Asda NewsSupermarkets are destroying the traditional British High Street by undercutting prices till smaller local shops go bankrupt or give up. They, the supermarkets, offer choice and prices that no small retailer can match. So ‘they’ continue to expand and the small shops disappear.
But not only are they depriving the local communities of the choice of where they can shop they are also deliberately ripping off the very people who keep them in business. It’s illegal but they don’t care!
This is how they do it. They advertise promotions at an offer price on the shelves and then charge the full price at the tills. Here’s an example of how I got ripped-off by Asda the British arm of Wallmart. I took advantage of an Asda promotion that offered three yoghurts for £2 (approx $4 US) when I got to the till they charged me the full 37p (approx 70c US) each.
When I complained I was treated with disdain by the assistant possibly because the total overcharge was ‘only’ 22p (approx 40c US). Quite a small amount but hey, try taking out 22p worth of goods without paying and see what happens! At very least you’d be branded a thief by the supermarket but more likely you would get a criminal record because the supermarket wants to make an example of you to deter other miscreants.
When I got home I found a previous till receipt and realised I had been overcharged before. I decided to run an experiment. After all I had alerted them to the error now and a responsible retailer would make sure the error was put right. Yeah, OK, right!
As well as the bad attitude of the staff member it took fifteen minutes to sort out the refund. First of all I reported it to the assistant at the checkout. He was very polite, apologised and sent me to ‘customer services’.
The woman (with the attitude) at the customer services counter looked at my receipt and went to the yoghurt shelf to check that I was telling the truth. When she got back she confirmed my honesty and expressed a reluctant apology. Then I had to endure a painfully bureaucratic process of refunding the Asda theft of 22p. I even had to sign for my money!
Now if this was genuine mistake that was immediately rectified, OK – human error and all that, but nothing was changed. I continued to buy the same yoghurts right up till the day I left the UK and I was mugged by Asda every time.
The Asda Shelf Price
Now Get Ripped-Off At The Till
Oh by the way, this case at Asda is not rare. So why aren’t Asda and other supermarket chains prosecuted by Trading Standards or the Police for this illegal activity? Here are some interesting links with further interesting evidence.
We Estimate That Tesco Steals £7.8 Million A Week From It’s Customers
UK supermarket rip-off? – ThisIsMoney.co.uk
The half-price wine ‘rip-off’- ThisIsMoney.co.uk
Supermarket rip-off culture must end – The Independent
Exposed: the tricks supermarkets use to make rip-offs look like bargains – Mail Online
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Have paid, four days running – without noticing until today, that I’ve been charged £2.07 for a 500ml bottle of Coca-Cola (£8.28 for 2L effectively). I’m waiting for Tesco to respond to my customer enquiry regarding this…
And here’s the response, complete with spelling mistakes:
Dear [Redacted]
I would like to apologise for the higher pricing charged in our [Redacted] store. There are higher costs involved in operating our Express stores, compared to the larger supermarkets, other factors can also be the area the store is located. However i can appreciate your concerns as this does seem a little high for a small bottle of coka cola.
Although we do absorb many of the costs involved, in order to give our customers the high standard of service they expect, it is sometimes necessary to charge a little more on a limited range of products. These pricing differences are kept to an absolute minimum. I’ve fed back your comments to our Pricing and Marketing department, they will look into your pricing concerns and and i’m sure if they can make changes.
We are confident that for quality of products, service and fuel, we continue to offer the best value possible in comparison to other stores.
Thank you for your time.
Kind Regards
[Redacted]
Tesco Customer Service
ASDA branded products sold via food4brits in Portugal is 400% more expensive than it is in the Uk and most of it is out of date, complain and the “spooky owners behind food4brits make a joke of it” ASDA don’t comment if you complain!!!!!, bet they won’t pay out 400% extra on a compensation claim when someone gets poisoned ,just send flowers (at a cost 400%+) and hope the person dies so they can get away with it, must be tories.
My local Tesco Express tried to rip me off by forty six pence this afternoon. The offer should have been £2.50 but they charged £2.96. I told them that this was the 2nd error in pricing I have found since they opened last month and they need to be more careful or people won’t shop there.
