I did not know this about food return

[Racheyg]

I was in Waitrose and saw an sign to say frozen quorn sausages £1.00, thought bargain so picked some up.

Paid for my stuff and felt the need to check my receipt and the sausages were £2.50 didn't realise I got gluten free ones as the were in the section where the other quorn sausages were.

Went to customer services and apparently they don't take back frozen or chilled food, even though I hadn't left the store and explain they were in the wrong section.

Did anyone else know this?

I used to work for Tesco CS. If something chilled or frozen was returned we would refund as usual but the item would have to recorded as waste and disposed of as we couldn't guarantee how long it had been out of the 'chill chain'.

They won't refund frozen ( unless faulty) because the customer could have abused the product, but in this case they can see the time of purchase on the receipt do seems a little picky.
However, Tesco and some of the other retailers will happily refund anything for whatever reason as they charge it back to the supplier as a complaint, regardless of the reason for the return, with an admin fee on top. So you picking up the wrong product would have made £75 for Tesco at the expense of the supplier, of course they have a "no quibble" policy!
Waitrose don't do this unless the product is genuinely faulty and a supplier investigation is required.

As others have said they should have refunded the difference. I work in retail ad would have done that. They only needed to check the section to see you were telling the truth. It's not actually the law to refund due to the stores mistake but it is good customer service.

If you hadn't left the store they're being ridiculous.

Go to Waitrose every day for a week and buy precisely 1 banana and get your free tea/coffee. That'll learn 'em

Complain on Twitter or FB and link to this thread.

But surely, if it is only minutes (per the receipt) how is that different from the fact we all take our shopping home and no-one dies - or do we need to buy refrigerated cars now :)

I had a similar experience to this a few years ago,but with Tesco's. I'd bought one of their 'Finest' fish pies (chilled). Was home within 15 minutes of buying it,on a cool day,and put it in the fridge within a few minutes of arriving home. I took it out of the fridge a few hours later to cook,opened it,peeled the film off the top,and nearly barfed because of the rank smell that hit me. It was definitely off,despite being well in date. I took it back the next day,sure that I would get a refund or exchange with no problems,but no. They were adamant that they couldn't refund or exchange chilled/frozen items as they had no proof that the problem hadn't been caused by the customer storing it incorrectly. I was so annoyed that I went home and phoned their head office and (politely) tore them off a strip. They said that the person on the store's customer services was correct,that was their policy,but in this instance,as a gesture of goodwill,they would make an exception and send me a refund. Ever since that incident (in 2012) I have never bought any chilled or frozen items from Tesco.

This happened to me. I was in Sainsbury's and picked up three packets of ham. I paid then noticed that the third packet was smoked. It had been behind the other two on the shelf in the wrong place.

Customer service refused to let me swap it as they said they didn't know how long I had been walking round the store with it. I pointed out that the store had only been open for three minutes - I was the first customer through the door - and I had only bought those three items. They could check their CCTV and see that I had only been in there a few minutes. They refused so I just went back to the shelf, got a correct packet and walked out with it leaving the other one on their desk. Nothing was done.

I can completely understand if I had been wandering round slowly for an hour but I hadn't and could prove it.

Ridiculous!
All they needed to do was give the OP a non-gf bag of quorn sausages and chuck the one she gave them.

She hadn’t even left the store.

They can take back frozen food because once I bought a tub of manky ice cream.

I used to work on customer services in Sainsburys years ago. We could not exchange frozen goods once they had left the store , unless faulty. We would have on this occasion though for good customer relations.

I wouldn't be shopping in a shop that did take back food. Ugh.

The sausages weren't faulty, you made a mistake by not checking the price, maybe they were in the wronge section and not your fault but probabaly not theors either.

If they were forced to adhere to selling it at the price of the section it was in you;d get people moving the champagne to the biscuits section and insisting they pay 89p for a bottle of Bolly as it was in with the custard creams.

It's only £1.50 - and it is your responsibility to check. Lesson learnt.

My store manager mate says in her shop they refund and then bin it, write it up as a wastage.

@weedsnseeds1 is correct, but it’s not £75. Admin fee on top of refund varies from £6-13 ish. That’s why they are able to offer the customer product ‘guarantee’

@Catatlarge
What per item? That’s mad

Not really. It’s quite cheap for someone to deal with a problem on your behalf! It takes time for someone to fill out a form, deal with the customer, send the form to accounts, accounts to send it to the supplier.
Whereas if a quality team have to pick it up with the customer it’s more time spent. Not always good for the consumer if it’s a small problem that’s time sensitive

Sometimes going back to the manufacturer instead of the shop with a food problem is better for both the consumer and the manufacturer. The consumer is likely to get a refund plus a bit extra. The manufacturer doesn’t have to pay the admin charge.