Terrible customer service - this time it's TESCO

[wasntlikethisinthegoodolddays]

Totally fed up of bad customer service! What do you make of this?

On 22 May, I bought a reduced meal for 2 at Tesco - a "Finest Chicken in Prosecco sauce". Checked the packet to make sure it was okay to freeze. Went home, put it in the freezer. Sunday night, I moved it from the freezer to the fridge to defrost, with the intention of eating it on Monday night for dinner.

So, Monday night, I look at the back of the pack for cooking instructions, and I notice on the back, in tiny letters it says “not suitable for home freezing”. Very odd, because it says the opposite on the front.

Husband and I decide it's not worth taking a risk and eating it, especially with it being chicken. The local Tesco is only 5 minutes up the road, so a pain in the bum, but I get coat and shoes on and drive up there to take it back.

Fully expected Tesco to be shocked at the conflicting instructions on the packet, but no, the woman on the customer service desk, immediately says they can't take it back because :

It's not fresh.

It's been frozen.

They don’t know if I froze it on the day I bought it.

They don’t know whether I defrosted it properly.

I got it reduced anyway (it was still £4).

The date on it is 22 May, so I didn't buy it recently.

How any of the above is relevant, I don't know. No apologies for the inconvenience. In fact assistant was quite snappy.

I asked assistant if she would be happy with this if she were me, to which she replied that she wouldn’t have brought it back, because she would have realised that SHE had made a mistake!

How is this my mistake? Ah, apparently I should have not taken the sign on the front at face value, and I should have read all of the small print on the back of the packet before purchasing. Hmm.

After arguing my point, I eventually got my £4 back on a gift card. Which didn’t work at the check out. Brilliant.

I'm pretty sure that some people (we have a lot of elderly people here) may have walked away £4 down, which could be quite a chunk of their daily shopping budget.

I’d contact them separately as they obviously need to be told this. I use the freezer a lot and would expect the info on the front to be correct.

Ah yes good old customer service. Some shockingly bad assistants around who must have missed the training day which covered how to talk to customers. 🙄

There are some good ones around though. I recently bought a can of fruit salad as it's a favourite of my elderly mother but discovered it was 8 months out of date! I returned it (Sainsbury's) and had a really sincere sounding apology with my refund.

You are not being unreasonable to suggest they should have taken it more seriously. I would put all of the above into an email to their head office.
However you are being very unreasonable to suggest that just because a person is older they are more likely to just let something go and be out of pocket. I found that an odd and frankly patronising addition to your post.

I'm definitely going to complain. My point about older people, is that we have a lot of very old and frail people here, and I honestly don't think that many of them would have stood their ground up against this very cocky woman. I'm not young myself (54).

I work on Tesco customer service. Sorry you were treated like that.

Yes normally we can't take back fresh produce , however your complaint was about conflicting instructions for freezing on the front and back of the chicken. So this is totally different.

You should have had a full refund ( would have been better if your refund had gone onto a money card as gift cards can take up to 24 hours to work ) and the details should have been passed to head office to look into.

I am not sure I would have gone to the shop to begin with. When I previously had issues with produce, I simply emailed customer service and got a gift card every time.
Having said that, I freeze everything regardless of what the packaging says. "Not suitable for home freezing" just means that the product won't have the same consistency/flavour when defrosted and cooked. It doesn't mean that it is somehow unsafe to freeze it.

Mumsnet user too lazy to read the OP...

Thanks for this. That's what I expected - a refund as the packaging was incorrect. Interestingly, they had the same dish in the fridges, and the sign on the front that said "Suitable for home freezing" has been removed. So it's clearly not okay to freeze! It probably would only have impacted the flavour or consistency of the sauce, but I don't fancy risking it with chicken!

Customer did read the label.
Label gave conflicting advice .
Perhaps you should read OP's post?

Definitely contact the head office or complaints dept or whatever. If a packet says one thing, you shouldn't then have to closely scrutinise the rest of the packet just in case it there is further conflicting info!

So it had a freezer sign on the front but different instructions on the back, not suitable for home freezing generally means quality will not be the same rather than food safety so I would have probably ate it anyway, if it was unsafe wording would be much stronger.

In Waitrose there are notices up in the store at the fridges saying what can't be returned, including fridge stuff, maybe Tesco should have done this

Is that you Tesco customer service?

Your daughter sounds like she's in the wrong job.

RookieMa · Today 09:10
My DD works PT in a shop and she tells me they all absolutely hate customers like this

If she is anything like you I'd say the customers absolutely hate her too.

She hates customer's who have a valid complaint?

Front and back of packet. Bear in mind, this is £7.50 full price. I paid £4.

@RookieMa which label should the OP have read? The one on the front or the one on the back?

Tbh I would have eaten it anyway and then just sent them the label back so that they could rectify it, I couldn't be bothered traipsing back to Tesco to argue with a shop assistant over 4 quid.

She was in the wrong but you shouldn't have gone back to store. Should have emailed customer services head office with the pics. In store assistants won't be in a position to organize changes to the packaging for future batches.

The not suitable for home freezing instruction doesn't mean the food will harm you if frozen, just that it won't taste as nice. I freeze things with that instruction all the time.

Really didn't want to risk food poisoning. I had to go back to the shop anyway, as there was nothing else in for dinner (all other main meals are frozen and wouldn't defrost in time). I know it's only £4. We aren't short of cash. But it's the principle with things like this. I actually bought something from Asda in the end. A lovely beef dish. It said £4.95 on the shelf, and it went through the till at £5.50. Yes, I went to customer services and got my 55p back. It clearly wasn't my day yesterday 😂