Customer non services - oooh i am sooo mad

[Georgina]

I vowed I would not go back to Leclerc in Morlaix after three years, I was duty bound as the kids needed a hampster cage and they were on special.  Whilst there i saw a big sign saying E2.99 salmon, in a big separate freezer were hundreds of packets of salmon.  I paid and checked the receipts (always do that) they had charged me E 4.99.  So I took it straight to the customer services and after waiting about 10 minutes because there was one person serving ten people, she said she would go with me to check the price.  When we got to the big freezer, she took a couple of minutes to find out what the price referred to and in small letters on the sign (nowhere near the salmon i might add) was marked salmon cake, and there were some small packets of salmon cake, about four in all, as I said nowhere near where the sign was and totally outnumbered by hundreds of packets of salmon.    So i said i wanted a refund as it was not clear.  She had the audacity to say to me that as i had had it out of the fridge and it was now no good, {because they took so long to sort it out}, they could not reimbourse me!!!!  What is with these people, are they really so stupid to not realise they lose customers by behaving like this???  OOOh it makes me blood boil, - I got my refund after refusing to budge by the way, in French!!!  But I left, vowing to leave it much longer than three years. (I would add that I really am allergic to this particular store, never had a problem with others).  aaahhhhgghghghg!!![:@]

Georgina

[Clair]

I leant my lesson the hard way too and I double-check every "special deal" label.

I did get my own back though, when I found the label for the synthetic-fill bolsters (€6) had been misplaced for the label for feather bolsters (€25).

I bought enough for every bed in the gite and watched carefully when they went through the till. Of course when the barcode reading priced them at €25, I protested they were marked at €6 on the display and even went with an assistant to double-check [Www]... They had no choice but to price them at €6, as shown on the display!

The sheer joy at getting one over them!! [:-))]

[Georgina]

So Clair, please tell me, are they allowed to get away with putting a massive offer price sign on something it does not refer to.  Of course in England they would be fined for this, but it really is misleading.

[Clair]

I have absolutely no idea if they are in the right or in the wrong.

I just double-check every offer label, to make sure it applies to the flavour I want!

[Clair]

I remember seeing a special offer package in a supermarket freezer, "three for the price of two" packs.

I went to check the pack-of-three price against the price of the single item and realised there was no difference, no "three for the price of two" as advertised on the packaging.

When I queried it, I was told the special offer had finished the week before and that the fact that the packaging was printed with "three for the price of two" had no bearing on the price at the till once the offer was over![blink]

[Georgina]

So what is to stop them putting  a lower price on something just to get more sales and hope that the customer does not notice, and they won't.  It's criminal.

 

[Jay]

Reminds me of the time I bought a DVD from said store. When I got it home I found it was faulty and refused to play. Of course I took it back to the shop but they refused to change it because I had taken the wrapping off and opened the box !!!

It took nearly an hour of argument to get a refund.

[babcock]

We are very suspicious of any "promotion" offer. Very often there is no advantage whatsoever. Our favorite was the white melamine shelving we bought at €3.5 that subsequently went on promo at €7.5. MOH who was an accountant in a former life carefully checks such things as the price of milk, Two 1 litre bottles often costs less the a 2 litre bottle, 2 x 10 packs of beer often is less than a 20 pack, 2 small tins of toms is also frequently less than one twice the size. Mr Bricolage is one of the worst offenders regarding shelf pricing vs till pricing. I feel sorry for those who do not have a tame accountant. They need to take a calculator when shopping in France.

[Dog]

I think it is useful when on the bottom right of the price ticket it shows the price per litre or kilo.

Unfortunately I keep finding these are wrong.

Another wierd pricing thing was 75cl bottles of Goudale beer went from 2.15 to 2.20 and now if you buy 3 packs of 6 25cl bottles,the price per litre even with all the extra packaging is 1.77.

They must have lots at near sell by or have over produced.

[Dog]

Forgot - I would like to say Auchan are incredibly good at refunds. I cannot believe that I just have to say I am not happy and or state a problem and they open the till and give me cash.

