Tesco's "Complete Mess" Delivery Service

I have emailed the letter below to online@tesco.co.uk and terry.leahy@uk.tesco.com after a really distressing experience this evening.

I placed the above online grocery order and arranged delivery for 28th March 2008 between 9-11pm. The driver arrived at 9.10pm approx and straight away i noticed that my order was not 'in carrier bags' as requested. Furthermore the order contained 2 items of dog food, one bag of dried dog food plus six tins of dog food - i do not have a dog. It also contained a packet of 6 snow ball cakes, which i had also not ordered. There was only one '21 pack' of walkers crisps - i had ordered 2, and to be honest this was the final straw. Myself and the driver began to 'tick' items off on the receipt but it became clear that the order was a complete mess, the driver said it would look badly on him as he was limited to time spent at each address so i asked him to take the order back. He advised me to telephone customer services to re-arrange the slot which i did soon after. I explained the issues to the operator and they arranged re-delivery for the following day - 24 hours after my original order. I also explained that i do my shopping online as i am disabled and have a young child at home, and we now have no food. The operator apologised - i also pointed out that as my delivery was completely messed up through NO fault of my own i objected to paying delivery charges, he said 'Tesco delivered your shopping - you sent it back!' - is this what you call customer service?? My order was totally incorrect, packaged incorrectly and now i'm told its my fault and expected to pay for an inferior service. The call ended.
I then went to log into my Tesco account to check the change of delivery time, to my surprise the total amount of my shopping had increased by almost £20! Again i telephoned customer services only to be told that as the 'home delivery team' worked short hours there was no-one available to find out the reason. I requested that the order be cancelled completely.
Now this leaves me with not only no shopping but no further funds to do my shopping elsewhere as the funds have been debited from my debit card and upon speaking to customer services for a third time i am advised that it can take up to 5 days for a refund. I really cannot believe that i could be left in such a complete and utter mess and no offer to rectify the situation. None of this is my fault and i will certainly think twice before using Tesco again - which is a real shame as i have used Tesco for almost 12 months now - but i suppose my business hardly makes a difference.
I just hope someone in a similar situation to myself may not have to experience anything like this, i will be sending a copy of this email to Watchdog and Motability Magazine as i think you're customer service is non existent.
I would like to continue shopping with Tesco but do not feel confident my custom is valued or that you are able to provide a basic delivery service.
I hope you are able to get to the bottom of these problems and look forward to speaking to someone in authority who is able to take ownership of this and bring it to a mutually acceptable conclusion.

Yours Faithfully
Mrs Diane Dawson

Pointlessly pointed nowhere

Hello Tesco-Complaint. Thought i'd share this experience with you.

I work for Sainsbury's, and the other day while at work, a customer bought to me some keys with a Tesco Clubcard keytag attached.

The keys/card were kept in lost property for a while, but as the day progressed no one came in to claim them, so I rang the customer service number and asked them to contact the customer and ask them to come in as it was obviously important as there were keys there. I explained the situation to the man in the phone and he brashly informed that he wouldn't. I protested that the customer would need the keys, presumably to get in and it was very important. They again refused and hung up!

This incident just reminds me why i chose to work and shop at Sainsbury's and go nowhere near Tesco! If the guy wasnt allowed to contact the customer then fair enough, but his attitude stank of Tesco through and through!

Anonymous

Tesco's express way to hell

We were delighted to hear that a Tesco Express/Esso Petrol Station was arriving in Rotherham at the bottom of Fenton Road last year.

We have used the Tesco on regular occasions since its opening as we like to use Tesco for our shopping and it is more convenient than going into the main town centre. Also it gives us the opportunity to fill up with petrol.

However, the organisation of the petrol/shop has been cause for concern since its opening and we are surprised that we have not been involved in a serious accident, as we have come close on many occasions, entering or leaving the premises. The problems have occured due to the bad layout of the parking and also the two entrances/exits to the shop/petrol station. The petrol station/shop is entered via two separate entrances/exits which are from different roads, however, this results in cars being head on to each other at the petrol pumps and being unable to move away from the pump. This causes tailbacks onto the main road which is the major access route onto the roundabout.

The two areas for parking for the store are at two separate ends of the petrol stations and due to the tailbacks at the pumps often you are unable to get to them.

It is apparent that this has also been raised by other members of the public as some efforts have been made to restrict the entrance to entry/exit but this is not policed by the staff and therefore is of no use as many of the users of the petrol station/shop do not adhere to it. The security guard is there, as explained to us today, for drive offs and nothing further.

On our last two visits at key times there has been various sections stopped up by cones. The first cordoned off the bottom car park being that there was nowhere to park the car and therefore had to wait, leading again to tailbacks onto the road. People start to get annoyed and just reverse their cars back into the main road in an attempt to get out but this leads to further problems and potential accidents.

Today, upon entering the car park all but two of the petrol pumps had cones left next to them but it was not clear if the petrol pumps were empty/out of order etc. We spoke to the security guard who advised he was unsure as to why they had cut off the petrol to those pumps. This meant that we ended up having to park up in front of the other car, preventing her from leaving the car park until we returned - after we had purchased our food shopping. Our choice was to wait in the long queues to pay for our petrol, move the car and drive out of the car park and back in to repark to purchase our dinner or to buy our dinner. We where too scared that the security guard would think we stealing the petrol if we had moved the car into the car park before paying.

This is becoming a regular occurrence which is causing a lot of undue stress when going for a pint of milk. It is obvious that the people attending the shop are getting very annoyed and this is coming out in their driving. We really do not want to stop using the shop - we really do like Tesco and the convenience of attending the local shop but we sure that something could be done to ensure that the one way system is imposed - surely the problems were obvious when the designs were being discussed.

