J Sainsbury plc - London

Mark N.

Have you ever wondered how Sainsbury's make such a profit? Here's how, by selling drastically underweight food.
Check out these packs of Smoked Salmon trimmings. There's no excuse for not getting the correct weight, yet I've never had a single pack meet the 100g stated. Worst was 80g. There's one at 85g, 15% underweight, which is the worst kind of shrinkflation. Underhand and plain deception. It's also illegal, but Sainsbury's don't care about their customers, only their shareholders.
Just in case you think it's my scales, check out the picture of the 90g bar of chocolate at 91g, so my scales read over, not under.

Timotei O.

It is ridiculous how your loyal Nectar Card holders sometimes get offers on very specific products - e.g. ”Sainsbury's British Whole Milk 2.27L (4 pint)” [SKU 181402] - but if the store in question doesn't have stock of that particular item at that time but they have for example got stock of an almost identical product right down to the same brand, size, and even price - e.g. "Sainsbury's British Semi Skimmed Milk 2.27L (4 pint)" [SKU 357937] - not even customer services online let alone managers in stores are apparently allowed to still add / honour those points, even if it has to be done manually (which I know is possible).  Really does make me question why I spend so much money at Sainsbury's each year when they have backwards policies like this, which in the long run can hurt the Sainsbury's brand image in the eyes of customers e.g. if they tell family or friends either online or in person.

Instead, for products such as your own brand milks, Sainsbury's should just make the offer available on any 'standard' Sainsbury's 2.27L (4 pint) milk; this would be similar to how I sometimes get offers on things like bonus points for "Any Jam, Honey, or Preserve - Includes marmalade, chocolate spread, peanut butter and curd".  Or alternatively just allow customer services online or managers in store to use their own discretion when it comes to something like this, even if customers obviously have to actually make the alternative purchase first and queue up at the Customer Service Desk in store afterwards, with the receipt as proof of purchase and show the offer live and added ("Saved") on their account on their phone.

Jeanette H.

My advice to anyone considering shopping with Sainsbury's, is don't!

When a business thinks sending a substitute costing £202 for an item costing £62 is OK, there is something sadly wrong. Now I have to wait for my refund and constantly monitor my finances until it is processed. As for calling Customer Care, I wouldn't bother because they don't. All they do is read from a script. Just try to speak to a manager, you can't.

RDRCK E.

This is all in relevance to you all appalling customer service lines and your Hayes store who dont seem to want to take anything seriously... so hopefully posting it here will help get the attention needed!

**Update** October 23

Today (30/10/23) I placed a delivery from the store to be sent to me same day between hours of 6-7pm and once again everything was confirmed on to get an email at 2pm telling me “due to an unforeseen circumstance my delivery cannot be sent out” another poor example of service! Called through to the number provided and the level of service continues to horrify, not only was the person on the phone sarcastic! They literally sounded like a robot on repeat apologising for the inconvenience with no viable solution to my problem! I was offered £5 compensation for my troubles which frankly is an INSULT considering you charge people 6.50£ for delivery! This was later upped to 15£ but still pretty insulting considering I have to go out of my way once again to rectify your companies lack of going the extra mile! I asked to speak to a manager twice, to be told they are not available, but that they would contact me in 15 minutes!

Considering the profits you make as an organisation the way you treat your customers is appalling! If it wasn’t for you being part of the avoid scheme I would literally shop elsewhere!

**previous visit**

I’m not one to post on supermarkets but given expected service levels in today’s world I couldn’t help but share my experience. I am a person of convenience and I do utilise technology to my advantage to make my life easy especially where shops offer a click and collect or delivery service. So I thought why not give it a go… placed order day before for a 7-8am collection next day.
Turned up to the store 10 minutes before opening and I was the second to be served at customer service. Lady called through to the “experts” to get my order stating it will take “a few minutes”… 5 mins of waiting I informed her I will wonder off to check the Home department as I waited… came back 5 mins later, still nothing. Only to find I was approached by another representative asking me for my name once again. Asked if it had been picked, to which he responded “yes”… half an hour into 7am and I am still hovering at customer service.
For a service which you charge £4.50 and then 50p if you spend more than a certain amount this is appealing, as a person who appreciates their time, I would of picked this myself in less time without the annoyance of waiting around twiddling my thumbs. If you are not able to accommodate a 7am collection, why in earth offer it! This was a very bad experience and not convenient at all! Absolute waste of my time, and what a waste of resource!

I’ve now used two of the services you provide and in the space of 9 months you’ve let me down on both occasions! If your company especially this store is that incompetent at delivering on customer paid for services, then you should not really be offering them!

