Sir, - Overcharging (in the limited sense of checkout prices exceeding display prices and consistent failure of special offers to show up on the bill) is far more frequent in Tesco supermarkets than conceded by their management. The claim by Tesco that the odds are 100,000 to one against such errors occurring (The Irish Times, March 24th) is patently at variance with customer experience.
Three times in as many visits to Tesco stores in the past fortnight I have been diddled in this way. At the Bloomfield Centre in Dun Laoghaire, oranges were offered at 20p each - buy two and get one free. At the checkout counter the price was 22p and no free fruit. On Monday, March 22nd, at the same store, Tesco crumpets carried a sticker "Buy two and get the third one free". I complained at the checkout about this unfulfilled promise and a lengthy wait ensued while the operator sought advice from her supervisor. She eventually took me to the service desk, where I waited for my claim to be verified and was finally reimbursed the 62p charged for my third packet. Earlier in the month a placarded price reduction on baby potatoes from Egypt had similarly failed to be translated into a real bargain. Regrettably, I allowed them to get away with it.
On another occasion I discovered that Carnation evaporated milk was differently priced at two different display points within the same store. The checkout scanner inevitably recorded the higher of the two prices. Yesterday, after shopping at the Tesco supermarket in the Dun Laoghaire Shopping Centre, I found on my return home that John West sardines in olive oil, which carried a prominent shelf price of 43p, had been charged at their old price of 55p per tin.
I am not an inveterate complainant. When I realise that I have been ripped off or constantly suckered by spurious special offers, I usually complain with my feet and simply take my custom elsewhere. Tesco's management should note that reluctance to queue at the service counter may well hide real consumer dissatisfaction. To assert that overcharging of the kind reported above is a rare and unlikely occurrence in their stores is a contemptuous response to genuine consumer concern. - Yours, etc., Jack Lewis,
Coliemore Road, Dalkey, Co Dublin.