Supervalu Dun Laoghaire Overcharging

tomdublin

Since it opened around two months ago Supervalu Dunlaoghaire frequently seems to overcharge at the checkout, especially for items on promotion. This happened to me 5 out of the 10 times or so I have bought such items there. During the first few weeks the duty manager claimed that this was due to computer systems not yet having been properly "adjusted." When it happened again last Sunday afternoon he blamed it on the computer system already having been fed "Monday's prices." I find these explanations increasingly bizarre and am starting to wonder whether there is a pattern.

thesandeman

Welcome to Supervalu. That happens in most of their stores. Lots of threads about them here.

tomdublin

thesandeman wrote: »

Welcome to Supervalu. That happens in most of their stores. Lots of threads about them here.

Yes going by what's on here it seems to be endemic and as long as there is no real enforcement by Trading Standards they have little to lose. I wonder whether it's deliberate or just incompetence.

thesandeman

Mainly incompetence I would think. They dont have specific staff checking prices and stuff like Tesco do. Although Im sure some places take advantage.
Thats the problem with franchises. A few places give all the rest a bad name.

jmorrisey

thesandeman wrote: »

Mainly incompetence I would think. They dont have specific staff checking prices and stuff like Tesco do. Although Im sure some places take advantage.
Thats the problem with franchises. A few places give all the rest a bad name.

Deliberate imo, strategically placed "similar" items put on shelves where special offer signs but no stock exist. Also if you went through all the threads on boards alone about various super values, it quickly becomes evident that this goes on in more than a few stores and all over the country. Wonder will Superquinn start making the same "mistakes" now given their new owners?

Mo60

jmorrisey wrote: »

Deliberate imo, strategically placed "similar" items put on shelves where special offer signs but no stock exist. Also if you went through all the threads on boards alone about various super values, it quickly becomes evident that this goes on in more than a few stores and all over the country. Wonder will Superquinn start making the same "mistakes" now given their new owners?

These "mistakes" occur regularly in Tesco stores I haved used.

surferdudz

Mo60 wrote: »

These "mistakes" occur regularly in Tesco stores I haved used.

Tesco are the biggest offenders IMO

this is their modus operandi..

thesandeman

But you can profit from Tescos mistakes and a lot of the time things scan cheaper than the shelf label.
Ive never had a mistake going in my favour in Supervalu.

vicwatson

there is no real enforcement by Trading Standards

Trading Standards are English, we don't have an office of Trading Standards in Ireland.

In my experience Supervalu are far from the worst, that accolade goes to Tesco.

I have yet to have an overcharge in Lidl and Aldi - perhaps as they carry only X amount of goods, but really if they can do it then no reason why the others can't.

schemingbohemia

Mate of mine was over-charged on both of their headline Special Offers a couple of weeks ago, only when he checked his receipt when he got home that he realised. It was the guts of a tenner too! Most people don't bother checking receipts so SuperValu DL could well have been up a few hundred euro from that mistake.

tomdublin

vicwatson wrote: »

Trading Standards are English, we don't have an office of Trading Standards in Ireland.

In my experience Supervalu are far from the worst, that accolade goes to Tesco.

I have yet to have an overcharge in Lidl and Aldi - perhaps as they carry only X amount of goods, but really if they can do it then no reason why the others can't.

Ireland has the NCA which is supposed to do much the same thing. A few months ago Tesco was fined 600 Euro (!) for overcharging, which the others will probably interpret as a kind of invitation to continue ripping off their customers.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/1008/1224305457231.html

Mo60

tomdublin wrote: »

Ireland has the NCA which is supposed to do much the same thing. A few months ago Tesco was fined 600 Euro (!) for overcharging, which the others will probably interpret as a kind of invitation to continue ripping off their customers.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/1008/1224305457231.html[/QUOTE]

I lived in England for many years and never come across the amount of overcharging that occurs here in Ireland, even in Tesco. Maybe because they would not get away with it as easily as thay do here.

wmpdd3

One of the Super Value stores near me is desperate, they always have offers that offers on display that dont work. But the other store is brilliant, I have never been over charged there at all.