[Quillan]

I have given up with customer service in France as its virtually non existent. In small towns like ours you usually get one or two supermarkets. To get round naming and shaming one sounds very similar as the French name for mushroom and the other is the short name for Edward. We get loads of flyer's through the post, about two a week from each boasting special offers. Most of the time you turn up on the day and there is not one single item available and when you ask you get that famous French shoulder shrug.

I didn't know they cheat on the price per litre or kilo because I do tend to look at them quite a bit and use them for comparison so I will now be a bit wary.

Having said that it does work the other way sometimes and news travels far and quickly. We bought a George Foreman grill from a very big supermarket. It was priced up at 89 Euros and when you got to the checkout (and in the queue with all the others with them under their arm) they charged 45 Euros. You would have thought somebody might have twigged but the girl on the checkout just kept taking the money. That was one of our better days.

I also quite often use one of those price check websites in the UK to compare prices there and France and the difference is quite staggering, here's a couple off the top of my head.

Potatoes 2.5kg Asda £1.27 (€1.47) here €3.35

Tomatoes Loose Asda £1.87 (€2.08) kg here €2.90 (and they don't have far to come, Spain's only 1hr30 from us by road.)

Personally I think every supermarket has its highs and lows with price, availability, quality (some of our more recent spuds have been awful and I have had throw half of them away) and customer service. Still at the end of the day its France and that's how it is and we have to live with it. As to the prices, well I guess you have to pay somehow for all these glossy flyer's, get one of those brick making machines for the junk mail at least you can warm yourself.

[Pommier]

If it was just incompetence then occasionally we would expect to be undercharged, but no, most times that we buy things on 'promo' then we're overcharged. I don't believe we've ever been undercharged.

Even more annoying is that when items have gone through the till at the wrong price and after the inevitable 10 minute wait at customer services (!!!) for a refund, when I ask if they are going to correct the price on the computer I'm always told 'NON' - presumably because lots of people don't check till receipts.

[Clair]

[quote user="Pommier"]... when I ask if they are going to correct the price on the computer I'm always told 'NON' - presumably because lots of people don't check till receipts.[/quote]

In the majority of instances, the prices read via the product barcode are set and downloaded to the electronic tills by the head-office.

[tj]

Another handy spinoff of their general incompetance is, for example, to take prices from their website before you go to the store, as often the price quoted on internet is cheaper than in store.

I bought a costly item from castorama and had taken the price from the internet, instore it was 50 euros dearer, when I made them look at the website they reduced the price, maybe a one off, but here,I dont think so...

[bubbles]

in our carrefour the customer service department reimburse you twice the difference if there has been a mistake in price. almost worth going through the whole rigmorole again!

[Panda]

Whilst we are naming and shaming my personal favourite is Decathlon, I love this store and shop there regularly as they have a good range of sportswear but I have NEVER been charged the correct price for everything I've purchased, not once and I go to this shop on average once every 6 weeks.  Each time I stand and check the receipt and each time I have to queue and ask for money back, they never quibble, to be fair, but they are hopeless on anything buy one get one at X, it is never in the computer.  The fact that they don't quibble does make me think they all know and hope it won't be noticed every time.

[NickP]

 

In England the price on the shelf is not enforceable in law, for example a shelf price of £3 for a tin of paint, you get to the till and they say it's £5, it was wrongly priced, you have no right to the £3 price. Also in England we constantly buy jars of coffee in Sainsburys, and very often two small jars are cheaper than one large one of the same quantity. We find the prices in France equally bizarre, my wife has prices down to a fine art, and all supermarket bills are checked before we leave the store whether in England or France . When you live on equity interest, money is precious, thanks to Gordon Brown.

[Owens88]

Without getting wound up in the laws of offer to treat etc. the reality is that any GOOD retailer will honour a cock-up as long as it is not too ridiculous. (e.g. a computer at 1p or something like that was deemed to be incredulous) :

 

a) if I had not yet paid I would refuse the whole bundle, loudly.

b) If I had paid I would ask customer services for a signature and date of their refusal as my credit card operator would deal with their accounts dept (true) and it cost them more to deal with a 'reclaim' than a credit. (true).If they refused I would take a photo, it may infringe their civil liberties but they have to take the action and the company is unlikely to back them.

Good luck

 

John