Complaining about Budgens
I am always saying that I am going to write a letter of complaint when I feel I’ve received poor service, or feel a reason to complain, but I never do. We went to Budgens this afternoon, originally to buy some biscuits and lemons, as Cat is feeling a bit sick. Anyway I went over to the ginger nuts, and happened to look at the best before date. I showed it to Cat because it said May 2009. So they were a month old, which wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Then I looked at another packet to try and find a newer one. They all had a best before of November 2008!!
We decided to leave the biscuits and just bought the lemons. What we discovered afterwards is the same thing we’ve found the past few times — we’d been overcharged.
Enough is enough, so I’ve written about these things to the owners of the Budgens franchise, Musgrave, outlining my concerns. All of the Budgens stores are privately owned by independent retailers, but I’m hope that Musgrave will be keen to investigate.
Eating biscuits that are a month out of date won’t kill you and neither, for that matter, will eating biscuits that are 6 months out of date. They’re pretty well sealed so are unlikely to go soft.
Read this:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/real_food/article6480599.ece
But the fact that you’ve been overcharged…now that’s worth complaining about!
Quite right that we shouldn’t throw away food just because it’s past its best before date. I know what the difference is, and I’m the first one to complain when wasting food.
However in the case of Budgens, I suspects it is more a case of dodgy business practices rather than a case of the retailer being “intelligent” about the sense of best before dates. On its own it’s not a huge deal, but when combined with ripping people off, I think someone needs to put a stop to it.
Failing that at least Budgens are aware of how their brand name is being run, at least at my local store