I told you I liked a bargain! Tesco offered to redeem their clubcard vouchers for double their face value on toys, clothes, christmas items and some electrical goods if presented by Sunday 5 December. I was very pleased with the toys I bought for you know who. However, according to a Daily Mail article of 7/12/10* it seems some customers were disappointed because of a last minute rush which caused store queues and the website to crash. So Customer Service have been inundated. A massive organisation like Tesco will get over this blip on this occasion. However, there are other examples of the consequences of a very attractive promotion causing near bankruptcy to a firm. The most famous was the Hoover free flights promotion way back in 1992 as per this BBC article. If you can think of any examples of promotions backfiring due to higher than expected demand, please share via the comments and/or in class.
Tesco customers swamp store’s call centres as Clubcard double-your-points Christmas promotion turns ‘into chaos’
Huge queues of frustrated shoppers at shops
Website could not cope with demand
Complaining customers causes phone line meltdown
Angry Tesco customers have swamped the store’s website and call centres with complaints over the way a Christmas loyalty card promotion was handled.
The Big Christmas Exchange deal offered to double the value of points and vouchers held on the Clubcards used by millions of customers.
Customers had until Sunday to claim the double-value vouchers offering big savings on products such as toys, clothes, champagne and the new Samsung Galaxy tablet computer.
Initially, thousands of people faced long queues in stores in order to convert their Clubcard points to vouchers.
Many gave up waiting and went to the store’s website to do the same, only to find it could not cope with the number of people trying to log on.
Last night, upset customers complained to the store’s call centres with the result that many people found it impossible to get through.
Tesco appears to have been caught out by the level of interest in the deal.
The promotion allowed every £5 in Clubcard vouchers to be exchanged for a £10 rewards token to spend on toys, clothing, baby and toddler products, glasses, selected electricals, and beauty products.
Every £10 in vouchers could be swapped for a £20 rewards token to spend on artificial Christmas trees and Christmas lights, Finest wine and champagne, beds, DIY, computers and phones.
Today consumer internet forums were inundated with complaints from Tesco customers who said they had been let down.
One told the moneysavingexpert.com forum: ‘System is so slow – keeps crashing.
‘Decided to purchase a magazine subscription out of my tokens. Every time I add a token it takes an age then says: “We were unable to fulfil your request”.’
Another complained: ‘Tried to exchange Tesco vouchers yesterday [Saturday] for Rewards Tokens. Awful, sooooo slow that I gave up in the early hours.
‘Set aside items to try again today but the site has crashed. Sent them a disappointed email and asked if the time limit was being extended to compensate. There will be a lot of other people in the same position.’
Tesco said: ‘We experienced a huge last-minute rush over the weekend.
‘This meant that some customers were not able to exchange their vouchers or had problems with the process, and missed the deadline of 5th December.
‘We are doing everything we can at our customer service centres to help those customers affected.’
