Solitary chicken - need advice

[Space Chick]

What a frustrating afternoon

 

I usually shop at Sainsburys and local shops, and occasionally tesco, rarely I will call to Waitrose too (nearest one is 40 miles away, so I tend to nip in when I'm around). I hardly ever go to Morrisons.

 

Well, a few months ago I bought a load of Illy coffee from Sainsburys when it was on offer. I'm down to my last tin. I looked online at Sainsburys £6.48 a tin, Tesco £6.48 a tin, Waitrose £6.48 a tin

 

Today, I was passing a Morrisons after getting my haircut, so I thought to myself that I'd pop in and see how much Illy was.

 

Went to the coffee aisle (had to walk up and down the store twice, it was in the bread aisle ) and there, top shelf, Illy reduced from £6.48 to £4! Bargain

 

However, being a woman of limited height, I couldn't reach more then the front four so found a tall member of staff who got the remaining ten down for me, so 14 in all (Ok crazy I know, but the rate I drink it and at that price I felt the need to stock up!)

 

I now had a basket full of coffee and lettuces for the hens

 

Anyhow, got to the checkout, the self service was closed, all the manned checkouts had big queues, so I joined the queue, 2 people ahead of me woman comes up behind me buying a £1 bunch of daffodils so I said to here that she could go ahead of me (well it was a teeny tiny bunch of flowers).

 

The lad serving was very very slow and incredibly thorough!! So the woman with the flowers goes, she pays by card and wants cash back slow chap counted out the £50 (4 tens and 2 fives) very very slowly to himself and then again to her

 

He then served me, made some sarcastic comment about me owning a cafe and proceeded with his painfully slow transaction. At this point, I had been at the supermarket for thirty mins which should have been a 5 min transaction.

 

I pack, pay and walk back to the car. I start driving off and think to myself "hang on, that cost too much". I pulled back into the car park, checked my receipt and you guessed it, they'd charged my £6.48 per tin

 

So I go back, queue for customer services with my recipe and explain that I bought up their stock as it was reduced but I'd been charged full price. "Do I have them" the woman asks "as I need a barcode".... So I return to the car and get one.

 

She scans it £6.48.... "Well it said £4 on the shelf" I tell her. So she goes to the shelf, brings back the display card and tries to convince me that it was a different product that was on offer.

 

Well, I know my coffee and I know my Illy and that WAS what was on offer.

 

So she tells me she needs a grocery supervisor to "check into it".

 

I tell her that it is the same coffee and can I have my partial refund please. After much to-ing and fro-ing she agrees to process the refund... Which was well over thirty quid!!

 

She then tries to keep the coffee that I'd gone back to the car to get, claiming that she'd got it from the shelf I told her I'd taken ALL the stock from my shelf and that was MY coffee.

 

Well, what should have been a 5 min job ended up turning into a 50 min ordeal.... And I'm not entirely convinced my stressful Morrisons visit was worth the cheap coffe

[soapdragon]

I share your pain! I usually do the weeks shop at Tesco - convenient and we get loads of vouchers!

 

However, I ALWAYS check my receipt thoroughly as, probably 40% of the time, I end up at Customer Diservice as an offer 'on the shelf' has not shown up on the receipt. Now I double check the date on the offer ticket and, if its something that I would buy anyway but may not need now, I stock up.

 

I do wonder how many people just don't check the receipt and end up being 'done'.... or am I being cynical

[Space Chick]

I think if I'd bought one or two in my regular shopping, I'd never have noticed..... But buying 14 it was only when I did a bit of mental maths in the car, I thought "hang on one cotton picking minute".

 

I think you are right soapdragon, I think they do try and get away with it. I'm sure lots of people end up getting overcharged!

[Daphne]

I think you are both right. My Dad always used to check the receipt and I always used to think 'life's too short' but being older and wiser now, and extraordinarily cynical about the big supermarkets and their massive price hikes and massive profits, I find myself doing the same.

 

I hardly ever shop in Waitrose as I love the variety although not the prices and in any case there isn't one close by, but whilst travelling for work, I popped into one. I bought a few things, went through the quick basket bit, paid, came out, thought 'thats a lot, even for Waitrose' checked the bill, sure enough, I'd been overcharged. I got a refund immediately, but really that isn't the point, if 8 things can't be priced correctly and create an error, just think how much bigger the error is on a normal weekly shop.

