Supermarket apologises for mis-selling fruit in promotion trading standards officials condemn as misleading
Tesco has been fined £300,000 for mislabelling its strawberries, selling them at "half price" for three months after they were on sale at the full price for just seven days.
The supermarket, which is trying to shed its "big and bad" image, made a £2.3m profit from the promotion after a customer complained to Birmingham trading standards, a court heard.
Judge Michael Chambers said at Birmingham crown court that the case was "shocking by its very nature" because customers had a high degree of trust in national chains.
For seven days in 2011 Tesco sold 400g punnets of strawberries at £3.99, reducing them to £2.99 for a further week before marking them as half price at £1.99 for a further 14 weeks.
The promotion was a breach of the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations Act 2008, which bars retailers from running a promotion for longer than the period over which the product was sold at full price.
Birmingham city council argued that the offer had been presented in a way that could mislead or deceive the average consumer into thinking they were getting a good deal.
It also complained about a further promotion involving the same strawberries in which Tesco offered a free pot of single cream with each punnet but then removed the free cream offer, returning the strawberries to their "half-price" status.
The guilty plea by Tesco followed a preliminary hearing this year when the supermarket argued the council lacked the jurisdiction to proceed outside Birmingham on the case. The court threw out that claim.
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| Strawberries growing in a polytunnelTesco apologised to the court for the mis-selling, and said its internal processes had been tightened to avoid any repetition. It also agreed to pay Birmingham city council's £65,000 legal bill. |
A spokesperson said: "We apologise sincerely for this mistake, which was made in the summer of 2011.
"We sell over 40,000 products in our stores, with thousands on promotion at any one time, but even one mistake is one too many.
"Since then, to make sure this doesn't happen again we've given colleagues additional training and reminded them of their responsibilities to ensure we always adhere to the guidelines on pricing."
On Monday Tesco was selling 454g punnets of British strawberries for £2.
Sajeela Naseer, head of trading standards at the council, said the victory would have benefits for consumers across the country. She added: "It was the council's case, confirmed by Tesco's guilty pleas today, that this was a misleading offer which deceived the purchasers of strawberries over many weeks during the summer of 2011.
"Food pricing, presentation and the depiction of promotional practices is a crucial issue for retailers, and in turn, consumers."
In November last year the Office of Fair Trading tightened its rules on promotions, with Tesco, Sainsbury's, Morrisons, Waitrose, M&S, Aldi, the Co-op and Lidl all signing up to a new code to avoid similar abuses.
The fine is the latest labelling embarrassment for Tesco, which was caught up in the horsemeat scandal after horse DNA was found in its beefburgers. In that case the company attempted to reassure customers by publishing full-page adverts in several newspapers.
Since then Tesco has launched a major new marketing campaign in an attempt to regain consumer confidence. However, some experts have suggested this latest scandal may have dented trust even further.
Article Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk
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