Government must help the vulnerable access food

Sheryl – Are you sure that Sainsbury’s left several items out of your delivery by mistake, or was it because they were unavailable and you had not allowed substitutions? If it was their mistake then they should rectify that promptly and not make you wait a long time without the products you ordered.

One of the lessons of this particular situation is that, at a time when product availability is quite unpredictable especially in popular and staple groceries, it is sensible to have a stock of canned or packaged alternatives and to slightly over-order to compensate for any shortfalls. This bridges over supply difficulties and once your own stock levels have stabilised you can revert to normal quantities and choices.

In my experience it is best not to order specific brands of product, or even flavours or varieties of product, in essential and staple categories and it is sensible to allow substitution where you can. By all means specify a certain loaf of bread but allow them to provide an alternative if possible. This gives the pickers the maximum leeway to send you goods that are as similar as they can find to what you ordered. If the substitution is a higher price Sainsbury’s will refund the difference in the form of a voucher off your next order; this normally takes about 48 hours to process.

Sainsbury’s only bill you on delivery day for the actual price of what they have delivered. They scan each item in your ‘trolley’ in order to make up the bill – so check your receipt to make sure they haven’t charged you for any items that were not actually received. You should have received an e-mail notification on the delivery day identifying any items they were not able to supply and confirming any substitutions. In my experience they are conscientious about treating customers properly and making good any mistakes.

It’s probably best to check your order online the night before delivery or collection and choose alternatives (if available) for what has been ordered but is now not in stock. I presume that the supermarket websites show national availability rather than at the store selected, so there may be items that are not available locally.

My feeling is that Sainsbury’s do actually align their on-line product list with availability at the store or hub from which it will be despatched. The problem is that once the pickers hit the aisles at 4:00 am on delivery day, stock can disappear fast – nothing is held or reserved against known orders.

I tend to set up our orders a few days before the selected delivery slot but there is no way of checking over the intervening period whether or not the items placed in the ‘trolley’ remain available until after it is too late to change the order. That is why I have to order more or alternative items to ensure there will be enough for the week or ten days ahead.

The process was robust enough to serve delivery customers when they only represented 10% of turnover but the additional volume of trade and deliveries have exposed its weaknesses.

I’ve been very happy with my fortnightly click & collect orders (not Sainsbury) and apart from lack of dried yeast and flour, nothing essential has been either not available or missing. Sheryl and some people I know have not been as lucky as us.

I’m surprised that the supermarkets have not encouraged customers to choose click & collect to make more delivery slots available for those who have to stay at home. Click & collect does not need refrigerated vans if frozen food can be taken from the store to the customer’s car, making it easier to increase capacity without the need for extra vans.

Thanks Chris. I had been meaning to post about click & collect arrangements.

I have been told that our local-ish Waitrose requires customers to go into the store for a click & collect order. I know that one of the customers made a complaint but did not find out if Waitrose had responded.

I have used click & collect at Morrisons and Tesco. There is no need to go into the shop and both have designated areas of the car park. This photo shows how the local-ish Tesco operates:

When it’s your turn you drive into the collection bay and wait until the member of staff has located your groceries from the van and then you can get out of your car and load up. The collection bay nearest the van is blocked off because that would not not provide keep staff and customers far enough apart. The arrangements at our local Morrisons keep staff and customers separate but parking for customers’ cars does not keep customers far enough apart.

Perhaps the best system would be for customers to drive into the collection bay, stay in their car, and let the member of staff load their boot.

I’ve tried and failed to get a Waitrose delivery, but a friend has offered to add anything I want to her order.

Sharing orders amongst friends and neighbours is a growing trend now there is a bit more confidence in the arrangements. Friends who shop at Aldi get things for us that we can’t get on the Sainsbury’s order and in return we supply stuff they cannot buy at Aldi. It works well and is all very amicable.

A long time ago in the 1950’s – before everyone had a car – a converted removals pantechnicon used to come round the new district where we lived about very fortnight. It was racked out with shelves and loaded with as much stock as you would find in a traditional corner shop – mainly packaged and canned foods but some fresh greengrocery. Since a butcher, fishmonger, baker and the milk float came round daily it provided most of my mother’s requirements. We still had to walk to a local shopping parade once a week to get butter, cheese, eggs, bacon [sliced to order], cold meat, fresh fruit and more exotic food. Of course there was no frozen food in those days. Contact was too close for social distancing but one day – I hope – that will be behind us, normal shopping can resume and there could still be a role for mobile stores, especially if motoring becomes severely curtailed.

Our local corner shop (one man) took orders for general groceries in a small notebook and delivered them in his Ford Popular after closing on a Friday evening. The butcher did the same.

That was the next stage of my experience of shopping, Malcolm. Eventually the mobile store stopped coming and although milk was still delivered daily the other vendors couldn’t make it pay [more women were at work every day so there was less custom available] so my mother would fill out a page in a notebook with her order and send me round to the grocer’s with it on my bicycle on a Tuesday. Wednesday was early-closing day and the grocer or his boy would come round with the goods during the afternoon. The grocer had a Thames Trader van – which was derived from the Ford Popular car – but the boy had to do it on the shop bicycle which had a large wicker basket mounted above the front wheel. Real Open All Hours stuff.

I would be interested in knowing whether other branches of Waitrose or other supermarkets expect customers to go into the store when they arrive to pick up a click & collect order.

I rang the Waitrose branch in question and explained my concern about customers having chosen click & collect to avoid going into the store were expected to go in when they came to collect their order.

If you are self-isolating you can ring the store when you arrive and your order will be delivered to the car, but please park near the store entrance. Of course that’s where you are likely to be near most people, so the answer would be to ask for the bags to be put in the boot. Perhaps I should write to their CEO.

It’s been a hard time for supermarkets having to adapt to meet the large increase in number of people wanting to secure home deliveries or collection services. If you have chased up Sainsburys without success it might be time to look at other supermarkets that deliver in your area and keep checking at different times of the day.