 

I remember querying something years ago in Asda and Customer Services said you pay either the shelf price or the checkout price, whichever is lower. That made me feel really good and since then Asda is the only shop I don't go into, mentally preparing for a battle, although its not my main supermarket.

[chickencam]

You do have to be careful with the pricing in supermarkets, we have had to get many a refund over the years.

 

We use Morrisons quite a lot and their tills and queues are a nightmare, they employ the dregs of staff too, unlike our local Asda who employ largely polite friendly efficient staff. Morrisons have good produce particularly bread and meat, but their customer service is useless. We once bought two bottles of whiskey on a great offer as we walked away from the till thinking that it was expensive we checked the receipt and found that we had been charged for three. They pretty much acused us of having taken the third bottle to the car when we asked for a refund.

[Cinnamon]

It goes the other way too

 

We had a customer in last week who I had served, who bought around 8 items including a HUGE leg of lamb.

She paid, left, then came back in claiming she hadn't got a leg of lamb & had been charged for it in error. Don't see how, as we need an item to physically scan......

 

While Supermarkets do offer good deals, it is always worth taking a note or taking a snap on a phone, because human errors do got made sometimes,unfortunately.

 

There is NEVER any excuse for poor customer service though!

[Eggasperated]

I have had terrible customer service in our Morrisons and last year ended up leaving my trolley of shopping when I was half way through the self service as it kept querying everything and the assistant there was really rude to me. Now I never buy anything there not even petrol. But my Mum's Morrisons is a brand new store and they are very good in there.

[PurpleTree]

A Morrison's has recently opened by us, it's now our nearest supermarket. So far we've found it brill, always quite quiet & the staff are all friendly. Hubby tends to go on a Friday night &gets loads of bargains on the in-store bakery

[Chickendoodle]

I use the hand held self scanner at Waitrose so you scan the items as you go. You can see the price immediately and sometimes it comes up with offers that aren't shown on the shelves. It's brilliant and I know exactly what I am spending as I go round.

[Cinnamon]

I use the hand held self scanner at Waitrose so you scan the items as you go. You can see the price immediately and sometimes it comes up with offers that aren't shown on the shelves. It's brilliant and I know exactly what I am spending as I go round.

 

Wish more people did - it would make my job a whole lot easier!

[chickencam]

Don't think that we have that facility in our local store. Our local morrisons did this years ago but phased it out because they were losing too many goods owing yo dishonesty.

[Luvachicken]

We went shopping to Morrisons just before Christmas.

In the entrance was an offer on J2O's. We don't drink alcohol but we all drink J20's so we stocked up. The offer was buy one pack get 2 packs free so we excitedly filled up our trolley knowing that we would have enough for everybody over Christmas.

As we did the rest of our shop we saw another block of J2O's with a sign saying max of 3 per customer. This was not on the sign where we had got ours from

When we got to the till she said we couldn't have all the J2O's that we had because of the max 3 per customer, so we explained that this wasn't on the sign where we got ours. She said all the signs were the same. So I took her to where we had got ours and she agreed the sign only had the offer on it not the max of 3 per customer. But then they said we still couldn't buy them because the till wouldn't let them. In the end we had to split our shopping into 3 lots each with a portion of J2O's in them and buy 3 lots of shopping. Such fun

[craftyhunnypie]

Oh I absolutely loathe Morrisons. Absolutely hate the place. Mainly because they have it totally tied up round here so it is always chaos. We have a Co-op which I like & Lidl which I also like. But that is the only main Supermarket. However good for me...Asda have recently started delivering to our village & surrounding villages - through a big campaign by us locals on fb.

Yippee! The drivers come all the way from Merthyr & are lovely!

Wish we had an Aldi - was in the planning, but that was 2 years ago.

Emma.x

[bluekarin]

We don't have one here, but I went to one recently in Warminster when my hubby was working there. Have to say their sausage rolls were disgusting but their doughnuts were the best I'd had for a looong time Ive been in other branches and don't really like it. Just seems very busy decor and signage wise and nothing is where you'd expect it to be.

[Alis girls]

i hate supermarkets. Our waitrose is in a posh area and you can tell they think they are the bees knees. Today popped in for pancake bits and I was in a queue in which the woman either hadnt got money to pay or her card was faulty - no apology - nothing - i wouldve been mortified holding up a queue. I moved to another and the poor lad was having probs with a UDO (unidentified deli object) which judging by the size of the woman buying she could have gone without it and not missed it I got home and chuntered to OH about losing the will to live. Last time he was in there a woman on a "health kick" presented the cashier with 2 banana skins as she had eaten the bananas. OH said her bum was on the huge size and she didnt need the calories (hes very rude) . Frankly I was fed up with the waiting - i couldve eaten a bunch of bananas and the punnet of strawberries too - and I dont need the calories either.

