Tesco misprice policy discussion area

wallace_3

Whirly wrote:

...people assume the mistakes are completely genuine and never report them to Trading Standards.

I have no doubt that all price errors are genuine. If they were deliberately introducing an overcharge so as to profit, they would have been found out by now. A disgruntled employee or an employee who does not agree with such a policy would have blown the whistle on them. Also, if they were deliberately introducing overcharges, there would be some sort of 'paper trail' which could be used as evidence.

I suspect the problem is simply because the average store does not have enough staff to change all the tickets every time a promotion ends or a price is changed. Therefore errors do creep in, but they are not deliberate.

Whirly wrote:

One of the more interesting things I've noticed recently is that Tesco's won a court case against Asda who claimed they were the cheapest supermarket. Tesco's proved they were just as cheap....but you can guarantee they based the figures they used ON THE MISPRICED SHELF LABELS.

In the recent court case, price of products had nothing to do with the complaint. Tesco complained that Asda advertising claimed it was officially the lowest priced sipermarket. Tesco objected to the use of the word 'official' because there is no governing body which decides if such a statement is true. Also, Asda based this claim on a sample of 33 items, which Tesco claimed was far too small and gave an unrepresentative view.

ben500

Tesco certainly do encourage mispricing in their complacency towards occurrances, otherwise the issues would be resolved a lot quicker. You do not actually have to promote something in order to benefit from it, by merely ignoring its occurrance you send the message to the rank and file employee that this is an ok thing therefore increasing occurrances and ill gotten profit.

aint_life_great

I was just overcharged on 2 chickens, charged £3.99 each instead of £2.99 went to customer service and they agreed it was wrong and gave me the difference of £2 back and I totally lost my bottle and took the money and said thanks! I think it was because I had the little one with me and plus it was very busy but I cant believe I did it, normally I would have said 'oh what about the policy....' but today my mouth just clammed shut!!! I need more practise obviously!

ben500

aint_life_great wrote:

I was just overcharged on 2 chickens, charged £3.99 each instead of £2.99 went to customer service and they agreed it was wrong and gave me the difference of £2 back and I totally lost my bottle and took the money and said thanks! I think it was because I had the little one with me and plus it was very busy but I cant believe I did it, normally I would have said 'oh what about the policy....' but today my mouth just clammed shut!!! I need more practise obviously!

More likely you have been influenced by the tales of woe some have posted here in their efforts to obtain refund and replace, which of course is exactly why the attitude of some managers has altered and more and more people are being obstructed, it is to deter people from using the policy and highlighting the miserable standards within their own stores, the policy is there to be demonstrated to any unbeliever at every customer service point if they cannot read and understand their own store policy then they have no busines holding their position and enforcing policy on their staff. Ask them to check with their own head office or better still go to the payphone instore and call head office yourselves and explain the difficulty and the fact that you are concerned that they are advertising the policy yet blatantly refusing to honour it.

And yes life is great especially if shopping at Tesco.

Make sure you obtain the freephone number from the one giving you the grief so he or she knows you will be complaining and not concerned about the cost of the call to do so, this usually brings about a sudden change of attitude but don't rely on it, make the call.

Kenny4315

Originally Posted by Whirly
but you can guarantee they based the figures they used ON THE MISPRICED SHELF LABELS.

Tesco's do use the lower of shelf price and packet price on the supermarket pirce research.

I don't think that things are deliberate they are just simply incompetent. As the old saying goes if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. For example, 2 prices labels on shelf for same product slap bang next to each other, one at lower price than other, charged as per higher price. Man who had made error just shrugged his shoulders and continued his conversation with his mate about some football match, when the CS told him.

WELSH-DRAGON_2

I have to admit that after reading some of the discussion threads about the way people have been treated it has put me off, at Tescos yesterday a slight parnoid feeling came over me as security had a call on his radio just as I entered the store .... but with 4 kiddies in tow I didn't look for any misprices just wanted a quick shop. Tonight I will go to another store and see what mistakes they have made this week, after all I am only a little fish in a very huge pond and the policy is there, they implemented it and if they got their act together then tonight I will come home empty handed but not overcharged.

coolio_2

I go to 2 stores, one a Metro and one a pretty big store. The Metro won't refund the full price unless you ask for it. I am pointed out as soon as I go instore and I have heard 'here we go again' when I approach the cisgarette desk for a refund. I have only ever asked for a price correction 3 times there in the last few months. They only refund the difference, and when I ask for a full refund per their policy, food is them treated very roughly. The other one, I can't be bothered half the time because the customer service desk queue is always a good 10 minutes wait. On top of that I always get told 'the label on the shelf has a different barcode' In the meat, I asked them to show me one that was the same, they couldn't. It's all just too much effort in the end.

