Tesco checks out wording change

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7590440.stm

Tesco checks out wording change
Tesco says the change will be phased in
Tesco is to change the wording of signs on its fast-track checkouts to avoid any linguistic dispute.
The supermarket giant is to replace its current "10 items or less" notices with signs saying "Up to 10 items".
Tesco's move follows uncertainty over whether the current notices should use "fewer" instead of "less".
The new wording was suggested to Tesco by language watchdog The Plain English Campaign. Tesco said the change would be phased in across its stores.
"Saying up to 10 items is easy to understand and avoids any debate," said a spokesman for The Plain English Campaign.
"Fewer" should be used when you are talking about items that can be counted individually, for example, "fewer than 10 apples".
"Less" is correct when quantities cannot be individually counted in that case, e.g. "I would like less water".
Tesco is the UK's largest supermarket group with 2,106 outlets across the country.

Hold, what's not to undertand about 10 items or less? You are allowed 10 items or less. Simple as. Surely changing it to up to 10 items leaves people saying "is that up to and including 10 items or is 9 items the maximum?"

What a waste of money on tesco's part.

This is pathetic.

I don't care.

PostRe: Tesco checks out wording change by **Jango** » Sun Aug 31, 2008 3:55 pm

That may be a waste of time on Tesco's part, but this topic is a waste of time on everybody's behalf.

Jango wrote:That may be a waste of time on Tesco's part, but this topic is a waste of time on everybody's behalf.

tis the point

Lets Celebrate Good Times Come On

"checks out"...clever.

This is actually a huge issue at Walmart, they could learn a thing or two.

How stupid do you have to be not to understand the 10 items or less rule? Is this some sort of problem in translation to foreign languages as I fail to see a problem otherwise.

PostRe: Tesco checks out wording change by **aayl1** » Sun Aug 31, 2008 4:58 pm

I think the problem here is grammar.

The signs should probably read "10 items or fewer", but there are a few occasions where it should be "10 items or less".

So they're just taking the cop-out route as to not offend anyone.

Who does it offend though? The worst that could happen is that 1 person in every 300 gets ever so slightly confused. If we get shops having to worry about things as innocuous as that then I'm sorry but this country really has become a laughing stock.

I pay my licence fee so they can report this as 'news' ?

:fp:

Peter Crisp wrote:How stupid do you have to be not to understand the 10 items or less rule?

It's more to do with people abusing the system than any misunderstandings.

Alvin Flummux wrote:It's more to do with people abusing the system than any misunderstandings.

Ah, fair enough then.

PostRe: Tesco checks out wording change by **Abs** » Sun Aug 31, 2008 5:29 pm

Shadow wrote::lol:

I pay my licence fee so they can report this as 'news' ?

I doubt it's a massive dent in your fee for some guy to type that little article on the website, who's to say what is and isn't news anyway?

PostRe: Tesco checks out wording change by **SEP** » Sun Aug 31, 2008 7:16 pm

Eighthours just came.

They should just scrap the sign alltogether and use common sense whether or not to serve a customer.
At Sainsbury's we don't have a '10 items or less' sign because if there's not too many people with baskets then we will serve people with trolleys. Also, lots of people have baskets with more than 10 items and it's a bit stupid to make them queue up with all the large trolleys.

This isn't even recent news! It's been going on for aaaaaaages. There've been 'Up to 10 items' signs in a Tesco near me for months.

PostRe: Tesco checks out wording change by **Henke** » Mon Sep 01, 2008 1:10 pm

Jimmy Shedders wrote:Lets Celebrate Good Times Come On

First person I thought of when I read this 'topic'.

MCN wrote:Eighthours just came.

I've just clicked on your sig for the first time. So I can assure you that's the least true thing that has ever been said.

Tesco checks out wording change

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