Tesco bans the pyjama brigade

Tesco in Cardiff has decided it doesn't want its customers coming in wearing nightwear and it has caused such a storm, it's made the national news.

I know how I feel about the subject, and I've made a Squidoo lens all about it - I would NEVER do this - sheer laziness and lack of self respect. Not only that, I'm thinking what if one of my favourite celebrities just happened to be browsing the aisles in the store and I bumped into them - I'd be so embarrassed. But, it seems that I may not be in the majority and BBC Radio 4's PM news programme had plenty of correspondence saying that it's perfectly OK.

I'll be interested to see if my local Tesco takes a stand on the subject. Rather than worrying about what their customers are wearing, I would rather they improved the standard of fresh food that they sell, pay their suppliers a fair price and cared a bit more about animal welfare. Oh, and made sure that their special offers are special for the customers and not a con.

When my local store re-opened after a rebuild, I thought I would at least give it a chance. I wished I hadn't. Whoever designed it, must have been standing on his head. You have to walk the full length of the store to reach basics like milk and bread - past all the new things they now sell that I wouldn't buy anyway.

One of the items on my list on that first visit was the particular type of tinned tuna my fussy cat prefers. I found single tins at one price and a 'special offer' pack of 3 tins which I expected to be cheaper per tin. WRONG! Believe it or not, it was nearly £1 more!

I took the two packs to the customer desk and I expected an apology for making a mistake and to be offered the 3-pack at a more appropriate price.  I didn't get the response I expected and was virtually accused of wasting the assistants time - when I expressed some mild annoyance with her attitude, she said she would 'tell the duty manager'. I did expect that on a subsequent visit that the error was corrected - it wasn't. 

I am tempted to visit in my pyjamas this weekend or wear a fluffy dressing gown over street clothes - perhaps then I'll get some proper attention to an outright rip-off.

Tesco fail to impress on environment and health

At the other end of the car park from my local giant supermarket Tesco at Langstone, there is a recycling facility. At the store end, they seem to be encouraging consumers to take home as much NON-recyclable packaging as they can.

This morning I went in for some croissants or pastries to eat with a cup of coffee, my occasional weekend treat. On the bakery counter, there were loose pain au raisin at 55p each. It is regrettable that the bags to take them away are plastic and not paper, but that’s what I’d expect from Tesco.

On the rack underneath there were plastic packs ofthe same pain au raisin pastries at 89p for two. That’s a 21p difference for exactly the same product, almost 25%. I didn’t mind the idea of buying two on this occasion, as I was thinking I would have one tomorrow. However the thought did cross my mind that single people were being somewhat disadvantaged here and why anyway was I paying less for a product with more packaging?

I paid for my purchases and afterwards took them to the customer service desk to point out the problems. The assistant there agreed it was unfair, stupid but pricing was out of her hands. She also mentioned that she normally worked on the tobacco counter where 2 x 25g packs of rolling tobacco were cheaper than a single 50g pack.

Aren’t we supposed to be discouraged from eating fattening foods and smoking? I tried hard to get it through to her that the reason I was complaining was as much to do with the packaging issue as with the price, but I was getting nowhere.

The insult to injury came when I got home. I had failed to notice that the sell-by date on the pastries was 24 hours past and they hadn’t been removed from sale. They were stale and not very pleasant and went in the bin. More waste and strain on my pocket.

The same Tesco management team were asking the local planning department a year ago to expand the store to a huge and unsightly building to include more clothing and non-food lines so they can compete with local rival stores Asda and Sainsburys. No-one in the area wanted it, but somehow councillors were persuaded to agree to it. Fortunately, later on, Tesco pulled the plans or at least put them on the back burner saying that this store had been taken off their re-building list.

In the meantime they had gone back to the local council to make some changes to the plans such that would have to go through at least part, if not all of the planning process again and I’m wondering if they were told that those changes would not be well received because of the protests it would re-start and the cost to the council. They claimed that the re-planned store would be ‘greener’. It's a larger store, with more parking so more cars. The traffic nearby already gets seriously clogged at busy times. There was talk once of a dedicated slip road from the A27 main road, but this disappeared from the plans.

If they are so dedicated to being environmentally friendly, why are they encouraging their customers via their prices, to buy items with MORE packaging rather than less.

Do I have anything to thank Tesco for on this visit? Yes, their women's underwear is good value :-) Knickers to Tesco.