Tesco profits down - where they have gone wrong?

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Not so very long ago, Tesco used to be held up as a massive UK business success story. I've read Tescopoly and sure some people despise them - they've enraged farmers and the protest lobby by aggressive policy with suppliers,store-expansion and squeezing out independent shops.

They've made a bunch of bad decisions outside the UK; but they had a huge loyal customer-base in the UK and a lot of their problems must come down to complacency and not thinking enough about their home-grown customers, despite the masses of data they collect through clubcards.

I'll post my own personal reasons for reducing my shopping with them, but think it would be interesting to have an open-forum to see just how out of touch and poor they have become, with stories from MNetters. Maybe someone from Tesco will read it and have a think about what they can change.

Dear Tesco....

This is where you have gone wrong...

I don't have a convenient Tesco's near me, but I don't want one.

Hate hate the express stores. Just soleless with hardly anything you really need.

I shop between Aldi and Sainsburys. I can get virtually everything I need in Aldi - and the quality is GREAT. Sainsburys are no more expensive really as they do a 'Brand Match' where if their stuff comes out more expensive they just give you the money off next time. I had £5.39 off this morning.

When I've shopped on the off chance I find the experience very clinical and the choice of products poor. I popped into a superstore a few weeks back to get some baking ingredients for my nieces birthday cake but the selection was woeful. Hardly any flavourings/colourings or icing. I went to Sainsburys instead.

I stopped online shopping with them when I heard about them refusing to deliver to the front door of flats (ie claiming that delivery to the security entrance was "to your door").

I live on the 3rd floor and the whole purpose of getting a home delivery is to not have to negotiate the stairs with loads of bags and a baby. Delivery to the security entrance is no good to me.

That's a few grand I've spent elsewhere.

Every little bit of pissing off your customer base helps.

The prices on the shelves don't always match the price the till says. I did a shop yesterday with thd hand held scanner and items were incorrectly priced. I only noticed because I was scanning as I went but I'm sure this happens more than you think so you end up over paying.
The toilets are always vile in every store I've been in lately.

Oh and I've just done the weekly shop in lidl and I came out feeling calm and relaxed and it took a third of the time a tesco shop would as local store is massive and confusing and I end up with distraction purchases.

I do that too, Niceguy, and when they had shopping baskets I bought three which just fit in the trolley so the heavy stuff goes straight in those, leaving a lot less to pack at the counter.

The big Tesco Extra near me has had a massive makeover and looks great. It has new hot food counters - pizza, jacket pots, pancakes etc. Fab idea but the quality is all crap.

Cost of food is way too high for me now so I have moved to Aldi. I didn't think I can do a full weeks shop there but it was easy and so much faster, No more annoyance at crazy queues due to check out assistants gassing with customers or people spending ages packing/putting money in their purse. Aldi won't stand for that shit and it is quicker to have everything chucked at you and then repack it at the end after paying than waiting for slow people at Tesco.

I have found the quality far higher in Aldi and even though there is less choice, there tend to be more things I like to eat!

Wish they delivered but an hour out of the house to save lot of money. It has pretty much cut my food budget in half so that is a saving of about £2500 a year! Crazy - I don't think Tesco can compete to be honest.

Quality of fresh food is bad, staff poorly trained in their depts (not sure which joint is best for which type of cooking etc), diminishing line of value products - or at least fewer and fewer available in the store (extra type) nearest to me, offers confusing, hard to find offer expiry dates, out of date labels on offers, fairly expensive, too many coupons given at the till - just cut your prices!
Mostly I would like to see better quality for less money.
The staff in my nearest one are mostly lovely though

"Ripen at home" fruit which doesn't. Its straight goes from rock hard to rotten.

The meat is poor quality now and very expensive. I finally stopped buying it after, at the end of a long week, I treated us all to steak and homemade chips etc. Out of the 4 steaks, 1 was ok, 2 were like leather and the 4th was a sliver of meat visible on the front but when unpacked was about 70% thick white fat. ( I have a photo - would you like to see it?)

The endless reams of paper that come with the till receipts with £0.08 off your next shop or you have save £0.67 on your shop this time, then the faffing about getting all those bits of till paper and Clubcard money off vouchers out of your bag when you pay, while the poor bastard behind you is rolling their eyes in resigned disgust, knowing they are going to have to do the same thing in a minute which will piss the person off behind them ad infinitum........

Being pissed off because it turns out the vouchers were out of date yesterday, because yes, I have nothing better to do with my time than file all these fucking vouchers in date order while juggling all the other things in life.

Am I collecting the vouchers for their 70% off but still massively over priced Teflon coated cat dehumidifiers or whatever the current piece of tat they are trying to flog you is? Am I fuck.

Their petrol prices being significantly different in neighbouring petrol stations. WHAT is all that about??

I could go on. But I'll leave you with Tesco attitude to Christmas. Now I know all the other retailers do it but Tesco seem to take a particular delight in ramming it down your throat for months. Our local store has the tinniest ( as it rattley, weedy, irritating) tannoy system through which they pipe a selection of the worst Christmas songs ever on a permanent loop. Everytime I went into the shop I regretted it, but the decision had been made.
And then, Christmas Eve comes the shop closes. We all have a wonderful Christmas Time just as Sir Paul predicted Day. By the time Tesco open again, Boxing Day, every trace that Christmas ever existed has been wiped clean from the face of the building. One of the check out assistants told me they take it all down after closing time on Christmas Eve - they even get the staff to strip the staffroom of decorations. Because as an organisation they don't give a shit, all they want is your money.