Sarah H.

Have to request VAT receipts via customer services & they don't get sent for 15 days - sometimes not at all and we have to request them again. Please make VAT receipts available online if you want to retain business customers.

C M.

I made contact via postal mail with the Chairman Mr Scicluna, Chief Executive Mr Roberts and Head of HR Miss Kapilashrami, in regards to appalling phone customer service that started from July 27th 2023. The correspondence was sent recorded delivery so they all received the letters. In addition, I put my email address on it for further contact.
I sent a formal complaint to an incident in one of companies local supermarkets.
I have not received any acknowledgement of the treatment I received from their phone team, although there was an acknowledgement from the local supermarket of the incident. I felt/feel dismissed and the behaviour was abusive from the customer service team. At one point they did not even forward my complaint to the relevant parties and the email address to make a complaint, did not work.
This may be the acceptable culture of being treated with discrimination, as not even an apology has been extended to how the phone team treated me. Thus I will be shopping elsewhere.

Daniel S.

The home delivery service has become a hideous embarrassment for sainsburys. To expand on the latest delivery:

- £50 worth of a £120 delivery is missing and about a third of what’s there is quite badly squashed in transit. Looks like someone sat on it. Broken eggs, mangled veg, flour everywhere.

- I call the call centre (now in a remote country with lower paid workers) and am offered refunds and compensation of £15.

- no confirmation arrives by email as promised so I send in a written complaint via the online contact form to try and clear it up. There is no other route of escalating an issue.

- the response from the online form is empty and generic which refers me back to the call centre (!)

- I’m also told in this response that in order to get a refund, I need to wait to be contacted by their ‘refunds team’ with no indication of when this might happen.

- As instructed by the written response to the complaint, I try calling the call centre at different times, 8 times in total on one day. The first 7 times, I am told by a robot that there is ‘no room in the queue’ and I then get hung up on, with a request for me to ‘call back later when I might have more luck getting through’(the cheek!)

- on the 8th time, after waiting 25 mins (yes, 25 minutes) I gave up.

- today I manage to get through to someone at the call centre. She explains that the last person I spoke to made a mistake and didn’t process the refund. She also informs me that 15 pounds of compensation is too much, and it will be reduced to 10 pounds. Nice!

- I am told repeatedly that there is no route to escalate the complaint, and that I have no option but to wait “5 to 10 days for someone in the refunds team to call me”. The refund is just for the missing items - not the damaged ones.

Shame on you, sainsburys - you really, really, really suck at delivering groceries. And sadly, I think you’re already well aware of this. I guess that’s what we can expect from a company who has so enthusiastically funded the Conservatives over the years: Make it hard for customers to get their money back, make it impossible for them to complain, and keep generally screwing the customer.

Stuart

To: Sainsbury's Head Office - 33 Holborn, London.

Very disappointed with my local store in Tunbridge Wells (TN2 5QL) today - Monday 12 Sept. All the fridge related products have been completely moved around without warning to customers (perhaps a sign outside the store near the entrance apologising that everything had been moved) would have been a nice touch. But no.

The staff were struggling as well, especially those doing the shopping for the customer deliveries. I'd been in there on Saturday and it was 'fine,' as expected, so this work must have all been done overnight.

Of course, these changes didn't come hand in hand with the aisle signs hanging from the ceilings. How about a bit of common sense management? Get the new signs printed and ready to be put up (or moved accordingly) at the SAME TIME as all the changes on the shop floor are made. It's not difficult. You certainly wouldn't survive in the City of London in my day doing a 11-12 hour stint, rarely taking a lunch break and that's before the commute each way there and back to home. No doubt any new signs will be at least 2 weeks away, probably more. We've experienced this type of thing before in the main Tunbridge Wells store. It really is poor management planning. Hopeless.

So, now I await what we call the TOFU principle in management - Take Ownership and Follow Up. Let's have a reply to this review from the head office with some proper contact details for management please, not the usual "we're not authorised to do anything" customer call centre team.

Thank you.

p.s
And another couple of things. I'm noticing a lot of price gouging now from you - more so than Tesco, ASDA or the discounters. I don't mind paying a bit more for products given the circumstances but you're hiking prices by 25-30+% in some cases, which is clearly profiteering. And secondly I'd rather you added another 5p or so to your in-house baked white crusty rolls (pack of six) rather than reducing the size of them to something only a 5 year old would consider lunch. Put them back to the size they were over a year ago please, the reduction in size now is just ridiculous.