In the good Super Value store the date the offer ends is printed on the posters but not in the other one, what way is it done in the other stores. Atleast if the date has past you know your not going to get the offer, even thought that is not to say that is the right was to display an offer.

The local store isnt very big and I'd say they only have 6 special offer 'ends' so a lot less offers that a similar size Tesco.

In Aldi, I can only recall 3 items that have changed in price since I the one near me opened, 250g cheese, 100g coffee and 6 pack fromage fais and I have never been overcharged.

tomdublin

Things have actually got worse now. Today I went there to buy a loaf of bread which had been reduced from 2 Euro to 1, with a large 1 Euro sticker on it. When I scanned it at the self-checkout the price charged was 2 Euro. After complaining to the duty manager I was told that it is COMPANY POLICY(!) not to either change or cover up the barcode for reduced items, as this would be too technically difficult and demanding on the system (he also claimed that no other supermarket chain was doing it either, which is clearly false). If a Supervalu customer wants to actually get the promised discount for a given item they the onus is on him or her to realize that they have been overcharged and to apply to a member of staff for a refund (which the manager admitted few people ever do). In other words, according to the manager it is Supervalu's POLICY to overcharge customers with reduced items at self-checkouts every time.

Corruptedmorals

It is supervalu's policy not to employ people to check prices. If they have fluctuating prices and offers, then they need to do so. Dunnes and Tesco do, obviously there are still mistakes in both but that's because they can't be everywhere at once and stuff does slip through. Lidl and Aldi don't have to as they don't really have hundreds of prices changing every week etc. or anything resembling it. But supervalu are fools to not even try, they wouldn't even need that many because they're on a smaller scale.

Their tills are scanning at the correct price, it is updated overnight. It is the signs, shelf-edge labels and offer signs that are the problem.

tomdublin

Corruptedmorals wrote: »

It is supervalu's policy not to employ people to check prices. If they have fluctuating prices and offers, then they need to do so. Dunnes and Tesco do, obviously there are still mistakes in both but that's because they can't be everywhere at once and stuff does slip through. Lidl and Aldi don't have to as they don't really have hundreds of prices changing every week etc. or anything resembling it. But supervalu are fools to not even try, they wouldn't even need that many because they're on a smaller scale.

Their tills are scanning at the correct price, it is updated overnight. It is the signs, shelf-edge labels and offer signs that are the problem.

Agree but as far as I can tell this seems to be premeditation rather than just negligence or incompetence. The system is set up in a way that customers who scan certain reduced items at the self-service till are NEVER charged the correct price. The shop itself has nothing to lose: if customers notice and complain the difference is refunded; if they don't notice (and many won't) it's Supervalu's gain. In many other countries managers presiding over such a system would go to prison in addition to the company itself paying huge fines, but neither seems to apply in this country....

Pacing Mule

Can I just get this clariifed TomDublin

I'm assuming that you are talking about a local reduced to clear promotion for short dated product or similar ? (Super Valu central offers would batch straight to the tills automatically so waht you're describing would not make sense for this kind of offer)

So what the store do is locally reduce an item by putting a new price sticker on it - but the reduction is only made manually by the till operator. Therefore customers going through the self scan are charged the full price ?

The other larger supermarkets used to operate like this (back before self scan came in) but now primarily because of self scan the reduced to clear labels generate their own barcode which scans at the reduced price. I'm very surprised that Super Valu / Musgraves haven't followed suit. Is there anyone here who could clarify if Super Valu reduce items like this in all stores ?

tomdublin

Pageant Messiah wrote: »

Can I just get this clariifed TomDublin

I'm assuming that you are talking about a local reduced to clear promotion for short dated product or similar ? (Super Valu central offers would batch straight to the tills automatically so waht you're describing would not make sense for this kind of offer)

So what the store do is locally reduce an item by putting a new price sticker on it - but the reduction is only made manually by the till operator. Therefore customers going through the self scan are charged the full price ?

