Tesco has been forced to apologise after a customer was left “humiliated” after a technical glitch led multiple shop workers to accuse him of shoplifting.
The Tesco customer, Andrew Kennedy, shared their experience at the supermarket store in Surrey over the weekend on X. In summary, he said, the supermarket chain “accused me of shoplifting, humiliated me in front of other people, wasted my time and forced me to be late for a reunion, your incompetence led to my card being blocked, [and] you took £75.92 from my bank account.”
The series of posts has since gone viral, with many sharing sympathy for Andrew’s experience. Andrew opened the thread by sharing that he had gone to a Tesco store on Good Friday to pick up food for a weekend with friends.
He used the supermarket’s Scan as You Go option, and after completing his shop, he paid £75.92 for his groceries using Apple Pay. Andrew noted that the self-service option was his go-to way to shop at Tesco.
However, as he was leaving the shop, Andrew said a Tesco staff member approached him to tell him he hadn’t paid. Thinking it may have been an easy mistake, he followed the worker.
In the post to X, he explained: “As I left the store, an assistant ran after me and said: “I am afraid you haven’t paid for your groceries, and I must ask you to accompany me back into the shop.” She did this quietly and discreetly and thinking there was an error I happily went back inside.
Andrew showed the staff member his banking app, which showed the pending payment for the supermarket shop. Another colleague was also called over, who, after Andrew’s explanation, called out across the checkouts: “This guy hasn’t paid for his groceries.”
Finally, a supervisor came over, but according to Andrew, they then accused him of attempting a scam, even though there was no evidence of this. The shop assistant told their colleague: “You need to watch out for this, quite often they do two identical shops, pay for one, then use the payment to avoid paying for the second.”
In his X post, Andrew said: “I don’t know if this happens, but in this case, there was no evidence to suggest I had done such a thing and your assistant was openly inferring that I was a shop lifter.”
He was then told he needed to pay for the shop again. Andrew said he was “angry” and felt “humiliated” by the whole ordeal, but as he was “running out of time”, he agreed to pay again so he could leave. However, his bank noticed the identical transaction and blocked the card.
Tesco staff then said he would have to pay another way if he wanted his groceries. This was when Andrew decided to leave the supermarket. Despite him abandoning the shopping, the transaction went through after the weekend, leaving him £75.92 out of pocket.
When he approached Tesco for help, they told him he needed to provide evidence that he hadn’t taken the shopping and return to the store with his card to get a refund. However, as he was visiting friends that weekend, Andrew said this would involve a “120-mile round trip”, “£35 worth of petrol” and “three hours of my time”.
“At every level on this Tesco, you and your staff have comprehensively failed,” Kennedy said. “You should actually be ashamed of yourselves.”
In the X post, he added: “Had I been emotionally vulnerable or had some form of learning disability, or being old and confused, this appalling treatment could have resulted in trauma. You should actually be ashamed of yourselves. I am now giving you an opportunity to redeem yourselves as follows:
“1. Immediately refund my money
2. Issue a comprehensive written apology for my treatment
3. Retrain your staff at Hurst Park on how to treat people with respect
4. Make a donation of £100 to Young Minds charity which supports young people dealing with mental health issues.”
In an update shared yesterday, Andrew confirmed that Tesco had reached out to him to apologise for what had happened and were refunding the payment. Alongside this, the supermarket chain also told Andrew it had donated money to the Young Minds Charity.
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In a conclusion post, Andrew said: “Whenever something like this happens I ask myself how I would feel if it happened to my mum. She was of a generation who were deferential to authority and would have accepted what she was told, even when she knew she was in the right.
“My mum is now sadly dead, but I fight petty authority like this for thousands like her and for those who don’t have a voice. Thank you to the 1.3 million who read my Tweets and the thousands who liked my post and retweeted it.”
A statement has since been issued by Tesco on the incident, with the spokesperson saying: “Unfortunately, a fault with a scan as you shop handset at our West Moseley Superstore meant that it incorrectly indicated that Mr Kennedy’s payment had not been completed. We are really sorry that this happened and have reached out to Mr Kennedy to apologise for how the matter was handled as it fell below the high standards that we would expect.”
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