With times a little tough, my other half has taken to checking whether the multi-buy discounts that are claimed are applied by Sainsbury's.
The first thing that struck us was the fact that Sainsbury's seem to have adopted a method of recording the discounts that make it less than straightforward to check if they've been applied - vague generic descriptions on the discount entries and a number of places to record discounts (some after the item, some at the end of the bill etc).
On checking for the discounts each week, we've found that on one or two bills out of four one or more of the discounts haven't been applied. I wonder how many people who made a buying decision based on the discount subsequently bother to check if the discount has been applied. A small percentage I imagine. What does this add up to in terms of lost discounts for customers (or, looked at another way, gained revenue for Sainsbury's)?
Today we thought we'd found another. To cut a long story short and leaving out the tiresome details of really rude staff, we hadn't found another, well not really. We bought two packs of sliced ham, taken off the shelf just above the notice that said very clearly "Any two packs of sliced cooked ham £4". After checking out, we noticed that the discount hadn't been applied. So we took our bill to the customer service desk. The member of staff there and two other staff on the shop floor insisted that although the item was clearly cooked sliced ham, it wasn't included in the offer. Clearly this wasn't just "any" sliced cooked ham.
In the end a supervisor was called. She came armed with the price board which she'd taken off the shelf front. She too insisted that the ham we'd chosen wasn't just "any" sliced cooked ham. After a few minutes, she suddenly noticed some tiny writing tucked away - which neither we nor any of the other staff had noticed - that said "applies to marked items only".
So, legally it seems they were right. What can you say. For us though it's misleading and dishonest. More of the dwindling trust we used to have for Sainsbury's has trickled away. We were offered the assurance that the ticketing manager would be informed of our displeasure. Mountains out of molehills, it may be, but that didn't feel like enough, so we've asked for the company to write to us to explain what they will do to correct this misleading notice.
Has anyone else noticed discounts not being applied or misleading notices at Sainsbury's?