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 wouldn't bother about getting my £4 back from the store nor would have bothered going in. It's a product labelling issue so I would personally Just send a picture of the conflicting instructions on the packaging to them on X or email, or on their website if they have a "Contact us" link.

I started getting deliveries from Sainsbury's and they were pretty reliable except that sometimes they didn't notice, say, that I had ordered 400g of something and only substituted it for 200g worth. I wrote them a note about it in a general feedback form and thought it probably wouldn't have any effect but the substitutions have been incredibly reliable ever since.

Honestly OP, what a palaver over nothing. It would have been fine to eat. If you wanted to make the point it would have been more useful to email head office.

They can escalate it upwards. And supermarkets have customer service desks - to erm provide service to customers! There's no obligation on a customer to contact head office at all!

@parkrun500club by the customer emailing head office directly it's probably quicker though.
Cuts out the middlemen (ie the staff member in the shop).

I work in tesco, and we have a colleague on our csd who will argue with customers about refunds like this. Its like the money is coming out of her personal bank account. Its embarrassing.

Their customer service is crap - I spoke to them recently after being charged 118% increase for a meal due to my child having ASD and they defended their policies to the hilt. There was no apology or finesse either.

So stupid as when customers take against you for something minor, you are going to lose out a lot more profit than if you had just been pleasant & put it right.

Rude

If OP rocked up to the till and was £4 short, Tesco would give her short shrift. They wouldn’t say don’t worry. It’s only £4. She wouldn’t be able to purchase what she wanted. So why should people not expect Tesco to refund £4?

I probably would have eaten it too tbh. But that’s not really the issue. The issue is incorrect labelling. Seems like the best thing to have done was contact customer services via e mail but again why should we.
Incorrect labelling can be fatal don’t forget.

Is there anything you don't complain about?

I just couldn't get worked up about something like this. Surely there are more important things to worry about and take action on.

Well, that's over and above if they gave you the refund at a later date after you'd taken the shopping home, because how could they possibly know you didn't actually buy two bottles of wine at the time? Or do you mean you went back to the till from the packing counter when you realised you'd been overcharged? 😏

Same here .

We need people like OP to complain about the small stuff or we end up with situations like thr Post Office where big companies take the absolute piss and get away with it

Good on you OP, MN's own Alan Bates 😀

I've had a reply from them on Twitter, and I have to say they were fantastic. The lady admitted she would have frozen it too, based on the logo on the front. They are going to speak to the store about attitude. And they've set me a digital card worth £10. So, I'm happy with that.

I think the thing that riled me up the most, was the woman in the store telling me over and over "this is YOUR fault, you should have read the back of the packet as well".

Good result, OP. They need the bollocking from head office, and that will help the next person who complains.

Sounds like the stroppy assistant decided you were trying it on without looking at the facts.

Well done OP, great result!

Good result. Even if you had read the back as well, what were you supposed to do - toss a coin?

Well said. Nail on the head there. We need proper accountability and that starts with people making organisations aware of their failings AND organisations taking things seriously. Far too many customer services staff and customer services departments are just "Fob Off" merchants and that must change.

It's not serious. People just lack basic biology knowledge and invent phobias out of ignorance. Perfectly safe to do what you are doing.

If they get the packaging wrong for this, who is to say the ingredients list is right? What if someone has a severe food allergy? You can't just shrug and say it's not serious. And it's certainly not ok, for the shop assistant to tell me that it's my fault! I mean, wtf!

Did you go in with an attitude that the woman on self service is at fault and should be apologising?
It's astounding the way many adults speak to customer assistants.

Safe or not is irrelevant. The packaging was wrong and that needs to be flagged as the major issue that it is. It's not for a stroppy customer services assistant to decide on what's serious or not. Tesco were in the wrong and a refund is the least they should do, without stroppiness!

Absolutely not. I was really nice, not confrontational in the least, because I didn't think for one moment that she would argue the toss. I know what you mean about how some people speak to shop staff and waiters etc, and I hate it. I am always nice, always say please and thank you etc.

I would assume the woman had just had enough that day then, service desk is a mentally draining job.

If you end up in that situation again you're best off asking to speak to the shift leader than getting into arguing the toss over it, as the shift leader will likely want you out of the way quickly to get on with what theyre doing and will hopefully also clock that the assistant needs switching off for a break.