Teen beauty spot drinkers are ramblers, not rebels
- Dave Burrows
Letter: Supermarket till errors Asda be a cause of concern
Friday 10th June 2011, 6:00AM BST.
Letter: A few years ago my wife went shopping at Asda in Shrewsbury with a friend who was a mathematical genius.
As my wife put the items in the basket, she calculated the price in her head and when she went to the till the till price was not the same as her friend had calculated.
They had overcharged by the princely sum of 2p and this mistake was verified by the till receipt, my wife did not want to complain.
However her friend said that she ought to because, on a greater scale, if 500 customers were all overcharged by 2p each in one hour then Asda would be making £10 an hour over and above their profit margin, which equals approximately £120 every day.
Furthermore, it might not be fair to point the finger at Asda alone.
Some of the other supermarkets could possibly be doing the same, making them thousands of pounds profit each week throughout their store chains.
This goes to show that our dependence on machines can be flawed.
Maybe mental arithmetic should be taught in schools once again.
Trevor Mytton
Shrewsbury
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I think I would trust a machine over anyone claiming to be a “mathematical genius” due to being able to simply add up…
Which is completely different to trusting a supermarket controlling a machine…
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You’re missing a not very clever pun. Asda replacing ‘has to’
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I think that the Govt should put an immediate stop on all supermarket trading until this is investigated.
Get a life.
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A simple error when you’re carrying tens of thousands of product lines. The price printed on the shelf edge label is not the same as the price in the database, which the checkout references. It’s possible that some were higher and some were lower, but the net difference was +2p. It’s likely that other baskets have a -2p difference and it all balances out in the end.
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“Supermarket till errors Asda be a cause of concern.”
Or maybe grammar should be taught in schools again – or am I missing a very witty pun?
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The latter.
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1) this was years ago
2) it propbably was a one off, and if it was current has stopped
is this the best we can do, wars going on, people dying, and you are complaining about 2p overcharge years ago?
you have a choice of not purchasing things!
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I use any supermarket and the one at the moment is Tesco in welshpool ,however I have used asda in Shrewsbury and was short changed twice to the sum of £10 both were addressed when it occurred as I like many add up as I go around.The biggest problem I find is offers displayed and not adhered to when you get to the till this happens a lot more in the shops such as coop and nisa. The writer has got a point and the “get a life” lot are a little harsh. I worked as a milkman for 9 months between jobs and many of my customers were from the so called middle/upper class group due to the area I delivered to and I can assure you if I over charged any of them by so much as a penny, an honest mistake as I accept people make mistakes, they would make it clear to me and make a very big issue out of it the odd one accused me of ripping them off for 1p and they would even contact the dairy to complain about being over charged even though it was rectified on the door step.I also would add however we do have many in our general public population who think anyone involved in shop work or collecting money off them is out to rip them off
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I used to shop in Asda in Shrewsbury. Asda payed out a nice £2 if they made an error in the bill so I was encouraged to check my bill just in case. To my horror ( and delight in getting the £2) I found that errors where made alarmingly regularly and ALWAYS in Asdas favour.
I became quite a regular at help desk.Asda have now stopped the £2 apology payment. My last complaint was being overcharged 50p on a tub of marge, I complained and reported it to the help desk, next day I was overchrged again for exacly the same product which I went to buy for a friend.
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Well stop shopping in this store I suffered the same problem many times and now I do not step foot in the store, you fiddle them out of a few pence and you are in court, but they can and do regularly fleece their customers.
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What about all the times that Asda undercharge by 2p? It’s just as likely to happen.
More of a concern to me is regular pricing errors that Tesco make. A recent one being a ticket on a shelf in Tesco Madeley which said £1.79 each, or 3 for £7.00. There is a Facebook page dedicated to similar Tesco oversights.
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my husband was in Tesco Madeley today and was going to buy 2 meat pies until he saw the special offer label 58p each or 2 for £1.50
he refused to buy them lol
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‘Maybe mental arithmetic should be taught in schools once again’
Typical of the sort of comment I would expect from a Daily Mail reading ‘anti everything new’ type of person. Is that you Trevor?
Where did you get the idea that children aren’t taught mental arithnetic at school? They call it ‘Mental Maths’ these days – but it’s the same thing!