Oh, thats a bit ranty

And their bread is over priced pants

Lidl did make me laugh recently when they introduced hand held shopping baskets - they put up posters saying "for your convenience we've now introduced shopping baskets - always looking to assist our customers shopping experience" (or words to that effect).

Why wait until 2012 to do this? Everyone must have used a trolley before.

So funny I actually took a photo of the poster.

I didn't even know Tesco were still using workfare. They made a big song & dance about pulling out of it (but then, workfare is several schemes, so maybe they just pulled out of one? ). I stopped using ASDA because of workfare; I stopped using Tesco because they're shite.

Like many others here I have converted to Aldi for the main shop with anything I can't get topped up at Sainsburys or Waitrose. I hate Tesco. Ours is just too damn big, it takes me forever to get round. The quality and prices don't tally.
Aldi is cheaper but great quality for that price bracket. And if I want treats I can afford a bit if Waitrose from the savings Aldi.

Basically I save about £30 a week I reckon from splitting the shop.

Clothes are grim. I get quite a few bits from Tu at Sainsburys though, especially for DC's.

They would rather throw food away, than offer decent discounts. The 'reduced' shelves have things like Ham with a Use By date of TODAY, reduced from £2.99 to £1.99. If its going off TODAY, and you cant sell it AT ALL tomorrow, then why not reduce it to 99p or 49p?

...and how come you never see things like Legs of Lamb, or other joints? Why is it only the crap - where does all the other stuff go? How much waste is there?

Ha ha,that comment about "ripen at home" is so right!

Tesco staff are rude and untidy in my local ones. The food is horrible.

Waitrose is better as is Sainsburys and that's where I will continue to shop.

Our Aldi has only just got baskets. Before that you could only use a trolley - signs up saying no baskets /bags to be used. So you had to push the buggy with one hand and a trolley with the other. Not easy. We then got baskets -great I thought - but they make you leave them at the front of the till so you have to pack your shopping straight into a bag before your shopping fall off the end of the till and the kids run off. I asked why and they said because people steal the baskets. I do love Aldi's like it or lump it approach to customer service. I still shop there though but it's not always easy.

The lidl checkout system is great. You just hurl it all in your trolley and then pack at the windo. It takes a matter of minutes.

There is also a very nice unspoken rule in lidl that if someone is behind you (when you have a trolley load) with a handful pt items you let them of first, which is all very friendly and civilised.

I did laugh when they introduced baskets last year. Before unless you had a trolley you would have to grab an old fruit box or so something.

Oh feah at the typos.

The Lidl/Aldi checkout system is a game - me vs the checkout operator. The closest I'll every get to a video game. And I'm good!

I use an IKEA bag and large Sainsbo's bag for heavy stuff/bottles. I put items on the conveyor belt in the order I want to pack in, and go for it.

Nappies, loo roll etc just get plonked on top - I enver use bags for them anywhere.

I never have to repack.

The checkout operators in Lidl are FIERCE.

If you take more than two nano seconds they give you The Look.

I never even noticed that they didn't have baskets before - I'm a family shopper trolley dolly always.

Once I went in and didn't get a trolley but I was only buying a bottle of champagne. No one let me in front of them in the queue though.

BeCool I love that game too. The adrenalin!

AngryFeet - rofl at "Aldi won't stand for that shit"

At our lidl - in a town with Tesco, sainsburys & Booths - a lot of entitled people don't play by the rules at the checkout & the staff aren't fierce enough to stop them

I don't mind people with baskets packing at the till but some of them will pack a whole trolley

(I always let people with a few things go ahead of me while I'm still emptying my trolley but after that, given scanning speed, they can wait )

Tesco doesn't feel like a pleasant shop.

If you ask the staff where something is they could not care.

In sainburies they employ a wide variety of ages of staff. They are all lovely.

Orange is a warmer colour than blue. Or green.

The fresh produce is truly crap.

The meat is awful. As is the fish.

There is no special selection stuff.

We shop at a mixture of our farm shop, Lidl and sainburies/morrisons.

I don't know how they train the sainburies staff but it should be copied by tescos.

I do NOT trust what they do to their food, they use dodgy & unscrupulous suppliers (criminals in some cases) hence horse meat scandal.

All of this to undermine genuine British suppliers with high standards of welfare & traceability. They complain that they have to use shit foreign imports because British people want cheap food but they have been making £££billions of profit, whilst UK dairy farmers have been crippled.

I loathe Tesco's. They've killed high streets, screwed british farmers, illegally conned their consumers. I will never cross their threshold. They are as arrogant & vile as Ryanair.

Wanted - I think you make a good point. Companies think we want cheap crap. They don't realise that many of us would rather have less that is better quality. We are not a well off family but we never buy cheap ready means with their shitty imported meat.

Everything is being crap-ified right now :(