We'd better start walking down the motorway

Hi,

Just had a bad experience with Tesco... for the sake of 30p. This is the email we just sent them which explains it all...

Dear Sir,

My partner and I have been customers of Tesco for some years now, both instore and online, and have always felt valued and cared for as customers.

Unfortunately, that experience has come to an abrupt end!

Having placed an order online on 18.04.2008 and received a confirmation email, I was contacted by telephone this morning, Saturday 19th April 2008, to inform me that my payment was not authorised. The advisor offered to call me back within five minutes once I'd obtained my card details. She never called back.

Upon further investigation I discovered the reason for the payment not going through; although I had left £35 in my account and the order was less than £34, a £2 debit was removed from my account to verify my card details.I called customer services who transferred me to the store responsible for the delivery. The manager explained there was nothing he could do, not even remove 1 item from my shopping as there was less than £1 difference. He blamed my bank for not re-crediting the £2 in time.

This resulted in me calling my bank three times and Tesco customer services a further two times as each company blamed the other for witholding the £2 that caused my payment to fail.

As a working couple with two young children we were relying on this shopping as we can't get to the store without spending £15 on taxi fares.

This experience has left me very upset and worried as we know that we can't spend that amount of money and get the same volume of products and quality from a "convenience store " that we've always received from Tesco.

Due to this, my partner has had to come home from work earlier, sacrificing a days pay as we have no food in the property and need to get to a supermarket before we're left with no provisions for the entire weekend.

I am hoping that you will be able to give me the kind of service I've come to expect and reply to this email with any suggestions you may have regarding my situation.

I am hoping that I do not have to remove my custom in favour of another retailer.

Not holding out much hope of getting it resolved. Oh well, we'd better start walking down the motorway to the supermarket 10 miles away or our kids will starve.