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...

We shopped at Tesco for about 15 years but gave up a few years ago as the quality of the meat became very poor.

If I go in there these days, I don't recognise the place

We now mainly shop with Ocado, Lidl and Asda and sometimes sainsburys

we don't like the fact that all fruit and veg come from abroad, and the same for meat. The weather in the netherlands is the same as here, but that they use GM on everything grown in the ground. Lidl always has British fruits and veg to offer.

Also don't like that the ethnic selection is so small and limited. At Sainsbury's the choice is much better, and saves me traipsing around with a tired fed up LO or DH.

ALso don't like that the mainstore in doesn't stock clothes, yet, the mini version in town has clothes and more. I can't park in town without getting a ticket.

My local Tesco has at least 4 aisles of ethnic and world food.

it must depend where you live, very multicultural demographics where I live.

Sainsburys are building a massive store in my town,causing all sorts of traffic disruption in a race to get it built before Christmas.

So Sainsburys are no better than Tesco imo.

Workfare.

Stopped going to Tesco ages ago. Others have said it but I'll repeat: they're too expensive for the quality they are delivering. People have realised this and know that if they're going to purchase store brand items, they might as well go to Sainsburys or someplace which actually produces a decent product.

Their 'sale' pricing is so blatant as well. You could always tell when strawberries were about to go 'half price'- they'd be marked as £5 for one week.

I shop at Aldi, Sainsburys and Morrisons.

Oh, and meat at Tesco is horrible. After the 2nd or 3rd pack of chicken which had the most bizarre texture I've ever experience, and packs of mince with more gristle than meat, I stopped buying meat there. I stopped buying meat at Tesco first, and eventually just stopped shopping there altogether.

Quality not good enough.

I stopped going when they changed the voucher scheme and you got less.A few Pizza Express vouchers weren't worth the prices.

Only Sainsbury and Lidl do reasonable quality cheap food.Sainsbury Savers range is good,Tesco awful.The higher ranges are too expensive.

Oh and the Shirley Porter thing.

Quality of food. In their race to maximise profits they sacrificed quality. A pack of 5 jam doughnuts in Tesco is 50p compared to 60p in Sainsbury. The difference is that the Tesco doughnuts ended up going in the bin they were that foul. Even the kids wouldn't eat them...

I hate them. Within 25 miles, of a rural area, I have 15 of them, and ONE other choice. They've moved into every village, every town, and busted up their high streets.

Their food quality is dire. Their meat sucks, their veg is WAY overpriced. and they pay the farmers about 0.5p for anything.

They're greedy, they're grabbing. We have one opening up in my village next year. I can safely say we'll have no newsagents, no pet shop, no nothing left after a year in our high street.

The waste they sanction is appalling. They waste tens of thousands pounds worth of food and donate nothing to food banks.

They use zero hour contracts, they support workfare, they have crap pension and employment rights.

I won't use them. I drive to use a Co-op or an Aldi, and buy my meat locally from the butchers ( while it's there, until the new Tesco pops up). I will never, ever use them.

And if you lived in Mid Wales you would love them, For all their faults at long last there is one real supermarket within 30 miles.

Local shops are lovely in theory, but not day in day out week in week out for everything.

Real rural butchers may be ok, but my parents choice of veg shops and small town spar type stores is very poor quality and very very expensive.

and our Co-Op is really over priced shit.

YY to most things everyone else has said, but the things I hate most are how expensive they are compared to Asda Morrisons Aldi and Lidl, while pretending to be cheap. The way the quality of own brand and fresh items is absolutely dire, compared with almost everyone.

I hate all the fake special offers and 'half price' wine, pizzas and seasonal fruit that are never sold at and are not worth the overinflated 'normal' price. When the OFT has finished with the sofa people, they should go after the supermarkets on these 'offers'

I hate the way they screw their suppliers and because all the special offers are on either nasty processed food, or things like 2 for 1 sacks of satsumas that almost no-one will get through before they go off especially is they are often halfway there in the shop.

Its not such a problem where I live, but I feel sorry for those who have little choice but to shop in Tesco. As well as a fantastic well priced farm shop, I have a co-op, M+S, Morrisons, Aldi, Asda and Sainsburys that's more convenient than the nearest Tesco.

I think all the supermarkets are guilty of the above, but Tesco, closely followed by Asda are by far the worst.

We live 40+ miles from a town and can only shop locally in either a Spar or a small Co op (both expensive and very small ranges). There is no option for internet shopping. 40+ miles away are a small Morrisons, a Lidl and a Tesco Metro.

We were all excited when Tesco bought and began to develop a site after years of wrangling. They put concrete over a rare peat bog but everyone was pleased because it would bring jobs, choice and internet shopping.

Once all the concrete was laid, they changed their minds. Profits are down so they have "banked" a huge site, in an area of great beauty. Now they have kept competitors from buying the site, they have decided motto bother.

Shower of bastards. They try to force their way into some towns but here, where they had everyone bending over to accommodate them, they have "changed their minds".

I think that the coop and waitrose are more ethical and have therefore ditched Tesco. Ocado is much better than Tesco deliveries and the quality is better imo.
I also don't want to contribute to Tesco's dominance of the british economy - £1 in every £7 is spent in Tesco...I don't want to be a part of that

Went to Tesco Express today at 5.15pm. 10 people in the queue with a basketful each, I was 10th. 1 young flustered girl on till. She rings bell for help. Woman leaves her shelf stacking, huffing, comes up aisle and looks at queue then turns back and goes straight back to what she was doing. I was RAGING.

Tesco's food is poor quality, I find, esp. their fresh food, and they can't seem to compete on price with Lidl and Aldi. Their choice of home delivery slots is abysmal as well, unlike ASDA or Sainsburys.

It's a bit of no brainer, really.

Oh yeah, and their attitude stinks as well, as pointed out by many of you above: workfare, shitty employment policies, land banking, driving small local businesses out... seems they don't care much about the society that allowed them to become rich in the first place!

To be honest the only thing I buy from them now is their own value branded cat litter, as it's the best there is. Otherwise I go out of my way to avoid shopping there...

Too expensive to compete with Aldi/Asda/Lidl.

Quality too low to compete with Sainsburys/Waitrose and quite honestly even Morrisons, whose fish, meat and produce beats Tescos' by a country mile.

Customer service is poor and I've noticed that even their hygiene standards have dropped.

Aldi and Lidl are cheaper would be my guess.

their own value branded cat litter...the best there is

sums the buggers up really

cheaper and better nkf!

Why don't the management read Mumsnet reviews over the past year?

Because we are not a paid focus group from the south east?

Because we won't tell them you are doing brilliantly, we luffs you.

Because they are busy choosing between the BMW 5 series and the Mercedes E class.

Because Christmas is coming so the next quarter will pick up anyway.

Actually,that is a good point about Tesco being the only choice in some areas and they are embraced with open arms.

I love living in a city with all the choice, howev I used to live in a very small town and the choice was Somerfield (lovely) or coop. So when Tesco came to town everyone was quite simply delighted as it represented choice and value (coop and Somerfield were very expensive and small stores so very little choice).

I admire coop for their ethical principles but their food is utterly dire. I would never buy anything (apart from wine admittedly) from there.