It makes you wonder how many others they have ripped off? I worry for those who were too stupid or too lazy to check their bills over.
I am going to go in tomorrow and see if they will try the same thing.
ASDA RIPOFF
I added two packs of pop priced at £2 each last night to my delivery for this morning. After they were delivered I realised I’d been charged £3.65 each an overcharge of £3.30. I rang CS who informed me that prices can change & I’d have to lump it. Unbeleivable! other grocery websites inform you if the price will go up on the delivery date, but not Asda, I wonder why? I will definitely not be using Asda again!
@admin: I must say your site is the first I’ve come across this morning that doesn’t have spelling errors every other line. Thanks for taking the time to write something that doesn’t look like a 6th grader put together. I apologize, just had to vent.
@Andrew Foster. Thanks I do try to write to a fairly high standard.
Every supermarket is at it. Lidl are using what appears to be sharp practice with spray cleaning bottles – 50 per cent extra says the sign on the bin.
Except that relates to only one kind of spray – all the others are standard 500ml – of course if you read the sign carefully it says that the extra applies to only shower spray cleaner,but I’m certain that many people pick up the other bottles thinking they too include 50 per cent extra.
Deliberate ? I wouldnt like to think so, but then again why put the smaller bottles in the same cage as the “extra” ?
@bill. It’s deliberate. Asda does it so does Tesco. I find there is some sort of problem with one in three transactions at a supermarket.
I went on Tesco Direct website and the price of digital timers was £2.50 each. As I was going on holiday the day after I couldn’t wait for delivery, so I visited my local Tesco superstore. The exact same timers cost £8 each!
I had to have them and coughed up the monies.
I wrote to Tesco telling them I felt ripped-off. They responded with a mail that as goos as said “hard luck”
No offer of discount in any way. Tesco care NOTHING for customer satisfaction…A rip-off.
Today at Tesco I put 6 apricots in a bag, and at the til this came to £4.45. No warning on the pricing of the apricots or anywhere to weigh unbagged produce to assess the cost.
i decided to boycott tesco’s , reason being is that they are another tax fiddling company who make £8 billion per month or something and pay no taxes..also they seem to be able to open up a store every 50 yards or so driving out competition…also boycotting sainsburys due to them selling products in connection with monsanto the GM firm that wants to own all food. and produce chemically dangerous products..
Biggest rip off is the two for or three for offers. They simply ram up the price for a single unit leaving you the choice of being ripped off if you buy one or buy two or three for the correct unit price. Worst is how it affects the poor and pensioners. If they only have the money to buy one they are having their pockets emptied. The government should have a look at this. If benefits are being cut and pensioners are being struggled why are the multi billion supermarkets being allowed to steal from their already frugal purses.
Get this one!! Asda will let you pay for goods using part payment (ie gift card and cash). But when you go to return the goods they claim that you can only be refunded on a gift card (your cash has been forgotten about) They say that part payment is the same as paying for your original goods on a credit card!!!! Can you beleive it?? Am waiting for a reply, will keep you posted.
Asda crinkle cut chips just went from 97p to £1.50 overnight!!! But wait they also went onto offer of 3 for £3….. They really think were dumb don’t they.
I subscribed to the latest scam by Tesco when they advertised “unlimited” internet access on pay-as-you-go for only two pounds. After two days I was cut off as it’s not actually “unlimited access” but something they call “fair access” which is limited to 100mb. Of course, this is far more dearer than the competition.
I watch tesco,s like a hawk,they come up with previous prices that are so outrageous then say new low price is such and such,it,s a bloody rip off and when you challenge them about something they say it,s down to head office and can,t give you an answer,and how come they put twelve pence on a five hundered gram pack of country life butter,like one of your previous writers said ,get rid of the small shop keeper then there,s hardly any competition,it,s legalised robbery why should government care the more people spend the more tax they get( come to think of it, they,re just theives as well!
