After shopping at Asda yesterday (not my usual supermarket) I checked my bill and was pleased to note prominently listed at the top of it both the name of the store manager and a geographic phone number.

Its a sad comment on the regulatory failure of Ofcom that this helpful and considerate behaviour by Asda is currently still the exception rather than the norm.  It seems that Asda's always low priced philosophy even extends to the matter of telephoning them.

derrick wrote on Aug 21^st, 2007 at 11:03am:


To be fair it may be a large complex call routing system and at least its not 0870.   Let us hope they replace it with an 03 number in due course.

As to Tesco the fact they allowed nationwide replacement of all their geographic store numbers with 0845 is utterly ridiculous.

jgxenite wrote on Aug 21^st, 2007 at 4:09pm:


So far as I'm aware the original geographic numbers of Tesco stores to which the 0845s are pointed remain the same as they have always been.

So if anyone has an old phonebook for their area they ought to be able to find the geographic number of their local Tesco and add it to the database.

bbb_uk wrote on Aug 21^st, 2007 at 6:17pm:

bbb,

Tesco's is a massive ruthless and highly efficient commercial organisation that only gets where it is by screwing its suppliers down to the lowest possible prices and threatening to cut them out of its stores permanently if they don't agree and don't regularly agree to promotions like 2 for 1 that the supplier has to fund the cost of.

For you to suggest that the board director of Tesco's responsible for recommending its telecoms arrangements to its board is as naive, incompetent and as easily hoodwinked as a doctor's practice manager is completely unrealistic.

Tesco will have switched to using 0845 numbers nationwide because their telecoms suppliers will have offered them their national contract for phone line rental, outgoing calls and phone equipment more cheaply than if they maintained the geographic numbers.

Calls to Tesco stores on 0845 are not routed around elaborate call centres but are handled in the store and are closed when the store is closed.  The only reason to use 0845 is so that Tesco's telecoms supplier gets a cut at 2p per minute or more on the calls to its many hundreds of stores 7 days a week.  That's a huge number of calls and a big revenue share number.

For you to make statements such as Tesco's probably didn't know what they are doing stretches the bounds of all credibility given the organisation we are talking about here.  Equally I'm sure that Asda's decision to maintain geographic numbers and list the name of the store manager at the top of every till receipt reflects a matter of company policy decided at board level.

I have challenged several head office Tesco customer service staff on the use of the store 0845 numbers and they all to a man repeat the same lie that 0845 "is a local rate number" and that I am definitely mistaken in believing it is not.

They all seem to behave like frightened battery chickens and I can imagine them getting severe demerit points if they quote anything other than the stock company propaganda line on this issue.

If you go to the Sainsburys web site....http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/shoppingandservices/storelocator/storelocator.htm

Type in a post code and you get your local store's address and geographical telephone number.

As previously stated on this thread not so with Tesco where they give an 08 number.