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.

It probably means it's either already been frozen at some point in production, or they tested freezing it and it didn't work - sauce may have seperated or something like that.

It may also mean that either microbiological testing for shelf life purposes hasn't been done for products being frozen in a domestic freezer, or it's failed the testing.

@needmorelego it's an automated process, so it's not so much the staff being able to contact the factory, as the process of giving a refund fires off an email. Not a favourite part of my job! Digging through a pasta meal that's been on a shelf for a week and sent second class post, looking for a fly that's long since decomposed is not enjoyable at all! 😂

@wasntlikethisinthegoodolddays you're welcome, and they really do investigate, because when tesco audit the factory they choose random complaints to review ,and you'd better hope they've been looked at properly! Something like this, needing a reprint, was my absolute nightmare.

The irony in this post is utterly marvellous! Bravo!

If Tesco can't be bothered to take food labelling issues seriously (there are huge legal implications and massive fines for this) then report to Trading Standards and let the chase it up.

Talking to some drone like RookieMa's daughter who hates customers won't help.

I agree with all that. It's part of the job of customer service staff to deal with complaints/problems in a professional manner. If they don't want to do that, then they need to find other jobs.

And yes, I know that a minority of customers will be horrible, aggressive, etc., but that is absolutely no excuse for CS staff to treat badly the vast majority of customers who have valid complaints and are polite!

And it’s pathetic that you are so wrapped up in your own privilege that you don’t see that some people often just have £4 to see them through the day and that not everyone can afford for Tesco to just swallow their money.

The thing is, "Tesco" the company DO take that kind of thing seriously. The problem here is that the OP encountered "Little Miss Stroppy" on the counter who seemingly didn't get the memo about how to deal with perfectly valid customer complaints!

Thank you! 👏

I also don't know why anyone would think that returning a faulty item to the place I bought it was wrong. To speak with a real person, and show them the packaging.

You know what I hate as well - even if you do get your refund, you never get anything on top for your inconvenience. Traipsing back to the shop, finding a place to park, queuing at the CS desk. One of the big supermarkets used to give you double back for faulty goods or if you were charged wrongly. I think it was Sainsbury's.

I checked my Aldi receipt the other day, and a bottle of wine was put through twice. They did refund me, but again, nothing for the trouble of having to go back to the shop.

This is a really good point. Some people have severe allergies. If they can't get this right, how do you know anything else on the package is correct?

Yanbu @wasntlikethisinthegoodolddays
Imagine buying something that said it was free from, say, nuts, but then you read on the back it contains nuts. Which one do you believe? You are allergic to nuts so you wouldn't risk it and you would return it and expect the store the clarify the labelling on their product.
Usually the reason for not freezing is because it's usually been frozen before, but I think it's to do with how freezing changes the structure of the food and not any safety measures (though I am sure someone will correct me on that if it's wrong).

I did think the same about this post.

I can afford to lose £4. But many many people can't. And why the fuck do I want to give Tesco my 4 quid!!

Tescos is the worst company I have ever come across regarding a complaint. Absolutely horrendous company to complain to, it's literally like hitting a brick wall.

Fucking hell read the room, £4 is a lot to waste for many, many people. The point is the OP shouldn't have had to face an argument from customer service, just apologise and refund.

Tesco are appalling. Their customer service needs a radical overhaul.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tesco-complaints-racial-profiling-apology-banana-b2548000.html

It sounds as though the Customer Service Assistant you met has been to the same charm school as the Customer Service Manager in our local Tesco Extra. You need to be made of strong stuff to have the audacity to trouble her with a complaint of any sort.

FWIW, it's not whether your complaint was valid that matters, it's the response you received.

Yes the no freezing issue because of texture and taste compromise not food safety but that’s irrelevant really, the food labelling error is far more serious for all the reason Jc2001 points out. Tesco should be thanking you not dismissing you.
Send it to their X profile maybe - they seem to take that more seriously.

In these cases you contact customer services by phone or email, they refund automatically. Though personally I would have eaten it anyway

My local's Tesco's is very good with food refunds, they don't quibble at all. They just bin the returned item.

I was shocked to see this behaviour on YT by a staff member though. Not good.

Customer read the front of the package which stated that it was suitable for freezing.
Bought product.
Took product home.
Customer reads the back of the package where it states in very small font that the product is not suitable for freezing.

So the customer is wrong here???????????????????????????

You mean the big label on the front of the pack that says "Suitable For Freezing"? That one. She read that.

So your argument is that she is at fault because she read the front of the pack where it said suitable for freezing and she thought that meant it was suitable for freezing whereas she should have thought hmm, maybe suitable for freezing means it is not suitable for freezing so I should read all the small print on the back to ascertain whether the big writing on the front that says suitable for freezing means it's suitable for freezing or means it's not suitable for freezing.

Good to know. 👍

Load of fuss about nothing. Nobody needed to lost £4 or waste their own time going back to the shop. It's a bit annoying the information was conflicting but it wouldn't have been dangerous to freeze it.

Yes anyone in the shop should always be polite but it's only your own time you've chosen to waste heading up there in the first place

from the responses the shop assistant gave you in your first post it sounds like maybe you didnt get the point across properly--ie that the packaging was the issue? is that a possibility? there may be policies where they arent allowed to take back food within certain amount of time/if it has been frozen etc which regardless of your complaint why would they break? you would not have gotten sick from it, why would you be any more likely to get food poisoning from this than from any other ready meal? anyway you got your money back in the end so i think its time to move on.

You wouldn't have risked food poisoning as you froze it straight away it would have been the same freshness.
It just means freezing it may affect the quality/taste of the meal not that it wouldn't be suitable for eating.
I would have just eaten it.. Waste of a meal.

This is pure genius. Thank you, gave me a great laugh, and just about sums up the ridiculousness of the situation!!

They should be able to adapt, when it is THEIR mistake. This "Computer says no" business is tedious. I showed her the packaging and the "suitable for freezing" logo on the front, but she was having none of it. It was, in her words, MY mistake for not reading the back and then somehow knowing which statement was correct.

Imagine buying a gluten free product, for example, and finding in tiny words on the back "may contain gluten". It's not good enough.

I agree that it was probably okay to eat, but I didn't want to risk it quite frankly. And why should I?

Incidentally there were 2 identical meals in the fridge, but she wouldn't let me take one of those as a replacement. I mean, why?

She wanted to "win" the argument at all costs. She spoke to me like shit actually, and said it's YOUR mistake.

I've sent in complaint, which they are taking seriously.

As long as it was piping hot throughout it would be fine.
I would have eaten it 😋