Wednesday, 21 December 2011
Resolution!
Marvellous, this has all now been sorted. People are quick to say that Tesco has appalling customer service, but if you persist, they are very good & very conciliatory. Lesson learnt: Always persist.
Monday, 19 December 2011
Tesco Clubcard Voucher Exchange
I would be extremely surprised if I were the only one in this position!
I would advise readers NOT to make use of the "voucher exchange" Tescos offer occasionally, normally before Christmas. You will almost certainly regret it. Your loyalty will be rewarded with headaches and many, many 3 hour long phone calls and several unanswered emails. In fact you are probably better off shopping elsewhere. The apparent "good deal" that Clubcard offers as a reward for loyal customers is almost certainly not worth it for the hassle, lies, false advertising & duplicity you will get in return.
Firstly, there are so many exceptions to what you can spend the vouchers on. My mum went for "homewares", but didn't read the small print and couldn't actually use them on any of the things she actually wanted to buy from "homewares", eg, towels, bedding. She runs a B&B, so could potentially spend an absolute fortune at Tesco, but she finds the whole unhelpful attitude too contemptuous so normally shops at Morrisons these days.
Then, you manage to exchange your £20 worth of vouchers for £40 on toys and games & they won't work. You can't get through on the telephone. You attempt several times, different vouchers, different items, different browsers, different days. Nope! they don't work. Eventually the offer time expires. You take several screenshots and contact the helpline. Several hours later you finally get through only to be addressed by someone clearly paid by the hour to say "NO!". Grrr. Helplines. They are peopled by people who are deliberately evasive and act deliberately obtusely, but when you raise your voice in a final last-ditch attempt to get them to understand your predicament, they say "Don't raise your voice, that's not going to help". Nothing more likely to make your blood pressure shoot up!
Then, ameliorated by a line manager, good at his job, you are advised to send an email. So you send an email to the address you've been given every day for a week. Then someone suggests you bypass that address and go straight for the CEO's address. Immediately you get a "we are looking into it" response. Progress. Next working day, you get an email from the people you were emailing every day. (quelle surprise!) Unfortunately, there is a clause not mentioned in their terms and conditions, not mentioned anywhere, in fact. If the person writing the email is telling the truth, the only way you could possibly know about this clause is if you contact the help desk (provided they are properly trained). But you can't get through to the helpdesk, so you are screwed.
This clause is, that if you have vouchers worth £40 in total, you can only spend them on items equal or more to the value of each voucher. So you have 4x £10 vouchers, and you think you'll be fine spending £40+ as a total, after all it worked that way last year. But apparently not. Each £10 voucher has to be spent on an item worth £10 or more. You will not find this information anywhere. This is a closely guarded secret that only the Tesco Clubcard helpline staff apparently know. My mother-in-law works on the Customer Services desk in my local Tesco and she didn't even know! God knows how many wrong transactions she's allowed through! yipes!
You might think this a trivial matter, after all it's "free money" right? Not at all. The whole point of "giving" you these incentives is to keep your custom. But they are so aggravating, they may well lose mine! And I live within spitting distance of my local Tesco, so if they ever want to develop or require planning permission etc. I will do everything in my power to stop them from doing so.
Times are hard. Tesco is coining it in. The rest of us are really struggling. That £40 on toys for my little girls would have made a hell of a difference. Instead they'll have to make do with pound shop crap. I can have the original £20 back in February, but that's February! Hopeless. Nobody in the evil machine that is Tesco gives a damn. Shame on them!
The emails & responses:
My email:
I would advise readers NOT to make use of the "voucher exchange" Tescos offer occasionally, normally before Christmas. You will almost certainly regret it. Your loyalty will be rewarded with headaches and many, many 3 hour long phone calls and several unanswered emails. In fact you are probably better off shopping elsewhere. The apparent "good deal" that Clubcard offers as a reward for loyal customers is almost certainly not worth it for the hassle, lies, false advertising & duplicity you will get in return.
Firstly, there are so many exceptions to what you can spend the vouchers on. My mum went for "homewares", but didn't read the small print and couldn't actually use them on any of the things she actually wanted to buy from "homewares", eg, towels, bedding. She runs a B&B, so could potentially spend an absolute fortune at Tesco, but she finds the whole unhelpful attitude too contemptuous so normally shops at Morrisons these days.
Then, you manage to exchange your £20 worth of vouchers for £40 on toys and games & they won't work. You can't get through on the telephone. You attempt several times, different vouchers, different items, different browsers, different days. Nope! they don't work. Eventually the offer time expires. You take several screenshots and contact the helpline. Several hours later you finally get through only to be addressed by someone clearly paid by the hour to say "NO!". Grrr. Helplines. They are peopled by people who are deliberately evasive and act deliberately obtusely, but when you raise your voice in a final last-ditch attempt to get them to understand your predicament, they say "Don't raise your voice, that's not going to help". Nothing more likely to make your blood pressure shoot up!