[Cinnamon]

Last time he was in there a woman on a "health kick" presented the cashier with 2 banana skins as she had eaten the bananas.

 

That has happened to me - a Mum had given her child the banana to eat on the way round, then presented me with the skin to weigh

People in my branch, it being Henley & all, are often quite snooty, but on the whole they are just nice people & they like a chat. I have however on occasion been called one of 'those people who works' & had a duck thrown at me, which hit me hard in the throat.

 

Have you looked at online shopping?

[Alis girls]

Sorry Cinnamon - I thought of you when I wrote this thread - how do you cope? I work in a Doctors and there are times I love it others if there was a flyover near by I'd be first in the queue. My first thought was if they have eaten their produce could you scan their bottoms? When I suggested this OH said you;d need a fork lift truck for some customers to haul them on the conveyor belt. Or weight customers on entry to the shop and on exit. My friend works in Tesco in the East Midlands and has people putting their weekly shop thro the self service tills. The machine goes into meltdown - she hates it. Yes I have thought of internet but have heard thats not all its cracked up to be. When I do the weekly shop I expect to take a while. The top up shops are by far the worst as this is when we encounter the idiots.

[The Dogmother]

Last time he was in there a woman on a "health kick" presented the cashier with 2 banana skins as she had eaten the bananas.

 

That has happened to me - a Mum had given her child the banana to eat on the way round, then presented me with the skin to weigh

 

Is it just me, or does anyone else find this eating in stores rather rude?

[Cinnamon]

I don't like it either.

I would never have let my girls eat something that was yet to be paid for & certainly would not do it myself.

 

The worst is when you are given a half gummed,drooly pack of something a child has been chewing to scan, or something with snot all over it

It happens (thank God for my Bath & Body Works hand sanitiser!)

[Bramble]

Seems almost like shoplifting to eat something before you've paid for it ...

 

I was in Tesco the other day for a few items, the lady before me packed and paid and then asked for her receipt - the cashier said she must already have given the customer the receipt as it wasn't on the machine ... customer seemed a bit puzzled, but accepted that it was probably amongst her shopping somewhere and off she went ...

 

When I came to pay for my few bits, the bill seemed quite high, turned out that not only had I been charged for my own shopping, but for the shopping of the lady before me as well ... I told the cashier, she said absolutely no way could that happen, she couldn't issue a receipt to one customer without having finished the transaction first ... this, of course, confirmed that the customer before me was right and she hadn't received a receipt as she hadn't actually paid (she thought she had - I saw her put her card in the machine etc etc).

 

I had to queue up at Customer Services who seemed as bemused as I was about how it had actually happened. I got a refund for the items that weren't mine but I have to say, I've been reluctant to go to that particular cashier since ...

[soapdragon]

IMHO eating stuff that you havn't yet paid for is THEFT, plain and simple. I once saw a very smartly dressed elderly lady in Waitrose, Wallingford happily munching her way through a bag of grapes and could not contain myself. I politely but LOUDLY told her that what she was doing was stealing. She went red but ignored me tho several other people nearby said 'well done' 'quite right too' and similar....ohhhhhhh, makes my blood boil (in case you hadn't noticed )

 

I have never let my boys eat in the supermarket anyway......they often had a Frusili or banana in the car afterwards but my aim is and always has been 'get in, get round, get out as fast as poss'!

 

Probably should try internet shopping but I don't trust others to pick what we are going to eat or check dates on things. Also the contents of the reduced section often dictates the forthcoming weeks menu

[Geoid]

eating stuff that you havn't yet paid for is THEFT, plain and simple

No it isn't.

[soapdragon]

Howcome? Its taking something that isn't yours Esp if its something like fruit which cannot be paid for at the till as it cannot be weighed.

[Geoid]

Theft is defined as dishonestly appropriating property belonging to another with the intent of permanently depriving them of it. If the person intends to pay for what they have eaten, then it is not dishonest. Without dishonesty, there cannot be theft.

[soapdragon]

But eating fruit, which cannot then be weighed (grapes or bananas, as previously mentioned seemingly being the most often munched) would be theft as the cost of these items cannot be accurately ascertained so the customer cannot pay for them?