Tesco

[TheCalvert]

Gah. I have had one of those days, and a trip to my local Tesco Metro has really REALLY not helped my mood.

Situation is this:

I went into the store to purchase some ancilliary goods I had completely forgotten to buy in a previous shop (again one of those days).

Anyhows, to cut a long story short, I went to one of those self-service checkout thinngys. It wouldn't take my bank card. DH has just been paid, so I know there is plenty of money in there (plus I paid for earlier shop on bank card and withdrew some cash at an ATM for misc. goods). I had put my PIN number in already and asked for the assistance of one of the blokes on the till.

He tried puting the transaaction through again. I put my PIN in again and once more the card reader refused my card. He told me that my card was refused and that I had no money in my account. I said, erm, no - I think the issue resides with your machines. At this point, Tesco dude told me that they were accepting all other cards OK, so the issue was me.

I again said no, and that we had had a similar issue with Tesco and said card previously. He maintaied that there was nothing wrong with their machines and that it was my fault (??!). The shop came to a total of £12.

I left Tesco (raging) and withdrew £50 from the same account and went to buy the same provisions in a nearby Sainsburys Local, and ended up paying more as not all my items were on offer (I didn't want to return to Tesco as people had stopped to nosey at what me and tesco dudes discussion was about and was embarrased to return to the shop).

AIBU?

BU for what exactly?

Did you return to the shop and 'accidentally' burn it down??

That may have been U.

ALthough arguing the point is not at all U.

Just so you know, I feel your pain.

Love the word ancilliary.

Totally underused.

Is wine an ancilliary?

My shop did not include vino at this point, although DH was dispatched to the local wine emporium to satisfy my thirst and lift my spirits because of my dreadful day!

Nikki - was I being U from raging about the way I was spoken to by Tesco dude and embarrased in front of the whole shop for something that was not my fault .

Nah, you should have smashed a bottle and stabbed them in the face with it! [slightly maniacal grin]

You should have marched back into the shop, slammed the money on the counter and said in a loud voice "The customer is ALWAYS right." But then I am a confrontational bitch girl, so thats how I deal with things!

I'm with nikki........I would have told him to keep my shopping to one side, hotfooted it to the nearest cashpoint and gone and waved my £50 in his face.........may have even waved a few hundred in his face just to make sure the message really hit home

slightly off on the time of this but the same thing has happened to me at a tesco store. They were very nice though, they held onto my shopping for me while I popped out to the cash point outseide, withdrew the money and went in and paid at the customer care desk. They said that while they didn't know why my card had failed it was a problem with them not me and were very apologestic and gave me a book of comuuters for schools tokens as a gesture. I guess it depends who you come up against.

Mine failed in Sainsburys when two parents of kids I taught were in the queue behind me. Gawd embarrasment!

I got in a furious bloody rage yesterday (I am pg and was trying to buy cream cakes) and the fricking pissing bloody self service amchine shouted unauthorised item in the bagging area five times for the first 5 items! The Tesco woman went rifling through my bag to check if I was stealing!

I hate them hate them hate them .

The problem is with the merchant service that Tesco use (which I think may be the same as Asda use). The system doesn't always work, something goes wrong. Would be interesting to find out if your bank did authorise the payment, as I suspect they may have done but the message didn't get though to Tesco correctly thus the card was declined.
Unfortunately there is little anyone can do - Tesco use the card processor and most transactions occur without problem. However the card processor should in my view look at how many transactions fail and if that failure is an issue with their system. The system does do fraud prevention checks, so maybe it failed the transaction due to some anti-fraud check detecting a false-positive. No way of knowing - annoying when it happens though. With luck the card processing industry will work on making sure their system can be relied upon.
There are many thousands of transactions daily which work fine... but some still fail without obvious reason.
YANBU to go elsewhere. Though do consider carrying some cash so if low amount transactions fail, you have alternative payment. For example I always have £40 just in case a payment for petrol fails, as with fuel you can't just leave it at the till.

You are not being unreasonable.

I loathe Tesco along with Asda and never shop at either, unless I absolutely have to. On those exceedingly rare occasions the stores always seem to be full of weird looking people and never look particularly clean.

Give me Sainsbury's every time.

What exactly did you expect them to do?

The machine wouldn't take your card - that may be the fault of the machine, or of your card, or of the bank, but nevertheless they could not take your money so they couldn't let you have the shopping.

Happened to me to, in Tesco too - you do realise that this amount will come out of your account and refunded within 3 days (its like a ghost transaction, according to my bank). When it happened to me, I tried 3 times, and after the 3rd, used a different card, successfully.. The man had given me 3 receipts, with 'transaction failed' printed at the bottom, for each of the failed attempts - when I checked the next day, 4 lots of the money had been taken and 3 refunded 2 days later. I was, and still am pissed off, as I could (didn't though) have gone overdrawn cos of it.

My friend banks with RBS and cant use the the SS machines at all in Tesco cos her card never works there. Does at Asda tho. Weird. Think might be a maestro but not sure. Tis pants tho.

Interestingly the Asda machines won't take my Tesco credit card, but will take other cards. Do you think it's a supermarket rivalry thing?