Bumper Bargain? Bumper damage?

A few weeks ago a trolley collector at Tesco damaged my car with a line of trolleys, saw the damage (albeit minor) and continued on his way. I was in my car at the time; when I got out and called to him, he immediately replied that he'd "never touched it" (how did he know what I wanted then?) and then was very aggressive, shouting at me that it was my fault and coming to the conclusion that I had rolled into his line of trolleys (rolled sideways? after he had first denied any collision).

Luckily another witness had seen him check the side of my car for damage so I had back up. However when he went to get the manager who I assumed would be apologetic, he was just as rude, and refused to acknowledge that any damage had been caused.

Once we brought a trolley over to my car and demonstrated that the scratch had in fact been caused by the trolleys, he still did not apologise on behalf of the other employee, or Tesco, nor did his attitude towards me change. Throughout the conversation he was incredibly rude, and acted as if I had done something. I could go on! I then complained to Tesco about the attitude of these two men, not the damage to the vehicle itself (my car is old, and had the first man apologised, or acknowledged fault I would happily have accepted the 'bumper restore' I was finally offered after half an hour of questioning).

Their only response is that the manager did not record the incident, or has lost the incident form, so it is not in their database, so they cannot 'take my complaint further'. It is no surprise that the manager has 'lost' the vehicle incident form, given his attitude on the day, but I don't see why they need that form to uphold a complaint about the behaviour of 2 of the staff. What they have told me to do, with again no apology for losing the incident form, is go back and make another complaint in store. After the aggressive and hostile attitude of the two men in question, do they really think I am going to go back, and complain to their faces???

eleanor watson

Food waste piling up at stores?

I am writing to you to express my utter disgust at a food wastage policy that I discovered when shopping in a Tesco Express store in Ocean Village, Southampton.

I entered the store in the evening time and proceeded to go to the bakery section. Whilst there was a sizeable quantity of pastries etc left on the shelf, one of the members of staff was loading them into an already full dustbin size bag of pastries and I was informed that they were being thrown away. Whilst I was told that I could still buy the ones on the shelf at the full price (just before they'd been put in the bag), I was told that neither I nor the members of staff could take them for free and thus preventing the shocking food wastage that was occurring.

This slightly baffled me as I was told that even though the food was to be thrown away, the staff had been told explicitly by the store manager that any attempt to take the food home that was to be thrown away would be considered as theft and would result in the loss of their job. Adding to this puzzling and ridiculous practice was the fact that I was told that such food wastage was common in that store, to the extent that sometimes, due to space issues or delivery sizes, the food would be transferred directly from the delivery van to the rubbish bin without even seeing the shelf. Perfectly edible food. That has been transported in expensive, fuel-thirsty lorries halfway across the country.

In these times where fuel-economy and food shortages are key issues that need to be taken seriously by large corporations as they finally take up some vestige of global responsibility this (admittedly minor on the grand scale of things) practice, to me, revealed a worrying disregard for such matters and a deeply perturbing hypocrisy.

In Southampton alone, there are plenty of organisations and groups that would be more than happy to distribute (in an environment of quality control and food standards observance) the left over (or unused) food to the many disadvantaged people that populate the city.

Therefore I request that you heed this complaint and address this issue by re-examining such scandalous wastage policies and exploring the alternatives to throwing the food away.

Yours Sincerely,

Tom Price - Customer, Tesco Express Ocean Village Southampton
tomalprice@googlemail.com

Bagging a load of nonsense

As I am fully aware of the impending doom that humanity faces by using carrier bags to transport purchased goods from your stores, I am getting rather tired of fighting for a carrier bag every lunch time when I purchase at least 10 items or more for my department’s lunch. Most companies, as mine does, requires a ‘clean desk’ policy, which unfortunately includes stockpiling carrier bags like a tramp. So I am, unfortunately, required to obtain a plastic death bag from you on a regular basis (although, we do only use 1 bag for 3 peoples lunch!)

