Oh my! What a palaver!

[Beads]

No, not my run this morning (though I still haven't mapped it on Map my Run as the site mapping tool doesn't want to auto follow the roads at the moment). That went fine, just hard work, I didn't even think of running up the last bit, just started walking at the bottom of the hill.

No, not that, the garmin stuff. You may have read fatgirlruns' question 'To Garmin or not too', scroll down all the way to the bottom and you'll find a conversation between me and Phil72 about Garmins and Tesco (Clubcard tokens, Garmin on Tesco direct, Garmin in double clubcard exchange thingy).

This morning I headed toTesco website, put a bright pink Forerunner 10 in my basket, doubled up £45 of Tescos vouchers to £90, proceeded to enter the voucher codes only to get to the last one and it not accept it!

The contents of your basket must equal or be more than the vouchers, so basically you need to spend more and not get any change. So I can't use £90 of vouchers to buy a £89 Garmin. (I have to use £80 and pay the other £9, not what I wanted to do!)

OK, I'll get a cheap t-shirt, or knickers, or something to take me over the £90 so I only pay a couple of quid not £9. Found a bra for £3, put it in the basket, hit checkout. Garmins and bras don't go in the same basket so that didn't work! One comes from Tesco direct, the other from Tesco clothing.

So what else can I buy? There's a heading saying 'Party'. Party bags, napkins etc, they're cheap, I'll add a packet of those. Wrapping paper, yes, I'll definitely use that. A roll for £1? Just what I need, add. Total of basket £90, total of vouchers £90, done! Garmin free delivery on click and collect, wrapping paper delivery on click and collect £3.95. WHAT?!?!?!?!?!

Remove wrapping paper, head back to Tesco Direct, department leisure and hobbies (or something like that) thinking if there's a cheap Garmin accessory or some running related thing then I'll add that. So I went to the gardening (yep, attention span of a goldfish) section, added a £2.75 trowel (which I don't need, but may come in handy at some point), then spotted the 'camping' section and went and had a look.

So to cut a long story short (or at least shorter than it could have been) I came away with a bright pink Garmin Forerunner 10, 4 fluorescent guy lines, 4 LED tent pegs (the mind boggles, but at least we'll be able to find the tent in the dark) and a tent peg remover for the grand total of £45 in vouchers (doubled to £90) and £5 in cash. Now all I need to do is to wait patiently until after 4pm tomorrow and go and collect!

[SBG356 Graduate]

Sooooooo funny Beads!!! And internet shopping supposed to be easier and stress free eh?!

This sounds so much like experiences I have had in the past on the net, looking for something cheap to make up a difference in order to get free delivery or a %age off the total or the likes..... always looking for a bargain and sounds like you got one there! Good ol' Tesco's!

Enjoy your new toy and bet that patience will be strained to the limit tomorrow!

Sue

[swanscot Graduate]

You did better than I did, as I had a whole lot of palaver and didn't get what I tried to buy.

I shared this on a forum last year:

"What could be easier than ordering something on-line? One of the major supermarket chains here (Tesco) has a loyalty card scheme when you 'earn' points on your payments, to get money off future purchases. I really dislike the whole idea of 'loyalty' cards as I see it purely as a scheme to sucker customers in - like suckers but DH often shops at that supermarket chain and he is likes his points!!

Every so often they have promotions where you can double (or quadruple) your points. So yesterday DH realised the current 'double-your-points' scheme expires in a few days and we decided to double our points to spend on a new camera for me. The on-line catalogue actually has one I've been looking at for a while. We got all our points doubled - it's silly as you have to enter a list of points 'vouchers' to exchange for a list of 'eCoupons'. Come on! How silly is that! A voucher - a coupon - it's just a list of numbers!!

This morning I tried to buy my camera. I spent a bit of time entering the details of the 15 x £10 eCoupons and entered my credit card details for the payment for the remainder of the cost. Ooh, nearly there. but I couldn't pay! The page froze on the bank verification bit. So I cancelled that order and started again using a different credit card (my old one that has been verified by the bank for hundreds of online transactions. But I hit a problem! The eCoupons could now not be used!

I phoned the help line and was passed from pillar to post. I phone the loyalty card help line; they said to call the online supermarket catalogue. I did; they said to call the loyalty card reward scheme. I did; they said to call the online store again; with a different number to earlier. I eventually got someone there who confirmed what I thought, that the computer thinks the eCoupons are now 'spent' and will need to be re-issued. I hoped he'd just be able to flick a switch and I could use them again. No, I have to submit the list of numbers for the eCoupons by email and wait for a reply! Arrgh!

I know I should not be so ungrateful that I'll be able to get what I want for £150 less, but I still dislike the whole scheme.

BTW The final guy I spoke to worked out that the problem my card was not able to be verified by the bank was simply due to the address being entered incorrectly - he said with too many commas! I didn't enter the address, I entered my postcode and the postcode finder is supposed to do it automatically. Usually the address pops up so you can check it, but it didn't in this case. I think they need to change their software to allow the customer to have some input, if you have a non-standard address."

A day later, I wrote:

"They'd better get a move on replying to the email I sent yesterday requesting they re-issue the eCoupons. The eCoupons (from the voucher exchange) offer expires in 4 days and this morning they replied -

"Due to the popularity of ‘The Clubcard Voucher Exchange’, we have experienced very high customer contact volumes, and we would not be able to answer your email as quickly as we would like."

Then TWO days later I wrote:

"No discount and no camera.

I'd not heard anything in replay to my email from Thursday by this morning (except the routine we've got your email type message) so I rang them and was told the eCoupons would have been reissued within 48 hours of my request. Great, they had done so, but not bothered to tell me! So I check the catalogue and find the camera is out of stock now. I called them again and find that it is not going to be in stock before the current eCoupon promotion ends on Wednesday. All they can do is put the points back on the 'loyalty' card!"

I was not a happy customer!

[dottiemay Graduate]

Just so that you feel a little better and know that it's not just online that you get problems, I had a similar experience in-store last year. I can't remember all the details now, (it was so traumatic I must have blanked it out...!) but suffice to say, I was at Customer Services for over half an hour, with a huge queue behind me shuffling their feet and muttering shocking things about what they'd like to that to that idiot who was holding them all up...

Don't know what it was that I actually wanted any more, wasn't anything much that I do know, but I fell foul of the vouchers/coupons/cash thing as well and I do remember that even the woman on the counter was totally confused by the whole system! I couldn't understand why I needed to pay cash on top when I had the 'right money' in vouchers but it was something to do with having to be in multiples of £5 or £10.

In the end I gave up, told her in the nicest possible terms what they could do with their so-called offer and left!

[ju-ju- Graduate]

Lovely blog... Especially the 3 pound bra

X

[fatgirlruns Graduate]

I think there is a deal on Tesco direct spend over £50 and get £10 off - thats why the garmin was £89....I wish I had some clubcard vouchers as I got the plain old black one from Amazon for £75 (with a gift voucher!)

But defo well worth the money, it even got me to run 5k yesterday!! (a watch that makes you run further who'd have thought!!)