Getting the overwhelming impression that Tesco are on a slow spiral downwards. Low quality, expensive food (most fresh food now has a use-by date only a day or two in the future); confusing store layouts; non-grocery goods of truly terrible quality; and fuel that’s 3p/litre more expensive than the BP garage down the road.

People scathe about Asda and Lidl / Aldi etc, but shopping there is a breath of fresh air compared to Tesco. It’s also interesting that Tesco is rarely on sites like HotUKDeals, and when they are the deals are rarely national.

I believe they’ve suffered quite a large drop in profits this year – well, these are probably some of the reasons why.

Thoughts?

Caveat: They also knocked down my local pub and changed it into a Tesco Express, where the security guard follows me around despite me using it several times a week for over a year, which doesn’t help my opinion of them.

Sainsburys will go a long time before the Tesco empire, due to overpricing food, poor quality cleaning, and just looks run down,or the ones i go into occasionly.

But then aldi and lidl look at times as if theyve had a food riot, stuff just thrown around, but then again the mangers do man the tills, and the staff are extremely fast.

Caveat: They also knocked down my local pub and changed it into a Tesco Express where the security guard follows me around despite me using it several times a week for over a year which doesn’t help my opinion of them.

Just stop wearing lycra when shopping

I believe they’ve suffered quite a large drop in profits this year

couldnt cut it in the US.

They have pulled in the purse strings massively this year, hardly any new stores being built, maint.costs cut dramatically and they have had two massive distribtions centres built down south last year that they are not occuping.

I believe they’ve suffered quite a large drop in profits this year

….but still made a quite handsome amount of money. They’re not gonna disappear anytime soon.
Shareholders etc may not like the drop in profit/dividend, but tesco are still a cash rich company.

Whole Trout in Tesco with guts over £3.40 in Asda whole trout gutted £1.60 so Tesco’s are ripping us off big time. Hate the place, and I hate how they are one of the biggest supermarket responsible for all the unhealthy processed food thats passed on to us consumers thats full of salt sugar and water among lots more crap.

I hope they go bust. They have ridden rough shod over everyone from local high streets, communities, smaller retailers, suppliers (esp farmers, planning authorities and contributed sod all to society. All their actions were justified by Terry Leahy as they were ‘helping consumers’ but IMO that is just self serving tosh. It deserves to fold I think.

Sainsburys and Waitrose have a much better attitude to the rest of us.

Will Comet be still here in 20 years – I wonder if anyone asked that in 1992?

But if you don’t like Tesco’s, why shop there? 🙄

They’ll die a death…. well maybe not a death but there popularity is on the wane and that can only be a good thing , every store/chain has it cycles of economic relevance to the public and Tesco is on the downward slope, bout bloody time.

In my small rural town we only have a Tesco express and i’m constantly getting on the managers tits by opening up the pre-packaged fruit n’ veg (no other veg store/shop in the town) and only buying what i want by weight or amount alone, why should i have to pay extra for prepackaged stuff just so Tesco can make more profit?, they used to offer loose fruit n’ veg but recently moved over to prepackaged only and i also shop using my crumpler messenger bag as when it feels quite full or heavy i know that’s enough for this trip and i can cope wi it on my bike for the journey home rather than hang carrier bags on my handlebars – this really **** them off as they consider i am stealing stuff all the time as i place it in my bag and close the lid, the first few times i did it the manager/store detectives asked to see inside my bag and i allowed them as they have to learn that not everyone should be placed under suspicion, now if i’m asked i tell them to “f-off, i’m just doing my shopping”, My gran used to shop in exactly the same way when i helped her as a kid and she was never approached or treated like a thief so why should i be?.

Perhaps i should have scored higher than 12 in the “are you a psychopath thread”?

Have I told you about the French ladies underwear ad’s I get on STW!

Oh! Tesco, in 20 years? I doubt I’ll be around to worry about that!

However, Tesco do a great order online and deliver to France service. Great for Marmite, Brown Sauce, tea bags, and the like.

SB 🙂

New store opened in Windes not long before Christmas and competing with existing Morrisons and Asda. My OH went and would not stop telling me how rubbish it was which I couldn’t understand. I went just before Christmas to get a few last bits with her and was shocked how utterly sh1te it is considering the land it has used and the huge number of parking spaces.

Poor selection of everything compared to Asda and Morrisons, hardly any beer, crap meat selection below par fresh produce section, no bakery, no deli and considering it was literally before Christmas no Quality Street or chocky bickies.

Sainsburys will go a long time before the Tesco empire, due to overpricing food, poor quality cleaning, and just looks run down,or the ones i go into occasionly.

Went to a Sainsburys for the first time in ages this week. I was a bit suprised at how slightly grotty it was, and the pretty poor selection of fresh veg – though saw some nice looking sausages. Certainly didn’t seem the step up the ladder compared to Tescos that I imagine a section of Sainsburys demographic believe it to be.

