On the whole I have been a loyal customer of Tesco’s for many years with relatively little issues until now. I normally shop online on a regular basis because both my daughter and I have disabilities.
I am not targeting this post entirely at Tescos, as all Grocery Supermarkets should follow my example.
I am just writing about my own personal experience with Tesco but I am sure all other grocery supermarkets have the same problem and are following the bright spark that makes the rules.
So with the Coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic I noticed Tesco struggling to keep up with demand of some of my usual products such as antibacterial-disinfectant, hand wash and hand gel for many weeks now. This was not my grieviance as I understood people had been bulk buying.
I would have already prior to the pandemic had a policy in place not to be able to purchase more than 3 items of any one product, as the store is a retailer not a wholesaler, but for some reason I hear Supermarkets are being less lenient again. do they never learn?
If you want to buy in bulk go to a wholesaler, not that they are taking on any new registrations at this present time due to people thinking that this is the end of the world and we are facing some sort of zombie apocaplypse.
Just like every thing else CEO’s & MP’s do not think until after the event. Similar if there was a catastrophic event the law would only kick in after the fact.
Businesses and Governments should think outside the box to have scenarios of what could happen and put improvisions in place so that if the inevitable should ever happen they would be prepared and covered.
So moving on I received an email from Tesco a few days ago that they will not be charging me my monthly delivery fee due to no delivery slots and are only delivering to the vulnerable:
I then had another email from the CEO of Tesco saying due to the pandemic they will be only delivering to the vulnerable.
So you are telling me there is only 110,000 clinically vulnerable and isolated people in the whole of the UK?. What does that mean exactly? What about the rest of the population i.e cancer patients that have auto immune disease or the elderly what about those people? According to https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-on-shielding-and-protecting-extremely-vulnerable-persons-from-covid-19/guidance-on-shielding-and-protecting-extremely-vulnerable-persons-from-covid-19 people with underlying health conditions are at risk, such as:
- Solid organ transplant recipients.
- People with specific cancers:
- people with cancer who are undergoing active chemotherapy
- people with lung cancer who are undergoing radical radiotherapy
- people with cancers of the blood or bone marrow such as leukaemia, lymphoma or myeloma who are at any stage of treatment
- people having immunotherapy or other continuing antibody treatments for cancer
- people having other targeted cancer treatments which can affect the immune system, such as protein kinase inhibitors or PARP inhibitors
- people who have had bone marrow or stem cell transplants in the last 6 months, or who are still taking immunosuppression drugs
- People with severe respiratory conditions including all cystic fibrosis, severe asthma and severe COPD.
- People with rare diseases and inborn errors of metabolism that significantly increase the risk of infections (such as SCID, homozygous sickle cell).
- People on immunosuppression therapies sufficient to significantly increase risk of infection.
- Women who are pregnant with significant heart disease, congenital or acquired.
So I decided to reply but had to hunt for the email as I tried phoning customer service and got cut off several times, meaning they are not taking calls, by having auto responders in place. The email is towards the end of this thread and I got a response back from them today which is laughable.
The whole point of isolation is to try to contain the virus, so you would think that Tesco and all the rest of the grocery stores should follow suit and employ more staff (considering many people have lost their jobs right now) and have them answer calls, have online chat and answer emails.
On top of this stop people coming to the stores, full stop.
Cross Contamination.
By someone coming into a store there is a chance of cross contamination as someone that coughs could easily transmit the virus onto a product packaging and have it airborne for some one else to inhale.
“The only people in the stores would be the staff and they also would less likely catch the virus from cross contamination. But the store managers and the CEO’s are not OCD like me so they will not be thinking this way”.
As for the elderly who only shop for one or two minimal items or people that do not normally buy online, humanity should love thy neighbour and give a helping hand meaning if you live in close proximity to an elderly person or someone who does not know the first thing about shopping online you could order on their behalf it is not difficult, you could combine it into your shop and split the cost after, or set up an account for them.
If there are so many staff supposedly employed then they should be able to stock, stack, pick, pack, chat online, answer calls, email and deliver How about giving me 10% bonus to organise your business management as it needs re-organising.
So like I said in the beginning my daughter has an auto immune disease and suffers with multiple sclerosis, I am her mother and her carer and she has a low immune system due to treatment she has had six months ago.
So therefore physically venturing out to buy food in store I have a greater chance of contracting the disease from cross contamitation, which I could potentially pass on to my daughter. I do not know what sickly individual has coughed and spluttered on a product I have just picked up. Also I could be inhaling someone’s airborne germs having a greater risk on contracting the disease and then bringing it home.
I am not alone when it comes to people who cannot shop instore there are many disabled people in the UK 13.9 million disabled people to be exact but who’s counting: https://www.scope.org.uk/media/disability-facts-figures/ and not every one is clinically vulnerable as listed in the 6 points the government have laid out, some people cannot walk or lift/carry large shopping orders and some have mental illness issues and cannot shop for themselves. So for Tesco to send an email saying the Government have given a list of 110,000 vulnerable people what does that mean exactly?, I know I cited a guide from the Government website earlier but is it not the the case that every one is vulnerable? It does not mention the elderly, disabled, mental health patients and domestic abuse victims and not everyone has been diagnosed with underlying conditions as men more so than women do not like visiting their GPs hence that is why more men than women are dying from the Coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic because of this reason and not being diagnosed for any underlying problems. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/07/coronavirus-hits-men-harder-evidence-risk
All people healthy and disabled are vulnerable because of cross contamination.