Then, ameliorated by a line manager, good at his job, you are advised to send an email. So you send an email to the address you've been given every day for a week. Then someone suggests you bypass that address and go straight for the CEO's address. Immediately you get a "we are looking into it" response. Progress. Next working day, you get an email from the people you were emailing every day. (quelle surprise!) Unfortunately, there is a clause not mentioned in their terms and conditions, not mentioned anywhere, in fact. If the person writing the email is telling the truth, the only way you could possibly know about this clause is if you contact the help desk (provided they are properly trained). But you can't get through to the helpdesk, so you are screwed.
This clause is, that if you have vouchers worth £40 in total, you can only spend them on items equal or more to the value of each voucher. So you have 4x £10 vouchers, and you think you'll be fine spending £40+ as a total, after all it worked that way last year. But apparently not. Each £10 voucher has to be spent on an item worth £10 or more. You will not find this information anywhere. This is a closely guarded secret that only the Tesco Clubcard helpline staff apparently know. My mother-in-law works on the Customer Services desk in my local Tesco and she didn't even know! God knows how many wrong transactions she's allowed through! yipes!
You might think this a trivial matter, after all it's "free money" right? Not at all. The whole point of "giving" you these incentives is to keep your custom. But they are so aggravating, they may well lose mine! And I live within spitting distance of my local Tesco, so if they ever want to develop or require planning permission etc. I will do everything in my power to stop them from doing so.
Times are hard. Tesco is coining it in. The rest of us are really struggling. That £40 on toys for my little girls would have made a hell of a difference. Instead they'll have to make do with pound shop crap. I can have the original £20 back in February, but that's February! Hopeless. Nobody in the evil machine that is Tesco gives a damn. Shame on them!
The emails & responses:
My email:
I write to complain about the system of Clubcard Voucher Exchange. It was not synced to the Tesco direct system properly. I will explain what I mean, but first let me tell you the tale of the lead-up to this.
Firstly, I had to wait almost 3 weeks for a new card to arrive after being on the phone for 40 minutes. When my card arrived, I could not access my clubcard account. After being on the phone on 4 or more occasions for a total of 8 hours, I finally got through to discover that the reason I couldn't access it was because my name had been inputted incorrectly. Finally able to commence shopping I kept having problems with vouchers disappearing (which I am still waiting for a reply about from Tesco), before I was able to exchange them.
So, finally in possession of the codes I exchanged £10 for £20 in clothes and £20 for £40 in toys. Despite the fact that the clothing site was down on Monday, I managed to get it to work and ordered my £20 worth of clothes without significant problem. I am about to go down to the local shop to pick up my clothing order. However, there was also problems with not being able to access Tesco Direct on that day. I was trying desperately to spend my vouchers, but the webpage had an error message. When it finally did begin to work, it would not add items to my basket in my preferred browser (Chrome) so I went to Firefox in order to do it there.
When I got to the checkout, the balance of what I wished to spend was £41.25. As I had £40 worth of exchange vouchers in £10 lots, I should have had to pay £1.25. However, no matter how many times I attempted to get the vouchers to work, I kept getting a message telling me that some of my vouchers would not work. It did not matter which codes I entered, I could only get £20 off.
So, I thought, I'll beat this bug. I can do in in two transactions. I put half of the toys I wished to purchase to "save till later". I tried again. This time I got a message telling me that only one of the codes I put in was able to be used & I would have to pay the remainder via card. So I tried all 4 codes and got the same result. I thought "4 separate transactions?" and reduced the amount in my basket to £11.25. This time none of the vouchers would work.
I tried every combination, on three different browsers (Chrome, Firefox, IE), deleted cookies, restarted my computer, always with the same result. For some reason, whether this was a general issue or one specific to me, it would only allow me to pay for half of the value of my basket in vouchers. I have combed through the terms and conditions. THERE IS NOTHING WRITTEN IN THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS THAT STATES THAT YOU CAN ONLY USE YOUR EXCHANGE CODES IF YOU DOUBLE THE AMOUNT YOU SPEND IN CASH. But this is what appears to have happened. (I enclose some screen prints for your perusal). I am highly experienced in both selling & buying online and skilled at solving various technical issues. My partner is very adept at using computers, used to sell them, build them, fix them etc. We are not hopeless fools, struggling with technology, quite the reverse. There is a bug in your system that disallowed this to work, that much is clear.
By this time, I had been on the phone to the helpline for 2 and a half hours and still was on hold. I thought I'd give up & try again in a while. In the meantime, the helpline closed. And that was that, the last day of the voucher exchange and I had not managed to get through and resolve my issues. I went out to see my mother in law, who works on the customer service desk at our local store, 100m from my home. She said I should ring the next day and remain steadfast that I should be reimbursed the £40 as Tesco had not honoured their commitment to offering me £40, then not allowing me to use it. Furthermore, the £20 would be unavailable to me until February.