As much as I enjoy a daily lecture about global warming from someone as qualified as a checkout girl, I don’t particularly enjoy being told that that you ‘don’t have any bags’ when I can clearly see them in view. And I also don’t appreciate being looked at like I’m using said carrier bag for drowning puppies in when I DO insist on one. I personally do not own a pair of clown pants with giant pockets capable of holding 10+ items in them and simply carrying them in my arms isn’t an option as I was only blessed with two of them.

Might I suggest a series of training exercises for your staff in the skilled art of ‘the customer is always right’ or possibly screen your staff for fundamental environmentalists before hiring them? Or possibly offer me an alternative, environmentally sound paper bag? As now, after a year of constant battles I will go elsewhere for my lunch where checkout staff understand their jobs and simply serve me.


Yours sincerely ,


Jon Keddie

Standards flushed down the pan at this store

On Tuesday 12th May I stopped off on my way to work in your Colney Hatch Lane store. It was around quarter to seven in the morning and I just wanted to grab some lunch for the day. As I have a 50 mile journey I thought I would quickly use the customer toilets.... I'm sorry to say I didn't!!

I went into the toilets and I have to say I was very shocked and disappointed with what I was confronted with. The three cubicles and hand washing area were all absolutely filthy to the point they couldn't be used. There was rubbish and toilet roll all over the place but worst of all there was excrement and blood all over the walls and toilet seats. I know the toilets cant be checked every minute of every day but to make matters worse, as I was going in through the female toilet door I passed a member of staff coming out..... (and she wasn't a cleaner!!)

As there were only two checkouts I waited at one and was going to mention it to a member of staff but then a third till was opened... By the time I had listened to the two cashiers shouting and arguing with each other across the four tills between distance them I was running late so I had to leave. They were arguing about the new till opener being too lazy to go to the warehouse to get their own carrier bags and leaving the first till with none. They were shouting to each other to shut up and stop moaning etc etc much to the embarrassment of all the customers.

Up to this point I have never had any reason to even think about complaining about any aspect of Tesco but I was truly shocked by this store..... it also made me think..... if the stores senior management are happy for the customer areas to be like this what must the staff only and food storage areas be like?

Cassandra Paton, Biggleswade, Bedfordshire.

Blood on your shelf, you big disgrace

View complaint letter and photographs sent to Tesco CEO by Ravi here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/13965520/Tesco-complaint-letter

Received a very nice letter of apology on behalf of Terry Leahy.

Six weeks on following the letter, the store, Wood Green Express is still a tip, blood on the shelf, rubbish on the floor.

Ravi Vadgama.

Tesco staff give me a headache

Dear Tesco,

I have just been to your new South Road store in Dundee to do my usual weekly shop. As a sufferer of chronic headaches and recently diagnosed IBS I decided to get medication for both of these illnesses at Tesco as the local pharmacy does not open until later in the morning.

I tried to purchase paracetamol and ibuprofen for my headaches and buscopan for my IBS.

At the checkout (where three members of staff were huddled around chatting about Disney holidays) I put my messages through. WHen it came to the medication I ( and the other members of staff that were stilll chatting about holidays) were told that I couldn't purchase more than two types of painkillers.

Confused - I told the girl that there WERE only two types of 'painkillers' - paracetamol and ibuprofen. She said that the buscopan was a painkiller also. Confused, I said it was a muscle relaxant or antispasmodic.

SHe said she would have to ask her supervisor. So the box of Buscopan IBS (oh - it's clearly marked on the box) was shown to the supervisor and the members of staff who had stopped speaking about holidays. She said it was a painkiller. I said it wasn't - she should check the British National Formulary if she wasn't sure.

In the end my IBS meds were put through as a separate transaction - the mind boggles - and I suffered a lot of needless embarassment.

I am a longstanding and good customer of Tesco but this makes me want to shop somewhere else. Shouldn't your staff be taught to deal with these things a lot more sensitively? Why the hell were they allowed to hand about at the tills for so long chatting about personal things? Is there not a canteen for that kind of thing?

Thanks Tesco for making the start of my weekend so crap.

Kind regards,

Joanna Forbes
Clinical Research Nurse