Tesco up minimum spend for online shopping

[Michael Browne]

Tesco are seemingly intent on annoying absolutely everyone in the UK at the moment.

 

So what are they up to now? Well, they’ve just announced that, from 23rd July 2015, the minimum basket spend for those of you who shop online for groceries, will change from £25 to £40.

 

Of course, you can still spend below that amount, but if you do, you’ll find yourself paying the £4 surcharge.

 

http://www.bitterwallet.com/tesco-up-minimum-spend-for-online-shopping/86484

[SabreSheep]

To be fair other companies are trialling the same. Asda within the M25 for example.

 

It is also not to be unexpected. It is also going to apply to Click and Collect services as well.

 

On average the cost to the store (Where the Shopping comes from a public serving store) is averaging £25 per Order

This is to cover the costs of warehousing, picking the order, back office staff, warehouse staff, loaders, call center, van purchase and hire, diesel, drivers etc etc

 

Whilst Online shopping is the fastest growing sector in retail, it also in most cases runs at a LOSS and is subsidised by in-store sales.

 

I fully expect the others to follow suit and delivery charges to start rising. The business model will change to make it profitable and unfortunately the others will follow suit. ONLY Ocado have managed to make profit our of their home delivery operation, and the last I heard that was only for 2 years!

[SabreSheep]

Also from the site you listed yourself

 

http://www.bitterwallet.com/no-more-click-collect-at-john-lewis-under-30/86329

[ismylife]

There is more to this than just increasing the minimum spend - it's really quite something else.

 

Before all this went up, they had an offer to pay up front for a year's delivery at half price, as long as your delivery day was Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. So for £15, that seemed pretty good and would work for me.

 

So, they then put the minimum spend up, and that means I stopped doing a weekly shop because, being on my own, there was not a lot that I could keep ordering that I wanted for £40 every week.

 

BUT - Now I've just found out something even more sneaky. First, I got an order of just under £43 guide price. Used a clubcard voucher as part payment bringing it down to £31.

 

Went to pay and fortunately the system went wrong because when I looked, it was going to charge me £44.99!

 

I had a very irate convo because the operative couldn't see what I was talking about and eventually a manager told me that because I'd paid in part with a clubcard voucher, I was being charged as if I had not got the full £40 of goods in my basket!!

 

So, I go back, remove the voucher and then end up with around £41 of goods in my basket and go to pay again, only to discover (and NOWHERE on the screen on checkout did it say this) that I was still going to be charged £2.50 delivery!

 

Why? Well, the only thing I can think of is it's because Tesco may just manage to deliver my apples (weighed price) for less than the guide price and that may bring my basket down to less than the £40 I had ordered but that still doesn't make sense - but I was going to be charged for delivery!

 

So, it's a double whammy to be very aware of and which Tesco do NOT advise customers of before actually going to make the payment - at the Verified by Visa page is the first you see the altered amount in very tiny font.

[ismylife]

I have now received information by email that the same advice given to me by three separate previous CS reps (one by email), including one supervisor was totally inaccurate and not true at all.

 

I am amazed and staggered that so many people could have got it wrong.

 

They still cannot explain why it seemed I was being potentially charged a totally different amount to anything that added up in the basket, with or without vouchers but it is not true that if using a voucher takes you to under the £40 final guide price amount you will be charged the £4 minimum spend.

[citizenB]

Thank you for the clarification ismylife