Just been to our local Sainsburys, unplanned detour after taking some dvd's back as needed something for my tea, anyway, no wallet, just a £20 note in my pocket, normally I just throw things in the trolley and pay with Switch but as I didnt have it I had to check I wasnt going over my £20, got a few Beers, some Grape juice and two Pizza Express pizzas that were on 2 for £5.00, comes to in my head about £18.60, gets to the till and it was £21.60 or something, felt a right tit, I managed to find a couple of quid in the depths of my coat pocket.

I Examine the receipt that the bored, fat ginger kid with a skanky beard gave me whilst slouched in his chair staring into space whilst trying to pick his nose on the sly (difficult in a packed shop but he was gamely having a crafty old root, I feared for my French stick), he summoned the supervisor, Moira or Maureen or someone over to check my bill, the £5.00 pizzas had become £8.00 worth (£3.99 each instead of £2.50), pleased to have a mission to go on Maureen or Moira or something stomped off to check with an aura of she was going to show me good and a face like a freshly slapped ****, as is her perogative and obviously pleasure.

She comes back and informed me that my selection from the display wasn't in the offer, I asked to be shown why and sure enough we walked over to a selection of almost identically boxed Pizza's with names on, most had American in the title, apparently the Margherita, American and Sloppy Gillespie (as she called it) were in the offer but not the American hot, apparently the addition of approximately 3 miserable pieces of chilli to the top of a Pizza costs an extra 3 quid !!!

I postulated that putting all the Pizza's in a display it "2 FOR £5" and excluding one from the offer could be considered misleading, she pointed to the small print below that lists the words American, Sloppy, Margherita etc but not Hot, the smallest word, omitted showing that indeed one my selected Pizza's was not included ramping the price for two from £5 to £8. She offered to change them but I countered with "I cant be arsed for three quid" but I think that is a dodgy trick, she told me it said quite clearly, she was right but you dont read the small print in Supermarkets at 6.30 on a wet tuesday after nine hours at work wanting to get home and stick your manky Pizza in the oven.

I cannot imagine that a "American Hot", costs significantly more to produce than a "Sloppy Gillespie" (sic) or an "American" on which it is based, so I can only conclude that it is sharp practice to sell Pizza that looks to be discounted at full price, which stinks, I only checked as I had a limited ammount of cash on me. I cant imagine Sainsbury's and Pizza Express had some meeting where the American Hot was the deal breaker, " we will sell you 10,000,000 Pizza's at 2p each but we cannot possibily include the rare and precious American Hot, imported fresh from America on Air Force One and garnished with Truffle Chillis and hand baked by Barack Obama himself"

So they are going to get a snotty letter, with a Nectar card included to register my intention to boycott their theiving company, and I told Moira or Maureen that it is a "Sloppy Guisseppe" not Gillespie, what the f*ck would be a "Sloppy Gillespie" be ? getting a bird after the lead singer of Primal Scream had "Got his Rocks Off" !!

Thankyou for reading todays rant.

 

imagine how many mispriced items go through per day and people just pay the final bill.... me included. They have too few people on the tills so there's a pressure of people on your wanting you to get the *** out of there so they can continue with their miserable lives. You spend £100 but feel like you're killing kids in Africa if you ask for a carrier bag.

 

same old in them all, i always read the small bits of the ads/offers.

same happened to me on robinsons juice, big sign, 2 for £2,sweet,go to till, £3.60,huh,ah,the one flavour you chose from the SAME area as the offer bunch isnt included.

same with say pot noodles,they say buy one get one free etc but its the 500g ones not the 750 gram ones that are in the same shelf/area as the offer

hate em all

 

Yes, had that on Sunday, from Fosters in Alderely Edge, now that is a quality establishment, i cant go to the local one in Wilmslow one any more as have been spoilt and the roads are all up round here so its gridlock, the one near home is crap, so overprice Pizza it was, wasnt evenn all that nice really, still had to add my own chilli to make it anything like hot.

 

It once happened to me with Durex in Tescos.

They were something like £8 a box and £10 for 2.

So, I picked up a box of ribbed (for her pleasure - new man) and tingle.