I too was ripped off at Tesco, they had an offer on Branston baked beans 4 for 89p, next to the single cans was 4 cans handy wrapped, so I picked up several packs, got to the check out got charged full price for each can, had to go to customer service(?)and was told the offer only applied to single cans, I pointed out they were the same product, how come the difference, they repeated the same thing, so I ripped off the cover, they said no these don’t have a bar code on??? When I pointed out the sign on the shelf was misleading they replied that they come from head office nothing to do with them. I complained on the Tesco website, no answer, called them and they said they would get round to replying, but never did. They know what is going on! Complained to trading standards never heard a thing. Tesco’s were playing catch up with Morrisons who had the same offer, but Morrisons advertised theirs wrapped in packs of 4′s.
@ Barry Humphreys. These weeks Watchdog (BBC 1, 8pm and now on iPlayer) exposes several rip-offs by all the big supermarkets. They all churn out the same old lies that it was a mistake and then go on doing it. Rip-off is theiving so why aren’t the supermarket bosses being jailed as repeat offenders?
Are Tesco incompetent or dishonest? At their Walsgrave store today I purchased their £9 meal deal only to find that they charged me 19.99. When I returned to the store their defence was the offer had ended. Never the less they continued to display on the usual display as if it was a special offer. The store managers were that she was unaware the offer had ended. The refunded my money. I then went to their Arena store and guess what they were still displaying the £9 offer so I attempted to make another purchase. Once again Tesco wanted to charge the non offer price only this time as their display was clearly offering the goods at £9 I stuck to my guns and paid £9
Next stop their website which is clearly displaying the offer but if you bore down far enough you can eventually find an indication that their offer ends on 1.2.10.
Their customer services are a waste of time. They say that individual stores don’t control the prices and there may have been a mistake at the centre. How many people across the country who did not check their bill are £10 down and didn’t notice the rip off. I suppose Tesco have a plan to use this windfall in an appropriate manner LOL. Of course their wonderful clubcard system could identify all the club card customer who have been disadvantaged by their incompetence and arrange an unsolicited refund. But don’t hold your breath.
Supermarkets are dishonest. The practice you describe is widespread and too common to be incompetence.
I have lost count of the times I have selected an item from the shelf because the price has been “rolled back” only to find that I have been charged a higher price at the point of sale. I always point the discrepancy out to the checkout personnel and I am then treated with the usual disdain from asda staff. After an unneccessarily drawn out process I am charged the shelf price. I have never had such an error charged in my favour and considering the fact that this has happened to me at least twenty times, leads me to suspect that this is a scam.I would be very willing to contribute any help I can to stop these scammers getting away with this!
Thanks Michael,
The evidence does seem to support your suggestion. If this isn’t the case why are some of the staff so shitty about it being reported? I’ll never understand why SOME working class people are willing to back up scamming employers. They get lousy pay and conditions but instead of helping customers get a fair deal they become obstructive and defend the bosses. Crazy!
Absolutely let’s keep the pressure up. I got a reply to my original post by email from Asda with an apology but since I’ve been back to UK I have had frequent overcharges at the till so nothing has changed. A neighbour of mine took back some out-of-date items got the items replaced and her money back.The real problem here, I believe, is that large companies like Asda deliberately run understaffed but require the same amount of work done. Overworked staff will always make mistakes but the overpaid managers who should be checking that everything is done properly don’t. Unfortunately it is always the lowest grades that take shit from angry customers and lazy overbearing management. (I generalise here because some managers do do their jobs properly and are supportive of their charges.)
Over the last 4 weeks, I have had to check my Asda till receipt only to find that the items either marked on the product or on the shelf, IS NOT the price going through the till. Twice I was offered the difference back and a £2 giftcard…..today I was told it was not their policy to give a £2 giftcard when someone had just forgotten to remove the lower price sign..when in actual fact the product had returned to normal price. Not interested in conflict as had to get kids for lunch…but a long hefty email to head office when I got in…lets see what the reply is.
It’s about time things like this were brought to people’s attention – I can’t begin to imagine how many times this may have happened to me and I haven’t noticed (given that my average weekly shop is between £70 – £100). I’ve started using Morrisons instead now – they may not have the same wide choice of goods offered by Asda & Tesco but they’re definitely cheaper and as far as I know haven’t robbed me yet LOL