Tesco Mis-Price

Bamber19

Nope, that wasn't the point.

uktim29

With they date the promotion expires they haven't broken the law. Even though the print is small it's perfectly valid. It's called "small print". Companies spend millions of pounds each year on the finest solicitors to make sure they're within the law. The result is "small print/terms and conditions" and it's perfectly legal. This sort of thing is everywhere. When you spend many thousands on solicitors they're hardly going to come up with something that isn't legal!

I think there are many cases though including this one where someone thinks their opinion should be whats legal so assumes it's the law.

grayme-m

uktim29 wrote: »

I think there are many cases though including this one where someone thinks their opinion should be whats legal so assumes it's the law.

There are many cases indeed, judges determine what the law is based on their opinions every day.

Recently, Barclays were taking the company I work for to court when I personally argued they (and their lawers) were wrong not to apply the Insolvency Act 1985.

A week before the court date after constantly being so sure they were in the right, Barclays pulled out, finally agreeing they were in the wrong; they must have wasted a lot of money with all the solicitor's letters they sent me...

We'll have to agree to disagree on the 'reasonableness' test, though I see that I am not the only one to think as I do. However, these forums are full of posts from people who got anything from free beans to free laptops from Tesco as Tesco chose to (over) honour the price or POS out on the shelf...

As OP said, he's not after free coffee or any compensation, just 'reasonableness'.

RadoJo

grayme-m wrote: »

We'll have to agree to disagree on the 'reasonableness' test, though I see that I am not the only one to think as I do. However, these forums are full of posts from people who got anything from free beans to free laptops from Tesco as Tesco chose to (over) honour the price or POS out on the shelf...
.

But that's the point - when a company like Tesco does the 'right thing' and honours mistakes in pricing, people take advantage of that fact and go out of their way to cash in on it. Then they have the choice of whether to put their prices up across the board, or stop automatically refunding, replacing, or doubling the difference as a matter of course. I would guess that the ratio of customers taking advantage of Tesco to Tesco taking advantage of customers is at worst even, and probably more likely to be skewed towards customers taking advantage of Tesco. You only have to look on these boards to see the glee with which people come across an opportunity to make money from a large retailer, but that money doesn't come from Terry Leahy's pocket - it is accounted for with a cut back in staffing or quality.

taxiphil

uktim29 wrote: »

Companies spend millions of pounds each year on the finest solicitors to make sure they're within the law. The result is "small print/terms and conditions" and it's perfectly legal. This sort of thing is everywhere. When you spend many thousands on solicitors they're hardly going to come up with something that isn't legal!

That's a heart-warming thought but very naive and simplistic.

Corporate lawyers work with accountants to assess risk and will often decide that although something's illegal it's easy to get away with and therefore not worth complying with the law.

They'll also measure the cost of being caught with their trousers down (e.g. fines and damaging headlines) and compare this against the cost of compliance, often reaching the conclusion that it's far cheaper at the end of the day to not comply with the law.

And, I believe, that in the case of overcharging they've realised that the millions accumulated in "black profit" far outweigh the paltry fines that happen extremely rarely when Trading Standards choose to prosecute.

It's simple economics, Tim.

grayme-m

RadoJo wrote: »

But that's the point - when a company like Tesco does the 'right thing' and honours mistakes in pricing, people take advantage of that fact and go out of their way to cash in on it. Then they have the choice of whether to put their prices up across the board, or stop automatically refunding, replacing, or doubling the difference as a matter of course. I would guess that the ratio of customers taking advantage of Tesco to Tesco taking advantage of customers is at worst even, and probably more likely to be skewed towards customers taking advantage of Tesco. You only have to look on these boards to see the glee with which people come across an opportunity to make money from a large retailer, but that money doesn't come from Terry Leahy's pocket - it is accounted for with a cut back in staffing or quality.

I can't say I was ever happy with the whole R&R mob; but my point was, why would Tesco ever offer such a policy? I've got a figure of a £1,000 fine per overcharge from somewhere (my old boss?), it's better to give away £10 in coffee to a customer than pay a £1,000 fine to whatever public purse gets it (and which would the customer prefer)?

Plus, remember all the OP wanted was his coffee priced as he saw it, not his coffee free.

Then you are into taxiphil's territory of in effect paying customers to do things that their staff used to.

troll3d

wizard5353 wrote: »

Trading standards say Tesco's are perfectly within their rights!?!

So what was the point of asking Trading Standards if you were only going to listen to them if they agreed with the world view inside your head and not the real one?

wizard5353

troll3d wrote: »

So what was the point of asking Trading Standards if you were only going to listen to them if they agreed with the world view inside your head and not the real one?

....Because there is a board here to ask others about your consumer rights. If you asked what the moon is made out of and you were told cheese would you then just smile and skip along like a mindless pleb?

Not everyone is right all the time and I know for fact that supermarkets have been fined for these sort of practices in the past. I'm not the kind of person who goes out and gets a quote and signs up because they tell me they are the cheapest..... They never are. So that's the point I asked.

Bamber19

wizard5353 wrote: »

....Because there is a board here to ask others about your consumer rights. If you asked what the moon is made out of and you were told cheese would you then just smile and skip along like a mindless pleb?

If the person telling me so was meant to be extremely knowledgeable on the subject of the moon, perhaps.

amandada

grayme-m wrote: »

When I worked for Tesco, I did a stint in File Management Control, part of which was price checking. We would have 'legal errors' and 'illegal errors', it's not hard to work out which we called which. The story was that we could get a £1,000 fine for each item we were overcharging on.

Unless things have changed, if they charge you more than the shelf edge label says, that is illegal. However, they didn't, you stopped them.

You'd have been better off paying it and then taking it up with CS, they used to give you your money back and the item, now it's double the difference I believe?

I used to do that job too!