{"id":645366,"date":"2026-05-06T16:59:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T14:59:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=645366"},"modified":"2026-05-06T17:03:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T15:03:06","slug":"checkers-fixes-strange-bug-for-shoppers-with-accents-in-their-surnames","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/business\/645366-checkers-fixes-strange-bug-for-shoppers-with-accents-in-their-surnames.html","title":{"rendered":"Checkers fixes strange bug for shoppers with accents in their surnames"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Shoprite said it fixed a bug that resulted in some customers whose names included special characters, such as accents or symbols, not getting Xtra Savings discounts loaded on their product basket. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
MyBroadband recently noticed a peculiar first-hand complaint about this issue from a member of a prominent Pretoria residents’ community group, Annelie Naud\u00e9.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I struggled for four years with my Checkers Xtra Savings card,” she said. “Time and again, I would simply not get discounts on products that were on promotion.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The cashiers were irritated with me because I asked them to double-check after every product on promotion was scanned whether the discounted price was loaded.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Naud\u00e9 said that Checkers staff often had to return to the product shelves to confirm whether an item was on promotion, which cost her a lot of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She also had to wait for more senior staff to authenticate the transactions every time. “It was always the same; it did not matter at which Checkers I shopped,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Naud\u00e9 said the issue reached a point where she wanted to burst into tears out of frustration. She wrote a letter to the retailer, spoke with managers, and obtained a new card, but the issue persisted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The breakthrough came when her husband suggested that she change her surname on the Checkers website to remove the accent on the “e”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since she made the change, discounts on promotional products have been consistently applied. She advised others with surnames featuring an accent to try the same fix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Naud\u00e9 suspected the issue was because Checkers’ system was not built to handle letters from extended character sets, relying on basic ASCII.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is a decades-old 7-bit character set that does not support letters with diacritics or other special characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It supports up to 128 characters and is limited to English letters, 0-9 digits, basic punctuation, and control codes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Extended, 8-bit variants of ASCII that support 256 characters, including Latin characters with diacritics, have existed since at least the launch of the IBM PC in 1981.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, extended ASCII was not a universally standardised character set, and data could get corrupted or displayed inconsistently between different systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Unicode standard was developed to address this issue and provide a universal character set containing the glyphs every written language on Earth needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
New cards don’t fix the issue<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Several other users with accented letters in their surnames who responded to Naud\u00e9’s posts related similar problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another person with the same surname said she had repeatedly tried to get new cards to fix the problem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In her case, a smart cashier figured out the accent could be to blame, but it took multiple calls to the Shoprite customer care line to resolve the issue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She explained that every time her ID number was entered into the system for a new card at the store, it would automatically pull her name with the accent. The record, therefore, had to be completely reloaded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another user \u2014 Louis Kr\u00fcger \u2014 joked that using the ASCII character set required a museum permit. He pointed out that several banks also did not accept customer names with diacritics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is unclear whether the character set was the culprit. Shoprite told MyBroadband that it fixed a “similar” bug earlier in the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The retailer said this was traced to a technical error introduced\u00a0during a routine update to our loyalty and promotions\u00a0systems.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Once\u00a0identified, the problem was fixed, thoroughly\u00a0tested\u00a0and successfully rolled out,” it said. “Our “automated testing processes have\u00a0since been strengthened to\u00a0prevent\u00a0similar\u00a0issues in future updates.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, it said this glitch would not have impacted\u00a0a customer\u00a0over\u00a0an extended period. “To fully investigate,\u00a0we\u00a0would\u00a0need to review this\u00a0customer\u2019s\u00a0Xtra Savings\u00a0profile in more detail,” it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Our\u00a0records reflect multiple customers with the same first name and surname, and\u00a0therefore the\u00a0customer\u2019s\u00a0Xtra Savings card number\u00a0is required\u00a0to\u00a0ensure\u00a0an accurate\u00a0assessment.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
MyBroadband asked Naud\u00e9 if she could provide her card number, but she did not immediately provide feedback to our queries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Home Affairs systems had similar character set issues<\/h2>\n\n\n\nHome Affairs minister Leon Schreiber gives !Kh\u016bboab Oedasoua Lawrence his smart ID card. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Similar technical limitations in South Africa’s birth certificate, smart ID card, and passport applications also previously prevented people with special characters in their names from getting the document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/XtraSavings-card-swipe.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Lawrence-getting-smart-ID-from-Leon-Schreiber.jpg\")