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Whenever I read “Typical of the sort of comment I would expect from a Daily Mail reading…”
I stop reading because I realise they have nothing of value to say, and are typical of those weird people who stand in the street and rant at any passerby they see.
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I take the point that the ‘typical Daily Mail reader’ label can be tiresome at times ; it’s basically a fairly lazy reaction which means ‘I’m a liberal and you’re saying something I find illiberal’. I say this, by the way, as someone who can’t stand the Mail either!
But I do think it’s fair enough for Peter to pick up on that sentence from the letter, which is making a pretty silly, probably uninformed assumption about what is and isn’t taught in schools these days.
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Actually, might now take that first paragraph back. I’ve just been reading a Mail article on a totally separate issue and the (mis)use of statistics to peddle a hate agenda has me stunned.
Anybody who unquestioningly believes such nonsense deserves to have a derogatory label pinned on them.
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I get annoyed when I have had to queue at the help desk at either supermarket in order to rectify their error and my loss which has happened quite frequently.
I hate that Sainsbury however charge a good deal more for not any better goods then expects you to queue for ages in order to pay for them. At least in Asda if there are any queues, all staff are till trained and will be sent to the checkouts.
I also resent the fact that if you buy a lot of shopping you have to queue whereas if you just buy just a bit you can use the self serve checkouts.
This discriminates against the bigger and more lucrative customer surely?
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I nearly died of shock. Trevor Mytton not writing about the Law of God in the letters pages of the Shropshire Star?
Maybe he’ll follow up with how Asda are a tool of satan?
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Beware citing Walmart’s name in vain…
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So what is the moral to this story then?????
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SIMPLE the people who say it does not matter from my experience are the first to complain very loudly when they are short changed be it 1p-£5.So to avoid joining them just add up as you go round and inspect your till receipt before you leave.
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A lot of people seem to think it is ok to be shortchanged and not a big issue. It is either a computer error which could just as easily overcharge by £20 or £200 or it is fraud.
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When at school I had a job delivering groceries to customers houses on a large bike with a larger basket in the front in the middle 1950s, before supermarkets came.The customers used to come into the shop with their order in a book. A lady named Joyce made the orders up with the prices next to the items. in those days you had £-s-p.She used to add the order up like lightning, and the same could be said about the ladies who were behind the bar in the Pub. Could the youngsters do it today, they seem to be relying to much on calculators. I remember going into a motor vehicle parts shop the item was £2 plus vat at 17.5% the lad said My mate is using the calculator he won’t be a minute, when I said the vat was 35p he was amazed and still checked it out on the calculator.
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And…?
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I shopped in ASDA [for which they now owe me a fee for advertising their name] last week and my shopping cam to £19.98. I gave the assistant £20. When she gave me 2 pence change I said ‘keep it’, ‘don’t worry about it’. Imagine my horror when I awoke to this report. How could she have kept it probably knowing that they were already over charging me by 2 pence. Make me sick this greed. I could be 4 pence better off now. I’m going to seek legal advice.
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Compare;
“Maybe mental arithmetic should be taught in schools once again.”
Trevor Mytton June 2011
with….
“Doing sums is not my forte”
Trevor Mytton July 2007
Someone obviously wasn’t paying attention in class.
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Port Hill Boy, And? That is the difference between then and now in education.
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I spot another difference too.
Nowadays children would learn not to try to extrapolate an entire trend from a single instance.
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Here’s another difference. 500 years ago, most British children’s education would have based on agrarian needs. But because of innovation and technology, we are able to feed ourselves without committing the majority of labour to the fields.
Society moves on, and so to should the focus of education. Why spend valuable time in the classroom to learning things that subsequent advances have made redundant?
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Have u considered LOOKING at what u buy + CHECKING The prices before + while they r scanned into the till (or at least check the receipt after?)
Whenever this has happened to me + I questioned it either on the spot, or over the phone from home ASDA has ALWAYS been VERY helpful + put things right there + then or when I was next in store!!! A couple of times I’ve even received a giftcard as an apology!!!
So u do the math + don’t whinge about it afterwards!!!
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i have not been over charged in asda but tesco overcharged me at christmas by a whopping £120.00 and what do customer services say are you sure an then to top things off even more there is out of dates and what do tesco say about this what do you expect in a store this size totally not exceptable but asda never had any problems only tesco
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