Click and...

So far so good; we still have a health service, Scotland is still with us, we remain in Europe, and my human rights have not yet been abolished. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how the new government does.

Yes, I’ll give them a chance before complaining. Tesco on the other hand have had there chance and blown it.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a new TV from Tesco click and collect. It was great value, good quality, and had all the bells and whistles my mother-in-law could ever need and, as it was to replace her old one, I clicked and waited for the e-mail telling me to collect.

The email came the next day telling me the TV was instore ready for collection. So off I went to the Altrincham Tesco which is just down the road with plenty of car parking which is why I had it delivered there in the first place. When I say ‘off I went’ it should read ‘we’, my mother-in-law came to drive and my daughter insisted that she was going to do the installing when we had got it.

When I arrived at the desk at the Altrincham branch I was told that it wasn’t there. I gave them my order number and was told that there was no order under that number. I remained calm and asked the lady behind the counter to check by name. She did so and told me that the TV had been delivered, just not to the Altrincham store. It had been delivered to Hale instead.

Now the Hale store is a tiny urban affair with no parking and Hale is one of the hardest places to park. Even so I thanked her and said that it wasn’t a problem and that we would collect it from there.

So off we went to get our TV. We had to park over a drive while I went in the store to get the TV and when I was eventually served I was told that my TV hadn’t been delivered there either. I wasn’t quite as calm by this time and the chap dealing with it said that he’d investigate and call me later.

An hour later the Hale store called to say that they’d had my TV all along and would I like to pop back to collect it. Of course by this time my helpers had scattered to the wind, so I asked them to deliver it to me rather than waste my time on yet another visit. They reluctantly agreed and a little over an hour later it was delivered. Apparently it had been stored in the wrong place and the chap who delivered it, the duty manager, said it was his fault because he put it there and, although he was stood by me as I discussed the missing TV with his colleague, he hadn’t realised.

Hadn’t realised? Was he asleep?

Of course I rang Customer Services and complained about the fiasco I had been subjected to. They were very apologetic, but said other than making management aware there was nothing that they could do. Now remember, three people had been driving around the area for over an hour on a wild goose chase that really wasn’t their fault. I felt a sorry was not good enough and emailed my complaint which led to a £20 refund as ‘a gesture of goodwill’.

A couple of days ago I received a mail asking me to write a review of the TV and my experience with Tesco. Of course I did this, rated the product, price, and packaging very highly, but commenting that my shopping experience ‘was one of the worst I had ever encountered due to delivery mix ups’. A fair summary I think.

Yesterday I received an email telling me my review had been moderated. Now, moderated should mean toned down in some way (not that it needed toning down). So I was surprised on reading it to find that it said, ‘Our staff has read your review and values your contribution even though it did not meet all our website guidelines. Thanks for sharing, and we hope to publish next time!’

So not moderation at all, more like downright censorship.

It is disappointing that there are some organisations that can’t come clean about what really happened. With no negative reviews just how are we to gauge how well they really did? Tesco, it seems, want to see the world through rose tinted spectacles and they want to be seen as are a great company giving great service, even though my experience was very different. Unfortunately – just like the spinning politicians – I won’t trust a word they say in future.