We do hope that you will be able to address these concerns and enable the local Tesco Express to be a safe environment for its visitors.

You might end up in a Korma

SAFETY RISK

Dear Tesco Complaint,

We purchased a Tesco Chicken korma and cooked it according to guidelines in the microwave. On removal from the microwave, it exploded everywhere, showering everything in the very hot korma sauce.

We consider this to be highly dangerous and would like to know who we should complain to, someone is going to get seriously injured - trusting you can help ?

T.C: Hopefully you'll find someone here who can listen and help you.

Don't mention the Store!

Regarding Tesco Store Lotherton Way Garforth

I have used your store for many years when you were in Garforth Main Street and more recently at Lotherton Way I am sorry to say it is falling far short of your usual standards.

1) The shelves are poorly stacked quite often items are missing for several weeks. (this week no medium Heinz beans no 12 oxo cubes no crisp & dry no small warburtons loaf on display)

2) Food quite often out of date, most recently a loaf of bread purchased from home bakery when I unpacked my shopping it was two days passed sell by date I returned it to store and was given a refund the young woman at service counter didn’t even apologise or indeed speak to me.

3) The floor is quite often dirty.

4) Why do they have to restock during the busiest time of day with cages strewn all over the place they are a health hazard.

5) Why don’t staff smile anymore? Smiles are free.

Perhaps a mystery shopper would be a good idea to get some of these issues addressed.

WAITING for the eggs to hatch

Yesterday I went for shopping to my local Tesco Express (Argyle Street, Glasgow), to buy some groceries for the Easter weekend. As I have choosen all items, I went to the till in order to pay.

There was a queue of about 15 people in front of me, waiting to be served.

I am afraid to tell you that it took almost 20 minutes to checkout.

Since the last couple of year I have always been a faithful customer at Tesco and do enjoy shopping there very much, however, the checkout time and the unfriendly sales assistant made me feel very uncomfortable. If this will not be changed in the near future, you might loose me as your customer.

In hope to hear from you as soon as possible on that matter and the solution you will come up with.

Shop till you Drop onto a verge

I was driving north on the A 24 through Horsham on March 8th 2008 , moved to outside lane to let joining traffic on at slip road, and a Tesco delivery van came over in to the outside lane, forcing me on to the central grass verge at 60 mph.

I got back on to the road and tried to get the Tesco.com driver to pull over, but he did NOT stop and turned off to Horsham at next roundabout.

So I am keen to meet driver of KX 06 KWW at 19 10 of above date.

-unhappy driver.

Additional Information: May Contain Metal!

On Friday 7th March I went to Tesco Extra Cirencester and happily completed my usual weekly grocery shop.
As a treat for my children I decided to buy a box of the new Tesco All Butter Flapjack Squares. Over the weekend we decided to have some of the flapjacks and you can imagine my horror and disgust to find after chewing one a large sharp metal shard! I promptly spat the mouthful out to be shocked at what I saw and I discovered I had cut the inside of my mouth. I kept all the metal, packaging, remaining flapjacks and prevented anyone else from eating the flapjacks.

On Monday the 10th March I contacted Environmental health to ask for advice on how best to deal with this situation and they advised that all evidence of the metal/packaging/remaining flapjacks be kept for there own inspection. I felt something needed to be done to prevent others from possibly doing the same so I called Tesco's helpine to advise them of what was happening and to ask them to remove any remaining boxes of the same batch from sale. I spoke to a young lady on the helpine who instead of asking any of my details or the products details only told me to see someone instore and let them have the metal. As soon as I said I couldn't leave the metal at the store as Environmetal Health wanted it she no longer wanted to deal with me and said very curtly that they will only deal with Environmental Health regarding the issue and cut the phone call short. I would've expected Tesco to at least want the details of the product and my own personal details.

As a loyal customer to Tesco and spending on average £150 on my weekly grocery shop with yourselves, I would have expected to received a decent standard of customer service. However, your customer service personal could not care less. I can assure you that this will not be the end of this matter and I would also like to add that it is lucky under the circumstances that was myself that had this particular flapjack and not one of my young children. I will await the visit from Environmental Health and let them deal with the issue as they obviously took it as serious as it should be.

Tesco-Complaint Needs YOU!

We have a problem and we thought it best to appeal to the readership to get some help. We are getting a growing number of visitors and feed subscribers every month and lots of complaints but we haven't got enough time to put them all online since half of our two man team (Steve) has been unable to post the complaints for a while now. So we thought we would put in an appeal here for someone to become an Editor of the site.

Putting a post on the blog is really easy and basically involves copying the complaint and choosing a nice picture from say Google Images and then the fun bit of coming up with a cool headline! The site has a backlog of complaints which are suitable to be posted. So if you have 10-15 minutes to spare each day and would like to become an Editor of Tesco-Complaint please email us and let us know.

Thanks,
Richard/Tesco-Complaint.

UPDATE: We have one new Editor already! If anyone else is also interested please do email ^__^

More Easy Less Fresh!

I know a Fresh & Easy driver in the US with the same problem in regards to the Tesco not washing out the trailers prior to reloading. Tesco is opening new stores under the name Fresh and Easy all over the Phoenix Arizona and metropolitan area and they seem to be using the same bad habits as far as not washing the trailers after each delivery and pickup (usually plastic containers, bread racks and cardboard. They haven't encountered the same hideous conditions as the European drivers (as yet) but they seem to be following their practice of not washing dirty trailers.