Once through the tills, checked my receipt and found that I'd been charged full price for two boxes.

So, I went to customer services, complained and led the assistant to the johnny aisle to be told that ribbed were not part of the offer. I decided that it was worth further embarrassment to get a refund and swap the ribbed for two packs of tingle.

At times like this, Viz is your friend and the application of a handful of frozen peas to the condom soon replicated that ribbed effect.

Steve

 

 

i dont believe it

 

Bugger off, I have seen you when done out of a quid !

 

i would of smashed the sloppy gillespie round her chops and hastily left

 

Thanks for that, from now on everything inanimate or otherwise called Guisseppe will for me be Gillespie.


I think if you had already dragged a shop assistant to check the price of ribbed versus black shadows or whatever your shame was complete. Striding back to customer services with your femidons for a refund should have been light relief!
Good on you though

 

Once worked for a meat company and barcoded 25,000 packs of frying steak wrong, they had a price of £3.50 a kilo but the barcode when it went throught the till only registered £2.00 a kilo. Nobody noticed and 25,000 people got a bargin still cheers me up every time i got through a check out. Felt responsible for Safeways going bust for a while.

 

pretty sure they trade on the fact that the specials arent always what they seem and are mixed in with the none special items, and its not in big enough print. Imagine if you where old with dodgy eyesight, would you be able to read their small print? This I doubt!

So you put the stuff in your basket and goto the till to be told its more than you anticipated and they know people will just pay it and not kick up a fuss!

 

This is one reason why I've took to reading the last 3 digits on the barcode of the item to compare against the item number on shelf price sticker to ensure what I'm picking up is infact the correct price for the item I have in my hand.

Also another sneaky thing; EU regs mean that shelf prices need to display the price per unit of item (or litre/gramm or whatever is suitable). Cool, its probably the most effective thing introduced to allow for easy price comparing of similar goods that are sold in differing quantities..

BUT, what do Tescos do? They use different unit of measurements for comparable items.

For example, Tea bags: Tetley is priced per teabag (0.12p per bag or something like that), PG tips are priced per gram (0.06p per gram or whatever). Making it impossible to use this handy method to compare prices - damn underhand and no doubt intentional....as I shop in supermarkets in Spain, and they do it perfectly and honestly (even bog roll is priced per sheet! ), so no excuses Tesco

 

I've fallen for a similar "scam" at Sainsbury too. Almost the same scenario, explained it's misleading blah, blah, and was told I should have read the small able on the shelf and would have to pay the full price by the "superviser". A bit p1ss off with this, I said thanks but no thanks and told them I'm off to Tesco leaving all the nicely laided out unpaid shopping at the check out.

 

I could go on about this all day, looking at it from the point of view of working in a shop, and seeing all these problems for myself. I can however see how people can get confused at times.

I won't say nowhere misleads customers, but it is amazing how many people seem to struggle with simple reading. Places comply with law (unless a mistake is made and we always side with the customer then, at least in our store) and put the information on tickets etc. To a point if people don't bother to read the offer, then it's not the fault of the store. Short of putting out a huge ticket (far too big for the shelf and covering up other information which would go against retail law) or putting up a neon sign/having someone speaking out the offer supermarkets/shops can only do so much to give the relevant informaion and hope people read it. I would however agree it could often be made a bit bigger when it comes to exclusions etc, but even then, plenty people will still miss it.

It's amazing what you see when working in the environment, and I could go on and on with stories from the other side of the coin.

 

while we are all at it i will tell you what pisses me right off from time to time at our local ASDA. every now and again certain popular products seem to disappear off the shelf for a week or two, but they always happen to be able to stock the shelves to the brim with their newly promoted own brand (usually with a design and colour scheme near identical to the one that is missing), coincidence? i foofing think not!!! sales of the stores items are collated (usually quarterly) and its my guess that they must say "10 times more X flavoured walkers were sold than any other flavour" with this in mind they go off and produce enough to distribute across there stores for the following month to MONITOR how sales of these go. what really annoys me though is the fact that there own brand is rarely cheaper than the one they have "held back". of course they would deny this is the case and is just coincidence. i can hear JIM ROYLE sounding off in my head right now- MY ****!!

