Wot No Eggs? ~ Tesco-Complaint

Monday, January 08, 2007

Wot No Eggs?

I went to the large Tesco in Station Road, Addlestone, Surrey, on 22nd December to buy, amongst other things, eggs.

I was informed by a couple of staff members that they had run out of eggs on 20th December. The first person I spoke to was very offhand, almost rude. The second was polite and apologetic, but neither had any satisfactory explanation.

I find it extraordinary that three days before Christmas a store the size of Tesco allows itself to run out of such a basic foodstuff. They had all sorts of other things in stock that I did not want but NO eggs - unbelievable.

I haven't been back to Tesco since, Jenny Lack.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Reply to Jenny Lack

In the store where I work we also experienced low stock on eggs this year. Hopefully I can explain the situation in my store, which may well have been the case for Addlestone.

The store ordering system usually uses the last 2 weeks sales history to generate orders, but because the orders will be higher than normal due to Christmas we manualy adjust them. Each year for the week leading up to Christmas we plan our additional orders for fresh food products.

Last year we had high volumes of fresh food products left after the last day of trade. So to put it simply, we had ordered too much stock for the amount of customers who wanted it.

So, this year we looked at what we ordered last year, and kept the levels the same, taking into account we had lots left over the year before.

However, some stores experienced a huge increase in sales and sold above and beyond what they sold last Christmas.

It would have been too late to bring any more stock in by the 24th if certain products had exceeded sales.

In my store last year we were practically giving turkeys away, yet this year with the same amount ordered, we almost ran out and had to transfer some from a nearby store. Cream, again, ran out, and last year we had shelves full of it, all reduced to clear and much of it thrown away.

I hope this helps, and could explain what happened in your situation.

Anonymous said...

It would be helpful if they (not just Tesco, any supermarket) could provide an explanation such as this where the eggs should have been. It would let people know what was happening and not just thinking that they hadn't bothered to replenish the shelves etc. Or at the very least let the staff on the shop floor know.

It would mean that the staff shouldn't need to be asked the same question all day, as there would be a sign or equivalent with the explanation and apology. (This may also have been the reason for the response from the first member of staff in the article). Even just telling the staff would mean that they would have an explanation to give when people ask, not just saying that they don't have any more or don't know.

Anonymous said...

Availability problem, what you expect Tesco to do? Make them out of thin air, have a go at the farmer.

Anonymous said...

Al, that's a fair point, although I think that no matter what explanation we gave, customers would still get upset about not getting what they want, especially at Christmas.

I do agree totally that staff should be better informed of avaiablity issues customers may become emotional about.

Also, due to Christmas seasonal space we recently moved tissues from Health & Beauty back to it's origanal location on Aisle 4. I made some very clear signs all over the section where tissue were and almost every customer who was looking for tissues still approcahed staff with "where are the tissues?"

Anonymous said...

I agree with you about some people being unhappy with the explanation but it's still better than none at all.

As for the signs going unnoticed, perhaps this wouldn't happen if they were on empty shelves. Presumably you replaced the tissues with something else so people would look, think "where are the tissues?" and not see the signs.

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