I’ve explained previously what I think of ASDA but I was still under the illusion that being nearby was the same as convenient.
To often my nearby journey is frustrated and wasted because they don’t sell what I want. Here’s the latest run-in with the idiots that are ASDA.
…and when I call ASDA I don’t mean the staff (most of them) but the incompentence of the organisation and it’s inability to satisfy the customer who is trying to give them money.
In this case though, I specifically mean one of the checkout supervisors.
No milk today
I’m fed up of no milk from ASDA. No milk was always the customers perogative to the milkman, not from the milkman. Not so from ASDA, who no milk me too often.
I was trying to buy 24 pints of organic semi-skimmed milk in the form of 6 x 4 pint bottles at £1.41 each. They only have 6 x 2 pint bottles and 82p each (thats £1.64 per 4 pints, and only 12 pints).
I empty the shelf into my trolly with all 12 pints and my other shopping. I’ll try my usual trick which is to arrange to by 2 x 2 pint bottles at the 4 pint price; after all why should I pay extra just because ASDA can’t keep their shelves full? This usually works fine, but this time someone new was on the checkout and it was her first day, so she called over a checkout supervisor.
We ask the supervisor if I can buy 2 x 2 pints at the price of 1 x 4 pints. She says we can’t. (Strange) but the reason is even funnier. We can’t because 4 pints cost £1.41 and 2 x 2 pints costs £1.42 (I corrected her to £1.62 and the cashier corrected me to £1.64). So yes. We couldn’t buy 2 x 2 pints for the price of 1 x 4 pints because 2 x 2 pints cost more than 1 x 4 pints.
So she would let me buy them at that price if they cost that price. But then I wouldn’t have had to ask, would I?
So I explain that I don’t want to buy 2 pint bottles anyway, I really want to buy 4 pint bottles. I don’t even want just 12 pints, I want 24 pints in 4 pint bottles, but they don’t have it.
Why doesn’t she understand that it’s bad enough not to be able to buy the sizes I want, but making me pay extra for the inconvenience is an insult?
She calls up to a higher manager who lets me do it “this once, because it’s Christmas”. I try to explain that I do this regularly, but she’s stopped listening. The cashier can’t work out what the problem is, they sell 2×10 cigarrettes for the price of 1×20 cigarettes when they run out of twenty packs.
And whatever the checkout supervisor said, I would have got what I was asking. If I had to, I would have left my shopping unloaded on the checkout, tipped my head back and bellowed to the ceiling (Never bellow at the staff):
“Why is it that you never have enough milk in stock? it’s bad enough that you don’t have the right size in stock, it’s bad enough that you waste my journey, but why are you trying to charge me extra for it? Whats the good of low low prices if you don’t stock it and try and sell me something that costs more instead?”
So here’s what I’ll do, I’m not daft.
I’m off to Morrissons for my groceries, but I’ll go to ASDA for my cheap petrol and DVD’s when I’m passing. I don’t mind bleeding them dry with their loss leaders, I may even enjoy shopping at ASDA in those circumstances.
Oh, and S______ never did call back to explain why they stopped selling maternity towels like they promised.
I find that strange that the checkout supervisor refused to over-ride the price. I know that in the supermarket that I am a supervisor in, we wouldn’t have an issue in over riding the price if there wasn’t what you wanted, in the size that you wanted. I know that the only thing we can’t do that on is Beer and Cigerettes because of legal reasons.
ReplyDeleteIf you do ever shop in ASDA again, and a similar situation arises, promptly ask about ‘Smiley Squad’ vouchers which allow colleague to take up to a £1 off for when we don’t have a particular item or product in stock. So in other words, the reduction in cost from the individual cartons shouldn’t have been a problem.
What I would do is suggest contacting ASDA House as well as writing a letter to the GSM of your local store listing the name of the supervisor or if you can’t remember; a description and the time of the day they were working.
I feel sorry that you got treated like that; I know of one or two people like that in the store I work in and often it is just because they are bitter people themselves and should be taken as no reflection on the rest of the staff and company.
As for the lack of stock; unfortunatley that is just a fact of life in modern supermarkets. If you shop at the weekend when everyone else does you have to realise that often there isn’t enough shelf space to stock the necessary amount of products to cope with the demand. The same applies to evenings because most stock isn’t put out except at night; although for things like Milk etc tends to be stocked throughout the day so it could have just been that there was no stock in, or it was being delivered.
The best thing to do is to raise hell not with the supervisors who depsite the power complex a minority have; believing that they are the be all and end all of decisions take with regards to customer service, instead, asked to speak to the department manager; or if they are not available, then the customer service manager or the on duty manager (it’ll either be the GSM or the manager with overall responsibility for the store at that time of the workday).