Adios, Tesco

Tesco has just totally lost me as a customer. I've become more and more dissatisfied, over the last year or so, with the city centre branch of Tesco. For a start, as much as I love wild birds, I am utterly repulsed to see them flittering around the store's rafters, defaecating on the signs above the aisles. What if they flew over the the deli counter, or the butcher's and fishmonger's displays? Would you like one sparrow turd or two with your monkfish, Madam? Ugh.

A further annoyance is the surprising lack of choice at the store, especially for singletons and childless couples. It's nigh on impossible to buy one or two chicken portions, one or two pork chops, or one or two turkey steaks. Everything seems to come in family-sized packs. To add insult to injury, whenever I go in there with a shopping list, I can be sure at least seven items from my list are unavailable, sometimes more.

But what has finally led me to abandon Tesco - apart from bird crap, and a growing unease with its sinister bid to take over the world and stifle all competition - is its prices. Tesco claims to be much cheaper than its rivals, citing examples in-store of where it charges far less for certain named items, than stores such as Asda or Morrisons. Well, I've just put their claims to the test, and discovered that Tesco, far from being cheaper than its rivals, is, in fact, considerably more expensive, for an average, fairly healthy shop, even with Clubcard points.

I've just placed an online order with Asda. For a typical mixture of groceries, pet supplies, household goods, medicines and toiletries, plus delivery, I paid £60.06. I then entered an almost identical order on the Tesco site, but without proceeding to the checkout. There were only minor differences in the two orders, e.g. replacing Asda labelled products with Tesco equivalents, substituting Tesco Value products where Asda Smartprice products were purchased, and substituting beef mince for turkey mince on the Tesco order, as Tesco didn't have turkey mince. The Tesco order weighed in at £72.30. I knew the Asda order would be cheaper, but I was expecting it to be by pennies, not in excess of £12. So, as the title of this post says, it's adios Tesco, goodbye, farewell, piss off.