So I rang the helpline. Here I was told repeatedly I could have £20 returned to my account in February. Speaking to Lee Tolton, duty manager, customer contact centre, ext:2319. I was informed that my only recourse is to send an email (which I have low expectations of being read in the next 2 months) to this address. So here I am. If nothing is done about this, I will be contacting various consumers watchdogs, the Trading Standards Authority & the Daily Mail. Maybe even my MP. You cannot offer something & when the technology fails simply withdraw it. That is definitely against trading standards and I will pursue this to the end. We don't have very much spare money this Christmas. Those £40 worth of present would have been the bulk of the presents for my two daughters. Now I can only afford to spend about £20 on the pair of them, so they will get a couple of clementines wrapped in newspaper. The Clubcard vouchers would have made such a difference between a totally rubbish Christmas and a bearable one. Thanks, Tesco. "Every little helps".
Dear Mrs Davey,
Thank you for your email. At the outset please accept my apology for the delay in responding to you.
I apologise for the inconvenience and disappointment caused in being unable to exchange your codes for the required items on the Clubcard Exchange. Each item on the order that you placed had to equal the value of the code being used for that individual item, not the total cost of the order.
I am sorry that you found it difficult to gain assistance with the issues that you encountered. Due to an unprecedented volume of mail and telephone calls customers did experience delays. We had ensured that extra staff were deployed in our call centre to offer service to our customers and we will be reviewing this for future Exchange promotions.
I have checked your account and can see that the Toy codes have been refunded back to your account. There is a balance on the account of £20.00 which will be returned to your account on your February statement. However if you wish to use this change to order a reward I will be happy to place an order for you. Please advise.
I do hope that this unfortunate experience will not deter you from using the Clubcard Exchange or reward scheme in the future and if I can be of any further assistance please do contact me.
Kind regards,
Dawn.
Dawn Angliss,
Customer Relations Manager,
Tesco Clubcard Rewards.
My response :
I'm sorry but that is not a satisfactory conclusion. Your terms do not state this. I refer you to your own website below( please refer to the section in bold). You are suggesting that you can only purchase items over £10 if you have 4 vouchers of £10 denomination? That is absurd! I tried deleting various items of various costs and that did not work. and last year I bought lots of little things anyway. I'm afraid I will have to take this issue further as you are guilty of not standing by your own policies and then lying in order to worm out of it. I will be telephoning the newspapers this afternoon, unless you contact me on 07895 033559 as a matter of urgency.
Kind Regards,
Isolde Davey
- The Christmas Clubcard Voucher Exchange Terms and Conditions: Minimum exchange value applies and may vary - see in store for details or tesco.com/clubcard. Clubcard vouchers can be exchanged online at tesco.com/clubcard or at most Tesco stores except Express, subject to availability. Clubcard vouchers can only be exchanged for Exchange tokens from 1st Nov 2011 to 1st Dec 2011 inclusive. Due to the Scottish Alcohol Act customers in Scotland will not be able to exchange their vouchers in store for a Finest Wine and Finest Champagne token. Customers can still exchange their vouchers online and redeem their tokens in store. If your Clubcard voucher exceeds the amount you wish to Exchange, any change will be credited back to your Clubcard account in points and carried over to your next statement. Exchange tokens have no cash value, no change given, are valid until 6th December 2011 and must be used in conjunction with your Clubcard. Each Exchange token can be used once only in the selected department, exclusions may apply. Check availability of products first to avoid disappointment. More than one Exchange token can be used in a single transaction, however the total cost of the products purchased, including any discounts, must equal or exceed the value of the Exchange tokens used. You must pay the remaining balance using a valid payment method. Delivery charges may apply and cannot be paid for using Exchange tokens. Exchange eCoupons for Clothing cannot be used in conjunction with other eCoupons. Exchange eCoupons for Tesco direct cannot be used in conjunction with other eCoupon codes starting TDX- or TDXR-. If you print your Exchange tokens at home, please ensure your Exchange tokens have printed clearly on white paper, before taking them into store. Unfortunately, smudged or unclear barcodes are unable to be scanned at the till. If you have a damaged token, please visit your nearest participating store for help. Exchange tokens cannot be exchanged back into points or into cash or for another department. Items purchased with an Exchange token can only be exchanged, with a receipt, for goods in the same category to the same value. Any refunds for purchases made using Exchange tokens will be equivalent to the Clubcard voucher value originally exchanged. Your statutory rights are not affected. Tesco reserves the right to withdraw The Christmas Clubcard Voucher Exchange at any time. Clubcard Terms & Conditions apply. The Clubcard helpline is on 0800 591 688 (Free from BT landlines. Other providers may charge. Calls may be recorded).
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