage for the difference she was told "Don't worry about it, we'll pay the rest....we'll give you a smiley one." A what? Apparently some sort of smiley customer reward/account that can be used. My mum's a regular shopper there.

I've never heard of that one before, and neither has she.....but thought it was nice. Anyone else ever heard of it?

We got a smiley once it was at a new store and they took ages scaning some reduced items we got £2 on a handwitten card with bit smilley face on

dawny10

Apologies for the length of this post - thought my experince of arguing on the policy point may be of interest:

When I took up the issue of national policy vs store managers policy (my local Tesco had put up signs saying they would no longer accept any coupons unless you bought the product) I was originally told by head office that their 'national policy' applies to all stores.

I wrote back and pointed out that my local store seemed to have their own policy. HO wrote back and he said he had spoken to the store concerned and it was now all sorted, and they would be accepting vouchers as per the national policy and removing the signs. End of matter I thought.

Went to my local Tesco, handed over a couple of vouchers. Cashier said they couldn't accept them. I showed him the HO letter so he called over a supervisor. She took my letter and disappered for 15 minutes. Eventually a man and woman appeared who turned out to be the Security Manager and the Customer Service Manager who told me that the store managers policy was not to accept coupons. I tried to explain that HO had said they had spoken to the manager and asked to speak to the manager (he was on leave). The CS woman said she had been in the room when HO contacted the manager and that he had never agreed to follow national policy or remove signs. They said HO had no authority over this, accused me of trying to commit fraud, were generally intimidating (the Security Manager was a pretty big guy and he was standing over me from about 2 foot away) and refused point blank to phone HO to try and sort this out. They said they regularly had people in trying to pay for £200's worth of shopping with £200 of vouchers so had decided to change policy.
They said if I had a problem I should contact HO myself, but that store policy was nothing to do with HO. They grudgingly gave me my letter back which they had scribbled on!

I then decided to leave the store, and said I no longer wanted the shopping (possibly a bit petty I know but I was pretty upset (on the verge of tears) by this point after being accused of fraud in front of the whole shop).

I then wrote to HO asking for an explanation - obviously someone had got it wrong - either the Head Office guy hadn't cleared voucher use with the manager as he had told me, or the manager had gone back on what he agreed. I got a letter back saying that if I had a problem I should talk to the store, and I shouldn't write back to him as the matter was now considered closed!

I wasn't really happy about this so I wrote to the Chief Exec and got a letter back from a Customer Service Executive (the previous guy had been a CS Manager) which said that Store Managers had the discretion to decide not to accept vouchers if they believed the policy was being 'abused', the CS Manager at HO hadn't done anything wrong and that I should take it up with the store if I wanted to discuss it further.

I wrote back and pointed out that the store had told me to take it up with HO, and now HO had told me to take it up with the store, which wasn't terribly helpful. I also pointed out that I wasn't abusing the policy - any vouchers I handed over were in line with the national policy, I had even stopped using internet vouchers as I could see how they could look copied and cause problems. I even sent her receipts showing that any vouchers usually came to 5 or 10% max of the bill.

She wrote back and told me that I had regularly tried to pay for my entire shop with coupons and to cap it all she also told me that the store had now decided to ban me from all use of vouchers - even if I bought the product! She again said it was up to the store manager to set the coupon policy and that I would need to speak to him if I wanted it changed.

I was obviously fuming at this but as I thought about it I thought what more can I achieve? HO are obviously quite happy to let their stores do what they like and will believe what they say. I had written twice on the issue and obviously wasn't going to get answers as to why two staff members were giving two contradictory accounts of the same conversation.

I had pretty much stopped shopping at that Tesco store anyway, mainly because I was scared I would be confronted again if I went in, even if I didn't use vouchers. The time I did go in I was convinced all the staff were looking at me and I was just waiting to be pounced on! I was also worried about handing over my clubcard in case something nasty flashed up to the cashier telling them I was banned. All pretty paranoid I know, but it was how I felt!

I decided once I had calmed down a bit (took about a month!), that sadly the best course of action would be to write a nice letter to the manager asking if he would consider lifting the ban as I had never tried to abuse the policy.

Suprisingly I got a nice letter back saying they would love to see me again and laid out their current voucher policy - which included using them up to 10% of the total!!

I have since been back and have been using vouchers without a problem.

It does highlight that you can get different answers even from head office, and that apparently they do allow managers to set their own policy. Whether they are only actually allowed to do this in the case of specific customers, or apply it to all becuase of the actions of a few is not clear, but if not, they may still be prepared to lie to justify their actions.