Order condoms, receive a pregnancy test

Having shopped online with Ocado, Waitrose, Tesco, Asda & Sainsburys, I have never had a real problem with substitutions, probably because I set up no substitutions in my account.

But if ordering a multibuy where you get a choice of products, it is a good idea to request one of the other items you have already ordered in the offer for a substitute otherwise you might get charged full price on the remaining items.

Substitutions or only receiving part of your order are mostly a problem with online supermarkets that don’t know real-time stock levels or where the order is hand-picked from a High Street store rather than a warehouse.

Our only problem was when ordering several bottles of filtered milk the order was consolidated into one giant container. We didn’t return it because we wanted the milk, but it was inconvenient because, although the ‘consume by’ date was far enough ahead, once opened, the milk has to be used within four days. Buying filtered [long-dated] milk in smaller volumes suits our way of life and minimises any wastage. A substitution of regular milk would have been more useful as most of it has a reasonable ‘use by’ period remaining. Other than that we have been well-satisfied by on-line orders using both Sainsbury’s and Waitrose.

Having occasionally watched the on-line order pickers going round our local big Tesco store I am not surprised at some of the errors, but I am not sure whether they are making the substitution selections themselves or they come via their hand-held computers. It seems to be a fairly soul-destroying job where boredom, lapses of concentration, and general ignorance feature highly. They seem to be picking orders for six or eight customers simultaneously and it is probably easy for an item to end up in the wrong box.

This seems to be a bit of a non story. I shop with Tesco online and the driver discusses any substitutions before delivering the order. They are listed at the top of the receipt/delivery note and they are packed in different coloured bags so they are easy to find and reject if you don’t want them. Additionally, in the case of Tesco, they substitute with an item of a higher price and charge the original so I have in the past had Champagne for the price of Cava and 2 litres of Bells substituted for 2 bottles which were on offer at £20. There are many other examples and it has been a long time since I rejected an offered substitute!

We shopped with Tescos online for years. Initially some substitutes were silly- two kg of carrots for two loose carrots on one occasion- but it had got much better, and as mentioned before, the substitutes were always clearly identifiable and usually pointed out by the driver. We switched to try Sainsburys because the choice from Tesco was getting narrower and narrower since they had swapped to providing our deliveries from a warehouse rather than a store. Sainsburys have recently opened a new store locally and it seems the pickers still need some training. The substitutes we’ve had so far haven’t been brilliant but worse much of the food comes with expiry dates within two days. I prefer how Tescos price match the substitutes though, Sainsburys charge the higher price but issue an e voucher for the difference if you accept, which means you are forced to spend the extra money with them either way.

This is straight out of a Monty Python sketch. I blame an electronic translator somewhere. “Where is the nearest chemist please?” comes out as “I fancy your sister”.

Don’t order hot dogs!