You gran had a crumpler messenger bag somafunk? Respect 😀

Whilst the likes of Tesco put temptation in front of the shopper by building their stores everywhere, the demise of smaller ‘High Street’ stores is purely down to us, the shopper, not using them in favour of the supermarket chains 😥

Yeah…her 1970’s crumpler style messages bag had wheels on the bottom, grab handle on the top and a mock tan leather exterior with a rather fetching tarten interior, quite a boxy construction but all the hipsters will be using them next year once i carry out my faux marketing campaign.

😀

opening up the pre-packaged fruit n’ veg (no other veg store/shop in the town) and only buying what i want by weight or amount alone, why should i have to pay extra for prepackaged stuff just so Tesco can make more profit?, they used to offer loose fruit n’ veg but recently moved over to prepackaged only

Is that a made up anecdote?

Because if they don’t sell loose fruit and veg anymore, how do they manage to price it up when you take 12 sprouts out of a bag ?

When I was a nipper Tesco was budget/down market, to the extent that if you wanted to take pish out off someone you would infer that their trainers were Tesco specials.

Hope not , it does my head in

Too much crap not enough shop

When you go to the usa and see walmart you realise that shops in the uk need to stick to getting the grocerys right first.

I use aldi for my shopping , least the fruit and veg are fresh

There is still weigh scales on the 3 checkouts, small galloway town – very small old store, lived here pretty much all my adult life and yeah it does annoy them but i’m not the only person to do this since the managers experiment started a few weeks ago and the till operators are folk i’ve known for 20+years and it was Carol (someone i know on checkout) who mentioned to me about them still receiving the price cards and updates for loose fruit n’ veg so i thought why not?.

Will Tesco be about in 20 years- probably, will they be as profitable as they have been in the last 20 years- no never, although getting rid of Fresh and Easy is a step in the right direction.

how do they manage to price it up when you take 12 sprouts out of a bag

Self service? I doubt they bother to customise the options menu for each store?

The one near me is a grotty whole, but then it was under the previous brand/owner as its a student store basically. I generally shop at co-op, or sainsbury as when you can only carry a small amount in your pannier going all the way out to Asda etc. dosnt save any money, all the deals are for multi-buys so big id have to take the trailer and just eat crisps for a month etc.

Thats the main thing that annoys me about supermarkets, you need to be buying massive amounts of food/stuff just to get a deal. Im only 1 person and have a tiny kitchen! i cant store that much meat/crisps/toilet roll etc. discrimination it is i tell thee!!

“f-off, i’m just doing my shopping”

So where are you going to shop when they ban you? Sounds like you are trying to shoot yourself in the foot.

Whole Trout in Tesco with guts over £3.40 in Asda whole trout gutted £1.60

Depends on the Trout, Asda stuff might just be in need of shifting quick.

Prefer Morrisons these days, cant stand ASDA. The local one is a scuzzy cathedral of tink.

I miss Waitrose

I use aldi for my shopping , least the fruit and veg are fresh

This.

Sainsbury and aldi right next to each other in my town, I get most stuff from aldi, which is brilliant.

3rd largest retailer in the world, historically best margins of any uk operator, massive growth potential in SE Asia.
The us investment was a bit unlucky in it’s timing but generally a well run business. I reckon they are here for the duration.

Buffett seems to think so as well, he has a pretty big investment.

If a fish is twice as much in Tesco as in Asda, that probably just means Asda got a good deal on a particular batch of fish. Or they are running a loss leader.

It’s a lot more complicated than you think.

Anyway – all supermarket stores vary a lot. I know scruffy Tescos and nice ones, I know scruffy Sainsburys and nice ones. I only know scruffy Asdas though, and I only know nice Waitroses 🙂

Every time I’ve been our Lidl it’s been like going back in time to Saverite when I was a kid. Piles of cardboard boxes containing nasty fizzy drinks, crappy clothing and odd household items, a tiny fridge at one with no milk in it, a few crates of moldy veg at the front and one utterly demoralised checkout person serving a queue of 10 people. Grim.

Having moaned about Asda though, it has some good points. The fruit and veg is decent and there’s more local produce there than most places.

IT depends where you live you twonks. In the Portsmouth area the Tescos are great. Sainsburys is run by overzealous stuck up floor managers, is dirty and generally has poor quality food. The asdas are okay but very busy with chavs and generally sell poor quality stuff that i want…occasionally have good fruit/veg though. A new morrisons opened near me which is fantastic, the old one though is shit.

Tescos are going nowhere. Their business is evolving, just look at the acquisitions they’ve made in the digital sector. In 20 years their model will be very different from what it is today.

My local Tesco Extra is great. My Sainsbury’s, however, has kept diligently to it’s apparent plan of a a slow and steady decline.

