Savers apologise after telling family to “come back in 10 minutes” for wine

10th April 2019

Today, a local grandfather, with his two teenage kids, visited Savers in Formby to purchase two packs of four CherryB (cherry wine).

On entering Savers the elderly customer picked up one pack of the wine and was handed the second pack by his 16-year-old son before he approached the till.

On reaching the checkout the grandfather placed his two packs in front of the girl at the till and she refused to allow him the second pack. Asking why this was, he was told that because his son had originally passed him the second pack it would have amounted to a  “proxy sale”. The customer, therefore, asked his daughter to return the wine to the shelf.

He then went back and picked up another pack and took it to the till once again.

This was again refused as a valid sale by another till assistant. So, the man took the wine back to the shelf himself, picked it up and once against took it to the checkout.

Again, he was refused the sale on the grounds that his son had handled a similar pack earlier on.

He asked the staff member how he was ever supposed to buy this second pack. She informed him that he could purchase it if he returned “10 minutes later” to the shop.

Consequently, the grandfather went outside the shop to wait with his kids and a minute later a male staff member came out to face him in what initially seems to be a confrontational fashion. After several minutes of debating the farcical nature of the situation the Saver’s staff assistant apologised for the inconvenience and agreed that the rules were “crazy”. The staff assistant claimed that the shop could be “fined £1,000” for selling alcohol to a minor and seems to not understand that the grandfather had taken the wine back, as requested, and brought it to the till himself several times.

The grandfather, who has been a loyal customer of the shop for many years, told OTS News

“We went into Savers in good faith to simply buy two small packs of the cherry wine for a family present. The amount of fuss they made was unbelievable. I had taken the wine back, at their request, to the shelf because my son had handed it to me. Yet to refuse to serve me when I had picked it up again was just crazy. The manager came out of the shop and seemed argumentative at first. He just wouldn’t listen to what had happened. However, he eventually apologised and had to agree that the rules, plus what his staff made us do was crazy. I do not think we shall ever visit that shop again, which is a shame but treating long-standing customers like this is not right. ”

He added: “I am well aware of what ‘Proxy sales’ are in terms used to describe the purchase of alcohol on behalf of children. However, this matter descended into a total farce leading to a staff apology.”

The most ironic thing was that neither the grandfather nor his son actually drinks alcohol and the cherryB was being purchased as a gift.