Tesco - damaged goods, do they let you keep them?

[Onequestiononetime]

I've had Tesco deliveries for years. If something is damaged or a short shelf life they have always refunded the price but we still keep the product
With damaged goods, they can't resell them anyway.

I don't take advantage of their generosity and only mention it if something is pretty obviously damaged or eat by the same day etc. More often they point it out to me when we unpack. I've had deliveries for about 15 years most weeks and this has happened fairly frequently.

Anyway, I had a delivery on holiday (in the UK) recently, and some cream meringues had got squished by products being put on top. So obviously squished, caved in meringues, which I pointed out. The driver gave me the refund but then went to take the cakes away.

I queried this and was told that I could keep the item but then I would be charged full price for it, all get a refund and forfeit it, with the squished product presumably being thrown away (or scoffed in the van...). Firstly he said he couldn't for high value items - they were about £1.50 and then that we are only allowed to keep it if It is an essential item such as milk and bread.

I later got it refunded by the Tesco WhatsApp customer service.

Is he right and I've just always had unusually generous drivers? Is he interpreting the rules overly strictly because he's relatively new (he was.very young, I'm thinking 18-19). Or am I just cheeky and should be happy going without desert as long as we have a refund? Am I being cheeky expecting to eat mangled damaged goods and still get a refund? I'd happily pay a reduced price for them btw, but not an option.

Of course people are under pressure to accept. Anyone who can't easily go out and buy a replacement is under pressure to accept damaged goods.

Replacement is fine if you don't need the product for days and have opportunity to go to the shop. If you are elderly, have young kids, live rurally, are really busy, or it's for something that day, you accept damaged goods and pay full price, or go without. That's pressure.

If your shopping arrives first thing and contains items for a meal you are catering for that night, and your pudding is badly damaged your options are to somehow magic time to go to the shop or bake something, or you accept the broken pudding and try to adapt it out of necessity. It's not really a choice is it.

Or the housebound old lady who orders her weekly shop and now has to decide between paying full price for non saleable products or potentially go hungry.

Also, the money takes 3-5 days to return. For some people, they can't afford to replace the product until the refund arrives. By which point it's too late.

Absolutely, but computer algorithms should be capable of picking up on any suspicious patterns.

Equally possible is the driver who refund products, days he had to take them back and eats them himself.

These aren't products that will go back on sale. They will never become yellow stuff even if they make it back to store. They will be for disposal only. Tesco's policy also bans the donation of damaged products.

No, they will not become products on discount but clearly Tesco sees it as a reasonable cost to prevent fraud. I expect the rules will only get enforced harder in the future.
If I owned a shop, I'd want every single broken scrap returned to me in exchange for a refund.

There are pluses and minuses to shopping online. I like to choose and sensibly pack my own food, so I shop in store. I have only myself to blame if my Tesco shop arrives home sans milk and with broken meringues 😅

Also, Tesco do donate or sell ( not sure which one) even badly damaged grocery items to businesses who just take away tons of mixed food waste. Will be some sort of Bio plant or something.

It’s reasonable for Tesco to keep damaged goods they have refunded, no matter what the custom/ practice was previously. And no matter what reasoning you come up with as to why you should keep the meringues, such as food waste and helping Tesco with the costs of disposal 😂

Was there no other pudding to be had? If pudding is very important to you, there would have been other things in the order you could have tonight rather than the planned meringue?

It's up to the driver to use their discretion on how badly damaged the item is or its its out of date the next day.
Well that's the policy of the Tesco store my online shopping delivery driver DP is attached to.

The meringues are Tescos property until they hand them to you. If you reject them at delivery they revert to Tescos.

What they decide to do with them after that is up to them!

You don’t have to care about what is convenient to Tescos. You are not “doing them a favour”.
Tescos sends damaged but edible food to Olio & Foodshare.
Inedible food goes to produce animal feed I think.

"Tescos sends damaged but edible food to Olio & Foodshare"

Damaged packaging yes, damaged but edible food, no. That goes against their policy.

And people are right it's not my business/problem that Tesco now have to dispose of it, but it's sad that wasting food is being encouraged on this thread.

