Prosecution by council sees Tesco fined £300k over strawberry pricing

A prosecution brought by Birmingham City Council under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations Act 2008 has seen Tesco fined £300,000 for a misleading price offer for strawberries.

The council’s investigation initially related to the retail giant’s store on Coventry Road in Sheldon, before being widened to a national basis.

At various stages of the summer of 2011 Tesco had sold 400g punnets of strawberries marked as ‘half price’. The punnets had a price of £1.99 with the previous prices of £2.99 and £3.99 crossed out.

The pricing practices guide states that the length of the new lower price sale should not be more than which the old higher price was available.

The company’s £1.99 offer lasted 14 weeks. However, the original higher price strawberries (£3.99) were sold for a much shorter length of time, the council found.

A subsequent offer saw 400g punnets of British strawberries on sale at £1.99 including a pot of cream – these were marked “£1.99 free fresh single cream 150ml”.

According to the local authority, this further offer had no mention of a previous price. The strawberries were then put back on sale at £1.99 without the pot of cream with the company again indicating that they were ‘half price.’

At Birmingham Crown Court the city council argued both offers were presented in a way that mislead or was likely to deceive the average consumer.

It claimed that the price or the manner in which the price had been calculated was likely to cause the average consumer to make a transactional decision that they would not otherwise have made.

Sajeela Naseer, Head of Trading Standards for Birmingham City Council, said: “This is not only a victory for Birmingham customers – it also has wider benefits for all consumers across the country.

“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.”

Naseer added: “Food pricing, presentation and the depiction of promotional practices is a crucial issue for retailers, and in turn, consumers.”

According to the council, at a preliminary hearing earlier this year Tesco had sought to argue that the authority did not have the jurisdiction to proceed outside of Birmingham.

The council countered that Birmingham residents who shopped outside of the city would have been affected by the offers.

In a statement issued on Twitter, Tesco 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.”