 

Tesco have the same offer on, have to say I was a bit miffed cos I only buy the 'American', which after 2 seconds of investigation, I found wasn't part of the deal

 

My local Tesco regulary fills empty 'offer' shelf spaces with similar items. No doubt at all that they do this on purpose, as few people check their receipts now that "barcodes make mistakes a thing of the past"... I checked four large receipts over four weeks and three contained substantial errors... b*stards!

 

Ive been stung with this one too. Also, the number of times items have been `double scanned` meaning Ive been charged twice. They've pretty much know your not going to check, as most shops are over £100 and have numerous items on the bill. So, you need to stop, go through the list and check, which can be quite difficult when your having to move from the till, to the door.

The hassle of then going to the service point, and arguing the point, all becomes a ball ache.

SBK

 

Liza....... -10 house points lol

 

Liza - I see your point and yes technically the store has indicated what is / isnt on offer. But, morally you know what the store is also doing but putting other items next to, or on the same shelf as, the promotional items.

Lets relate it to wheel clamping, technically there is a small sign on the wall stating that the area is under clamping control, but morally the sign is so small that people will miss it. However, the law states the sign should be a certain size to stop this.

So, perhaps stores should only have promotional items on the shelf, or have better signs. I can live with this though, its the double scanning, and the fact that the queues move along quickly, that you dont realise you've been over charged until your at home etc etc.

SBK

 

Morrisons don't like gaps in their displays, so fill them with non-offer goods whilst leaving the offer labels behind....

Well I am a Yorkshireman.

dunx

 

so we're all dumb or illiterate or both?

 

Have to be honest I've never bothered to check a receipt. I'm careful with what goes in the trolley (someone has to because my girls are a bit grab happy). Personally though its swings and roundabouts.

My daugther wanted a little toy dog and put the dog in a little kennel type hand bag. I couldn't see any other kennel things so didn't know the price. The dog was £3.99. I put the dog in the kennel with the tag sticking out the side. As that was the only tag, the check out jockey just scanned it and away we went. Never did find out how much this kennel thing was.

Just recently I bought a bottle of Southern Comfort. If you buy the 1L bottle you get a mixer jug. When they put the security cap on the bottles the jockeys can't knock them off because the mixer jug is in the way. The chap says to me do you mind if I take the packaging off. No I said, carry on. He struggled like mad to get this tag off and when he finally got the tag off he just handed me the bottle and charged me £5.49 for the 4 beers he previously rung through. He didn't clock it but the chap in the queue behind me did but chose to keep quiet. Win for me at £17.99.

AND something that never crossed my mind to do but my wifes sister taught us is when you get pick and mix you have to weigh it. If you go to the self serve and weigh the pick and mix, don't let go of the bag. Hold onto it so it just hovers on the scales. The person manning the self serve is probably helping someone else or at least has seen you scan it. £1 P&M!

 

I just like the idea that three hundred and odd people seem to have read my little rant and that if they go into Sainsbury's they may avoid getting stiffed on the Pizza "offer" or may check their receipts in future, for me its not the three quid, its neither hear nor there, its being misled I don't like, they spend millions on analyzing our data and habits, they will have stats on how these offers perform and the display techniques will be sent from head office, it is contrived to deceive all but the most eagle eyed shoppers, I want to be able to stick stuff in the trolley and get the f*ck out of there as quick as possible without having to read small print lest I get caught out, I then trustingly hand over my Switch card for them to remove my hard earned money directly from my bank account, I don't stiff them for three quid at this point.

These companies make millions, generally pay poorly and expect a lot, they nail suppliers to the floor on price and then do stuff like this or nobbling the comparison between products by weight or whatever.

I for one will be watching my bill like a hawk, they have a reputation for this type of thing, also not taking off reductions and other stuff that always seems to be in their favour.

 

Sorry mate but i hate customers like that, its YOUR fault you didnt read the sign properly, but you tried to blame the shop, the sign, the assistant, basically blame anything but your lack of reading ability!


Next time pay attention!

 

Please show j4cko how to read offers!