The other larger supermarkets used to operate like this (back before self scan came in) but now primarily because of self scan the reduced to clear labels generate their own barcode which scans at the reduced price. I'm very surprised that Super Valu / Musgraves haven't followed suit. Is there anyone here who could clarify if Super Valu reduce items like this in all stores ?

Yes exactly, the item in question was a loaf of bread that had been reduced to clear in the evening (but I presume the same problem applies to all items that are reduced to clear provided the original barcode isn't either changed or covered). I told the manager that all he had to do is to cover up the barcode which would make it impossible to check out the item at the wrong price as a member of staff would then be required to get it through. He seemed completely unreceptive to that suggestion which makes me suspect he knows exactly what's going on and likes to keep it that way....

xxlauraxxox

i work in a SV nd i gotta say thank god we dont have much over pricing ya maybe every third sunday when the promotions start you might have 10 out of the 500 products on PA not scanning but we have our own sections and are responible for our own products to be scannig at the right prices and if not we are put down the grievence route. its only common sense for every store to do this puts a bad name on the rest of our shops :mad:

freak855

Shop it's one big joke. All prices are wrong all the time. CUSTOMERS LOOK ON THE EXP DATE !!!! SO MANY PRODUCTS IS OUT OF DATE AND NOT ONLY 2 days old, some of them are 2 months old. I'm not joking it happend to me feew times I talk to manager about this and they take them down but I come back after 2 days and the old products are for sale again what da F*** ... Not come back there any more. And it's NOT A SUPER VALU IT'S A **** VALU AND ALL MENAGERS OVER THERE TOO. Sorry to say that but it's worse shop ever ( dun laoghaire super VALU) shut be close down....

khards

Apologies for commenting on an old thread, but we have a similar problem with out of date produce in McCann's SuperValu Moycullen.

The store used to reduce items to clear, but changed their policy so that now absolutely nothing in the store is reduced, not even stale bread.

You now have to watch the dates very carefully and you can find stock that went out of date on a Friday still being sold on a Sunday.
A bigger problem is that you can buy something that should last a few days, like a pack of bacon and the next morning you find that it is out of date.

Does anyone know if this is a local policy not to reduce anything on sell by date, or is this a nationwide policy.

the groutch

afaik they are a franchise, so it's up to individual stores.

in general if people have ongoing issues with dates on products, they should contact Musgraves directly, because even though they don't own the shop, with enough complaints it might make them think about whether they want to supply to a franchisee who is damaging the SuperValu brand.

orol221

It is never ''computer error'' computer reads what you put inin his language of 01100101101001, its always human error not to be ahead to scan the item and change price if its in offer. Problem could be due to poor logistics inside the shop and managers who are running their areas. Feel sorry for check out staff every time.
Got f****d over 3 for €8,5 in M&S paid €13 in KY last week never checked receipt...Rookie Mistake...damn:mad:

foggy_lad

I used to do online shopping with SuperValu in Tullow but the last delivery which was on Tuesday had bread from the shop's Friday delivery! and also Carlsberg substituted for Budweiser as well as a few other pricing mistakes so I just gave up on them, Tesco were not any better with me getting refunded about 15% of the total for each shop because of out of date/short dated items and wrong items delivered.

Forest Demon

Same happens in Reillys Supervalu Sallins all the time with any offers. Also the fridges not cold enough and this leads to the meat and dairy going off days earlier than the same products bought from the local Tescos. I don't bother with SV any more.

khards

Forest Demon wrote: »

I don't bother with SV any more.

I have stopped shopping there too, I used to pop in to the Supervalu in Moycullen on the way home from work:

I used to buy fresh bread, but they have no fresh bread after about 1pm.
I also used to buy the reduced items, but they don't reduce anything now.
I used to buy their 3 to for €2, but they are always run out.
Their fridges are also empty most of the time.

I suspect that the shop will go bust in the next year.