Diary 17th 18th And 19th Of September 2017

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Diary Sunday 17th September 2017 A simple shopping trip led me to writing this formal letter of complaint to a major supermarket in Preston. I’ll remove it name from this presentation. I wish to complain about abuse, aggression and confiscation of purchased shopping by staff at the XXXX branch of YYYYY on Sunday 17th September, at (by the till receipt I have kept as evidence) 14.38 pm. I only had a few purchases to make and the shop was quiet. I picked up a jar of jam priced £1.00, three bottles of fizzy drink on a multisave deal of 3 for £1 and according to the shelf price three tins of rice pudding on a similar multisave deal of three for £1.00. My shop should therefore have come to £3.00 exactly for 7 items. I arrived at the till operated by a lady called JULIE with only two customers ahead of me, and as they also had only a few item to purchase I naively expected to be out of the shop within five minutes. The customer but one ahead of me ended up querying his order and JULIE was very abrasive to him but eventually seemed to sort out whatever the problem was. The customer right ahead of me got through unscathed. I didn’t. She scanned my items and then told me I owed her £4.00. I pointed out the multisave deals meant my order came to just £3.00 – she expressed very loud doubt about the rice puddings being on such an offer and eventually, with much yelling to another shop assistant, she got confirmation that I was right, and the tins were on a 3 for a £1.00 offer. She then immediately tried to charge me £3.20. I asked where the extra 20p came from. She then snapped at me that none of this was her fault and she could only do what the till said and that she objected to my attitude when I requested complete cancellation of my shopping order – which she refused to do. I asked to see her manager and she just pointed to the younger lad on the next till who eventually suggested to her that she takes back one tin of rice pudding through the scanner as that would straighten the deal. She did, but in the process she didn’t return the third tin to me and with more customers approaching she just dumped my change and receipt in my hand and insisted that I go away. Only after leaving the shop did I find that I had still been charged £3.20 and worse, only now had two of the three rice puddings. Since when was it acceptable to offer a deal that your staff then refuse to honour? The right of staff to remove a customer’s shopping from the basket but still charge them for it? Make customers pay more for less than their shopping actually comes to? Refuse to get managers for unhappy customers to talk to? And ignore confirmed evidence from other staff that shows the customer is in the right? Also refuse to grant the customer a full refund and have the ignorance and audacity to berate customers for being unhappy with the service and prices being charged conflicting with prices stated on shelf edges? To then accuse the customer of having a bad attitude while bullying them out of sight and mind is beyond disgusting. I hope that I will receive a refund of the money effectively stolen from me and the goods that were confiscated from me, and a formal apology for allowing staff to treat a customer with such utter contempt and keep me in the shop for over 25 minutes despite not being particularly busy. Diary Monday 18th September 2017 Drafted the above letter, and helped give a talk to student starting out in the social services at the university on the roles the volunteer social work service users have as well as plugging our film festival for next month. The students were very attentive and interesting. Diary Tuesday 19th September 2017 It was the cheap bag of food day at the community centre so I got some lovely food in for the week for jut £2.00. Later I attended an employment agency registration event. Though told to be there at noon, once I filled in the rather repetitive application form I was kept waiting for a staggering hour and forty five minutes before I tore the application form to shreds and handed them to the rather speechless looking interviewer as I walked out. Arthur Chappell