It's not about the meringues as such. It's about the elderly lady who goes hungry, the exhausted mum who has to drag her toddlers to a shop, or be pressured into buying worthless food. All so Tesco can throw it away.

It's not about what my rights are, it's about decent customer service and trying not to inconvenience customers. If this is a new policy, then I'll just shift to Ocado in future.

If I were a business, keeping my customers happy would be important. And if that means they occasionally get a freebie which I'd have to dispose of, then great.

I think your examples suggest you think these items wouldn't be sold.

I assume the cakes would be taken back and given a reduced sticker and sold on at a lower price.
There are often squashed items in the reduced section.
Likewise you give other examples of flowers with broken stems - these would still be put in a bucket to be sold.

It sounds like you assume that these items would be given away for free which is why you should keep them along with the refund, but I think Tesco would try to sell them first.

I don't see why you should get a full refund and keep the items, especially if you are frequently doing this. I don't know whether they do look at people's accounts and notice how often they do this but maybe it's something they are beginning to realise they need to look at.

If you know their policies so well you’d know what happens to damaged food. Just because they don’t let you have freebies doesn’t mean it just gets thrown in the bin out of spite.

so, now you are taking back the meringues for the young mum/elderly?

The driver clearly has flexibility. But you don’t get to decide what happens next, they do.

No, the damage I'm talking about is beyond that for yellow stickering. I've eaten though yellow stickered stuff in my time to know!

Also once Tesco have marked it and damaged (because that's the reason for the return), it's not allowed to re-enter their chain. No I didn't know this before, yes I've checked now because I'm clearly a bit of a saddo. It doesn't surprise me though.

Anyway, it's clear we all have different views on this, and that's fine. I got to keep the stuff and got the refund anyway because if you tell customer service (WhatsApp chat) about the damaged goods they just refund them, no quibbles.

You sound a little like an old friend of mine who would have been rubbing her hands at the sight of the smashed meringue 😂. Knowing she could try for a refund and possibly keep the product, which is still edible, feeling like she’s won something.

You want your cake and eat it for want of a better word.

If an item is damaged get a refund and hand the item back …simples.

You are after freebies it seems.

I think it all depends on the driver. We have one driver who will openly point out if something is damaged or short dated and let you keep the goods and refund them. I also have other delivery drivers who refund but always take the goods back. I feel no guilt at being allowed to keep damaged/short dated goods for free, I pay a monthly fee to get goods picked and delivered in good condition and, with 2 deliveries a week, I spend a lot of money at TESCO, so it's much appreciated if they allow me to keep something and give me a refund, it's really good customer service. Who doesn't like to get something for free?

Why are you answering a question with another question instead of giving an answer?

It’s not fair but shopping that’s delivered is not always guaranteed, sometimes items get substituted, sometimes items are damaged and we can ask for a refund.

Agreed. Sometimes they ask if you want to keep it anyway, sometimes they just take it back. I can't think of a time I've wanted to keep badly squashed food, I'd rather they disposed of it one way or another for me.

In a nutshell, if you want the items you need to pay for them. If you want to be refunded and not therefore pay for them, then you don't get to keep the item. Obviously if you report damaged items online, they're not going to send someone round to collect them. However, if you do this too often you'll be blacklisted and they'll refuse to refund you, or worse refuse to deliver to you.

My driver told me a few months ago, that the rules had changed and they now had to take everything back apart from, I think it was milk and bread for some reason.

Anything else, that you say is damaged, they take and refund. They used to refund it and let you keep it, but not any more.

The driver told me that too many people were taking the mickey and claiming really minor damage to get free stuff.

Honestly I’d rather see it go to animal feed than to entitled people. Polices change because people take the piss and ruin it for everyone.

My Tesco drivers offer anything for free if it has been damaged., I once contacted them about not receiving my chicken thighs and they said they would refund. Which they did straight away. Then I found the chicken thighs that dd had put away 🙈 and contacted Tesco and said to charge me - they said dont worry about it. I’ve always found Tesco to be great with things like this.

I got a refund last week and the driver told me to keep the product. I don’t take the piss and only contact them with a genuine issue