I bought a Karcher steam cleaner from a Tesco store in November 2012. The item was advertised in print and online at £50 cheaper than the price displayed in store, and the customer services representative advised me to pay the full price of £129.99 and said she would arrange to refund me the £50 difference by cheque.
After some weeks I received the cheque but it was made payable to my home address instead of my name, so was returned by the bank. I contacted Tesco customer service and was sent round the houses before persuading someone to issue a second cheque. This arrived – but was payable to an incorrect name. The bank informed me that I would need to contact Tesco again.
Over the next few months (with mobile phone bills mounting) I was repeatedly fobbed off by Tesco. I was informed on two occasions that someone would contact me. When after two months this contact failed to materialise, I rang Tesco but had to start over with a fresh person with no knowledge of my complaint.
Last week I tried one more time – another 20-minute-plus mobile call in which I was transferred between customer services and accounts. I have made five or six calls of between 10 and 25 minutes to 0800 numbers, which my mobile company charges at 40p per minute. As you can imagine I am extremely frustrated! CP, Bristol
It seems extraordinary that you have been kept waiting for over a year for a (relatively modest) £50 refund, and we got in touch with Tesco to hurry things along. It has now contacted you to apologise and refunded the full cost of the product as a gesture of goodwill – which you have accepted.
However, without wishing to add insult to injury, Tesco even managed to get your surname wrong in its follow-up statement to us. Ouch! A Tesco spokesperson said: "We have apologised sincerely to CP. We have given him a full refund and a gesture of goodwill." There are plenty of lessons here to be learned about getting customers' names right – hardly rocket science, surely?
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