The less you spend outside your own home the better, as this is called “herd immunisation”.
The whole point of isolation is to stay indoors to try to contain the virus. People may be carriers of the disease and may not even know they are infected. It takes one person to infect 59,000 people in a snowball effect experts believe: https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-vs-flu-social-distancing-infections-spread-explainer-video-2020-3?r=US&IR=T
So here is my email I sent to Tesco yesterday:
….and this is their reply in an email that states they cannot reply to emails
and that I should try phoning customer service where they do not mention there is an autoresponder and no one is answering calls.
But the person replied to me (Name Omitted) by email today even though I emailed Tesco yesterday, so this was not an auto responder email as I would have had it instantaneously yesterday. So she could have answered my question, but chose not to. Therefore I have had to resort to other means to get my point across.
I will put it to the test when I send another email today with a link to this post and see if she responds, we will then see if this is just an autoresponder and if my blog post gets noticed. I will also be contacting the CEO of Tesco on Linkedin so that he can respond directly to me.
Do not brush customers off, you need them for the future.
Cross contamination is my main priority and concern. I am not saying this for myself, I am saying this for all the population of the UK on the whole, if you have a person who is infected and comes into the store showing no signs but picks things up and perhaps puts them back, you are automatically cross contaminating. Self service baskets will be cross contaminated, the area where you put your food down in checkout will get cross contaminated, your food/produce will be cross contaminated and the carrier bags will also be cross contaminated.
Furthermore coughing spreads droplets as far as six metres, and sneezing as much as eight metres. These droplets stay suspended in the air for up to 10 minutes. So by having the “two metre rule” is basically useless. https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/how-far-do-coughs-and-sneezes-travel/
Apparantly there is a right way to cough and sneeze and I beg to differ, remember I am the OCD expert here. As the photo suggests one should cough and sneeze into the crease of their elbow or back to their hand.
But imagine the scenario unfolding you have just sneezed into the crease of your elbow, not every one is going to have a bare arm thats No: 1, No: 2, germs can live on garments for several hours: Robert Amler, dean of the School of Health Sciences and Practice at New York Medical College and a former CDC chief medical officer, told HuffPost that the duration of the virus depends on the fabric, as some materials are more porous than others. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/how-long-coronavirus-live-clothing-washing
By sneezing or coughing into an elbow that is not bare and cannot be immediately washed one is potentially cross contaminating, as someone can easly touch your arm, even you unwittingly can touch yourself without thinking, as what occured an hour ago may not neccessarily be still be playing on ones mind to erradicate an hour later. If say you are wearing a coat and you have sneezed or coughed into the crease of the elbow and you take it off and lay it next to another coat owned by another person you have just cross contaminated. You could perhaps throw the coat over an armchair – cross contaminating the arm chair. Only an OCD person can teach you this.
Hence staff that have been screened to be healthy should be the ONLY people that are in the store.
By eliminating the consumer from entering the store, one potentially is containing the virus and flattening the curve. By allowing the customer to shop freely one is potentially opening a can of worms.
I will update on the post as and when I get more news.
Update 14/04/2020
On top of the fact there are no deliveries and one cannot contact the store by email or phone for love or money, without resorting to physically having to visit a store and queue to make a complaint, I am on the verge of screaming right now as I have only noticed 2 transactions going out of my account for the same amount of money.
At the time of updating my post earlier today I had not heard back from my email test the other day as I mentioned in my post at the beginning to see if in fact they actually do send out autoresponders or not and have sent another email today. However a few moments ago I received an email once again saying they do not respond to emails and prompted me to go to their online support FAQ, which frankly is no good to me as I need to speak with a human.
I have already showed this post to my MP Jo Stevens and Tesco via their email but have held off contacting the CEO until today and am curious how they will respond to this today if at all.
You can see the screenshot of the email content below:
I do not know what the maximum amount of transactions one can spend on self service but if it is say £40 and that went out twice the customer would have had £80 leave their account instead of £40. Imagine if this an elderly person how this would effect them and the stress it would cause.
The icing on the cake the contactless option obviously did not work forcing you to touch the keypad which is defeating the object of containing the virus.
Furthermore my daughter went out to do a shop yesterday thinking she was helping me as I could not go as I have a business to run and considering despite her disability, she was taking a risk having to go in-store let alone have to touch the keypad lol & omg….Under normal circumstances I do all the shopping but the one time my daughter went out she got charged twice and she risked her health at the same time by doing so.
I am now, shall we say very angry and still no closer to resolving the issues I am facing so only God knows what other people are facing…….
People are blaming the coronavirus covid-19 for just about everything that is going wrong with the way businesses are run, Coronavirus Covid-19 does not affect common sense to employ call handlers and online chat support workers.
My business is running smoothly so a corporate giant such as Tesco should not have a problem, yet they do.
This is now directed for the CEO of Tesco and any other Supermarket that has not got their act together !!!!
UK are their own worst enemies the moment they see snow the country comes to a grinding halt and now that we are faced with the pandemic all hell has broke loose and everyone is running around like headless chickens and blaming covid-19 for their bad management skills. In business you should have a Plan A, a Plan B and even a Plan C. Yet for some reason it seems as everyone is not organised, yet they will try to defend themselves by saying that they are when clearly they are not.
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