Nah, i don’t consider it shooting myself in the foot, i consider it a common courtesy that i should be allowed to shop at my leisure without needless harassment and with a suitable goods carrier that works for my self and my situation, i see retired folk doing their shopping with the use of their own shopping basket or granny trolley and they don’t get abused?, why should i or anyone else under retirement age get abused just because they do not use the provided and sanctioned receptacle?.

He wouldn’t dare ban me or ask me to leave anyway, i’d drop him wi a head butt to his nose if he ever tried….Dammit!….there goes my psychopathic tendencies again……. 😉

Stoke, sainsburys, cafe ran out of some of the menu items in the cafe, so i offered to get it from the shop floor, told i couldnt do that as the cafe food was diferent from the storefood, and was delivered by a man in a van from another store.

Sainsburys, near here, they refused to take my dads saving stamps for food, because he wasnt with me, and i didnt look the sort of person to use saving stamps.

Sainsburys again, charge me 60 quid on my card for fuel instead of a tenner, due to the dozy girl being more intrested in chatting about their night out , than actually being able to press the correct buttons.

our local coop have people who really shouldn’t be serving food 😯
asda’s further away & alreet but full a chavs. luckily its 24hr & a dina sleep much 🙂

That wasn’t my point, if you only have one shop in your town then making a nuisance of yourself probably isn’t a good idea. If you told me or any of my staff to f-off then you would be banned even if you had been shopping there everyday for fifty years. Shop staff shouldn’t have to put up with people like you.

But then I doubt any of your story is actually true anyway so whatever.

I hope so. I think Tesco is great. Always clean, tidy, full shelf’s. The food’s is fine, but then I’m not a foodie.
Petrol prices changes with location and the competition, but that’s capitalism.

I cant stand tesco so dont shop there, its like asda but with just 20% less scruffy special people getting in the way.

Sainsburys is a nicer shopping exerience IMO but not worth the extra and the overall winner is Aldi for ease and quality. I still stand by the fact that a supermarket that feeds over 30% of the population cannot hold the highest standards, it CANT, FACT!
Aldi on the otherhand uses the same manufacturers as other supermarkets but choses one good item that is the best they can produce for a competitive price and sells that, who needs an aisle of baked beans when they supply one type what works!

The one benefit with Tesco/Sains et al is that the self scan checkouts still dont recognise weights from items from the deli counter, so 1kg of fillet steak can easily be mistaken as one slice of corned beef!

Such a shame the meat in supermarkets is crap compared to the local butchers!

Nae worries brodie, you don’t know me, i don’t know you – whatever….it’s a perfectly reasonable conclusion.

Like i said the shop staff are great, but new store manager who’s dropped in is a little weegie prick who’s pissed everyone off wi his ideas and how he thinks the store/staff should work, staff hate him and carol’s nicknamed him “ballsack”, he’ll not last long anyway as we’ve had a succession of store managers over the past few years and then we can all get back to normal duty as before.

M&S in Dumfries don’t mind me using my Crumpler bag at all, even got a “good idea” from the security guard on the door when i asked him if he minded.

most fresh food now has a use-by date only a day or two in the future.

That’s because people want out of season food which is fresh, but don’t want any pesticides or preservatives involved. What’s the alternative here? Can’t shink-wrap it remember, people complain about the packaging.

Is that a made up anecdote?

Yeah, it’s mostly made up by Rhod Gilbert.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwK9aEpaG_o[/video]

Sainsburys again, charge me 60 quid on my card for fuel instead of a tenner, due to the dozy girl being more intrested in chatting about their night out , than actually being able to press the correct buttons.

Yet you were paying rapt attention and failed to notice the amount was wrong before entering your PIN?

I feel for you all.
We’ve got a corner shop called ‘Morrisons’ or something, a farm shop 500 yards away that sells proper (& I mean proper) fresh produce cheaper than the corner shop, a proper butchers & a proper greengrocer/deli. Neither Morrisons, Asda, Tesco or Sainsburys come close to our local stuff which TBH isn’t much (if any) dearer.

Anyone remember safeway or kwiksave ?? Or even somerfield!!!!! Most will go under imo i used to work for the uks biggest and most profitable social housing partnership, they went belly and had a few billion quid order book on the go!!! Nowt is safe, n for the record asda n lidil ftw!!! Or farmfoods if i cba!!!!

M&S in Dumfries don’t mind me using my Crumpler bag at all, even got a “good idea” from the security guard on the door when i asked him if he minded.

If you did that in M&S why didn’t you do the same in Tesco ?

Unless of course you actually wanted them to think you were stealing and follow you around so you could play the victim and moan about it 🙄

(Or unless bits of the story are made up of course)

I thought all you IT boys complained about locally owned shops ripping people off and constantly said that tescos was the only righteous place to shop?
I’m confused. Have you suddenly changed your minds?