Consumer abuse: milking FREE Xbox 360s off Tesco's |
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James Madison's implications may have been right: men are NO angels. Telegraph (UK) reports that retailer Tesco is suspending its zealously generous refund for overcharging policy after certain customers abused it to filch off, among other things free Xbox 360 consoles.Here's how it worked (emphasis on past tense): if Tesco overcharged you for the product at the till - meaning the price at the counter is more than the price on the sticker, the customer could take the product home for free, in effect claiming a FULL refund for purchasing the console. In this case, the Xbox 360 SKU was overcharged (or mislabelled as cheaper) by £2.16
Here comes the abuse. You know we support customer rights, especially with service warranties and all, but this is just too much. "Self-styled consumer activists," as the Telegraph described them, were posting information about which stores were overcharging which products. It's not necessarily wrong to post such information (probably under freedom of speech and in the interests of full information to customers), but it seems to have inspired a bunch of people to take advantage of "being overcharged at the till" and help themselves to some freebies, while Tesco was none the wiser.
Yeah, the retailer may have gone overboard with its admittedly vulnerable policy, and it has changed it to something more sane (to refund you only double of the balance between the two prices). Objectively speaking, Tesco has suffered the consequences of its own policy, and the company has learned its lesson. On the other hand, as for those who decided to help themselves to a "legitimized" five-finger discount, we only have this to say: there's a difference between a hands-down charitable deal and (forgive us for saying this) raping innocence.
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Comments [refresh]
Good work on the consumers part I think...
This wouldn't have had a chance to happen if the store just charged the same price at the till as they advertise on the shelf.
Don't think that's a mistake, because even with a policy like that, 80% of people won't check their receipt, or notice a $1 difference....now if 5,000 people missed that they were charged 2.50 extra and 100 did, well, they still probably stole close to $8000 from people that month...
I've worked at a company that does a similar deal...
Except the overcharge was typically £20 (~$40) in most cases for the xbox360. Despite hundreds/thousands of people noticing the overcharge and going to customer services, Tesco still left up the label saying the xbox was £20 cheaper for over a week.
There are laws concerning this in the UK (goods must be clearly and unambiguously priced), which Tesco have been prosecuted under many times, only to be let off lightly. It will be interesting to see what happens next time they get prosecuted for deliberately overcharging, and see if they get quite as much press coverage as they have for berating people who went out of their way to find Tesco's mistakes for them.