Pretty much this attitude has been displayed for years at Tesco. Their staff attitude is bad, I was always overcharged for something and would waste so much time queuing up to get a refund. Asda is where I take my custom now. Their staff just seem a completely different crop.

Whirly

Hmm, I never actually said that the Tesco's overpricing is a planned policy, just that the evidence (circumstantial) is, to say the least, interesting.

To answer Wallace:

I suspect the problem is simply because the average store does not have enough staff to change all the tickets every time a promotion ends or a price is changed. Therefore errors do creep in, but they are not deliberate.

Then this begs the question, does Tesco's have significantly lower staffing levels than the other supermarkets? Because they do not make the same level of errors.

My personal experience is that Tesco's seem to have the same (relative) amount of staff as either Asda or Sainsbury's.

The question I put to you is this:

"If a store has the same amount of staff, same levels of pay, and same quality of training (pretty much none) as it's competitors and yet it manages to make grossly more errors that are almost entirely in it's favour, is it time to question *why* this should be the case?"

In the recent court case, price of products had nothing to do with the complaint. Tesco complained that Asda advertising claimed it was officially the lowest priced sipermarket. Tesco objected to the use of the word 'official' because there is no governing body which decides if such a statement is true. Also, Asda based this claim on a sample of 33 items, which Tesco claimed was far too small and gave an unrepresentative view.

Ah, I see. Thankyou for clarifying this.

Reading between the lines, Tesco don't claim to be cheaper or even the same....just that there is no "official" body so Asda can't claim it officially. Brilliant marketing move...don't lower prices, just take the others to court on a technicality. Hehe.

From Kenny4315:

I don't think that things are deliberate they are just simply incompetent. As the old saying goes if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.

But what interests me is that the same thing can be said for pretty much any high street store and most especially the other supermarkets...and yet they don't suffer from the same problem.

For example, 2 prices labels on shelf for same product slap bang next to each other, one at lower price than other, charged as per higher price. Man who had made error just shrugged his shoulders and continued his conversation with his mate about some football match, when the CS told him.

This kind of highlights what Ben500 said. While I doubt it is an official policy of Tesco's they obviously don't lay great emphasis on their staff ensuring the prices are correct (although I suspect *underpriced* items are treated with a little more urgency!).

Why should this be the case?

Go back to my original post about the profit to be made from these mistakes and it might give a clue.

Fix the price in 2 weeks and get £1000's pounds profit from all the people who unknowingly get overcharged.
Fix the price now and get nothing.

Is it an official policy to overcharge? I seriously doubt it. Does it make great financial sense not to emphasise too much the need to fix incorrect prices immediately? Yes.

In other words, by being lax in fixing their overpricing Tesco's get their staff working at something else (like putting out more stock to sell) AND end up (accidentally, of course *wink*) with lots of extra cash.

If you (for argument's sake) assume that Tesco's do not emphasise to their staff that pricing errors need to be corrected immediately simply because experience has shown them that financially they are better off *with* the mistakes then it begs another question...

How do you define a "genuine" error?
Simply by saying the initial cause was a mistake?

Or do you take into account the policy to deal with these errors?

Because it could be argued that any error (genuine or not) that is not fixed as soon as the company becomes aware of it (and whenever a refund goes through you can be sure it highlights the product on their computers) is no longer genuine. Because if you are aware that you are doing something wrongly and yet continue to do it, how can you say that you are genuinely making a mistake?

More damning still is the undeniable fact that the longer ther misprice goes without being fixed, the greater the extra income.

vicky1_2

ALL the scanners have been removed from the Tesco extra in Watford, does anyone know if this to deter people, and have they done this in all their stores?

redfox

vicky1 wrote:

ALL the scanners have been removed from the Tesco extra in Watford, does anyone know if this to deter people, and have they done this in all their stores?

2 out of 4 Tescos I have visited in the last month or so don't have one - "we did have one once, but it was taken out" say the staff.

My nearest Tesco has one still but it is broken. The Tesco over the other side of town still had one (working too!) on my last visit a couple of weeks ago.