Supermarket giant hits customers with £800 bill for free magazine

Apr 16 2009 by Shirley Bartynek, Hamilton Advertiser

ASDA has come under fire for charging on-line customers in Lanarkshire hundreds of pounds for a FREE store magazine.

The blunder came to light after several local shoppers were charged £777.77 earlier this year for the supermarket’s free-of-charge store magazine.

One of those affected was Susan McFarlane, who ordered her groceries using Asda’s on-line shopping facility and clicked on the option to have the store’s free magazine delivered along with her shopping.

The North Lanarkshire Council worker received her weekly shopping two days later.

But the following day, when she went to withdraw cash from her bank, she discovered her account was £700 overdrawn.

Susan (28) explained: “I ordered my shopping on-line because of all the roadwork problems we were having in Wishaw at the time and actually only bought £58 worth of groceries. It was the first time I had used the service.

“I don’t have an overdraft facility and almost £800 was taken out of my account, leaving me with nothing.

“I had no cash to pay rent or nursery fees. It was a nightmare.”

Susan went to her nearest Asda store, in Motherwell, and was told that it was not a store issue but an on-line problem.

However, the store agreed to try and find out what happened.

Susan added: “Asda Motherwell were great and did everything they could to help me. But when I informed the on-line department, I was told that it could take seven to ten days for the cash to be put back into my account. I wasn’t even given as much as an apology.

“I was distraught because I had no money. I really didn’t know what to do. It was actually the store manager in Motherwell who managed to help get the problem cleared up for me.”

Susan this week warned shoppers to take extra care when ordering on-line.

She added: “This was a complete nightmare for me and shouldn’t have happened.

“I am not looking for compensation but an apology would have been nice at the time. Now, I just want to warn people to be aware that this could happen.”

The Advertiser has also learned that a similar problem had hit shoppers in Blantyre and Bothwell areas.

A spokesman for Asda said: “There were six customers involved in this incident.

“It was human error, where a colleague typed in the wrong barcode for the magazine.

“As soon as the problem was pointed out, many of our customers were refunded immediately.

“The way the banks work, it can take up to five days for the money to go back into an account.

“However, because customers were out of pocket by such a large sum of money, in most cases, we sorted out the problem in store by refunding them the money.

“We are very sorry for what has happened and it was an isolated incident that won’t happen again.”