Christmas preorder at local Morrisons: totally disorganised

[totallyrandom]

Ordered Christmas food for collection at my local Morrisons at 11 am today, 24 December, two weeks ago. They give you a half an hour collection slot- AIBU to expect to be actually collect my food during this time? Did this as I thought it would save time! Have been waiting in customer service queue for over 50 minutes and it is barely moving. They are completely disorganised and unprepared. Never ordering Morrisons again! How long is everyone waiting at other supermarkets? Local Morrisons don't even have a system where you hand in your order code so you can go shopping for other stuff. You are literally stuck in the queue. Would have been much less painful to go to another supermarket yesterday or day before and just buy the stuff. I picked up other stuff yesterday and yes it was busy, but staff were helpful. How long is a reasonable time to wait? Have prepaid 30 per cent of the order.

[QueenLizIII]

i never understood pre order food.

its a turkey and veg. how much effort does it take to pick that off the shelves.

i see queues at m&s every year if that helps

[LightastheBreeze]

Yes I have heard similar about M&S also, also lots of substitutions for key things like turkey.

[AndNowItsSeven]

Why didn't you get it delivered ?

[Grindelwaldswand]

Why didn't you get it delivered ? And why did you leave it so late you'll be lucky if they even have anything left in stock

[ilovesooty]

What a ridiculous fuss.

[user1477282676]

Well from what I've read on MN delivery is no better Seven....I never order anything online or pick up....it's much less stress to just do it yourself.

Buy non perishables in the weeks coming up to Christmas and the fresh stuff on the 23rd.

Sorry OP that's no help to you now. Complain in writing after Christmas.

[fairgame84]

I preorder at m&s every year. I always go 1st thing and was only waiting 10 minutes yesterday at 8am. Apparently it's horrendous later on in the day and on Xmas eve according to the staff.
50 minutes is unacceptable for a pre order. YANBU

[LunaLoveg00d]

Ordered our Christmas food from M&S and picked it up this morning at 9.30am, very quick, in and out in 5 minutes, they were VERY organised with at least 6 members of staff taking order numbers and dishing out the food.

We pre-order our food so we know we're getting exactly what we want and don't run the risk of them running out or not having what we want. It doesn't cost any extra to book in advance so there is no disadvantage in doing so, and plenty of advantages.

[ohidoliketobe]

Sounds similar to our local one (unless its also yours....) MIL was given 7-7.30am yesterday. Arrived 6.50 and there was already a massive queue so she joined the back of it. She was served at 8.45. She did comment that the man in front of her complained loudly and the manager came and gave him a big bottle of prosciutto as an apology (she probably meant Prosecco, but that story took her over 25 mins to tell me so I couldn't bear to correct her and drag it out any more...).

The problem is possibly that people aren't sticking to their time slots. Like she got there early, saw the queue, panicked and just joined it. So 20 mins later the people who might be arriving for a 7.30-8 slot will see a big queue and join that 20 mins before their time slot and so on and so on.

I am very grateful that my mum is a manager at Aldi. She filled up a trolley with our shopping on Thursday morning before the store opened and stuck it in the big chiller in the stockroom. I nipped in when it had started to 'quieten down' at 9pm (car park still packed!) she wheeled it out and I just joined a queue. I actually witnessed customers climbing on staff members when they were trying to restock the fridges and a woman screeching 'what do you mean you're closed on Boxing Day!'

[HoHoHammered]

We've just collected ours from the butcher

Cost a pretty penny but it's massive!!

No problems with the queue or ordering

[Bearlife]

Missing the point but I didn't know Morrisons did deliveries! trying that out in the new year! But yanbu 50mins is too long when you've preordered for a certain time

[TheWitTank]

That's ridiculous. When I worked in a major supermarket in HR a few years back I helped out one Christmas with organising the festive orders. We put each order in a box with receipt on top, name written in big letters on the outside and organised by time slot and alphabetically (yes, I am extremely anal about stuff like that!). It was simple and we whipped through the orders. Even when people arrived out of time slot we quickly located the order as it was in alphabetical order. The supermarket clearly haven't got themselves organised!

[totallyrandom]

Finally got served! Few substitutions like normal Brussel sprouts instead of sprouts with chestnuts so can live with that (but would have been very annoyed if my turkey was substituted). But yes, am not preordering again or if I do, will go for v early slot with a different supermarket. Next time will book a delivery stuff 2 months in advance, go to the local butcher or just shop in store. Morrisons did offer people tea and coffee and juice, no Prosecco unfortunately! There were lots of elderly people waiting and some with toddlers for more than an hour.

[Hoppinggreen]

I've had similar at M&S before
Apparently the main problem is people not sticking to their deliver slot but just turning up when they feel like it

[gamerwidow]

By contrast Sainsbury's this year were brilliant. I had a preorder slot from 10-12 turned up at 11 and was paid and out by 11.15 so much better than last year.

[trinity0097]

I was the only one in the queue at Waitrose (Bagshot) to pick up our turkey 'thing', apparently the first thing in the morning slot was heaving, but it was all very calm and just someone paying up as I got to the till. They still had everything you would need for Christmas on the shelves. I will be going back later on to buy up lots of stuff for the freezer before they close for a couple of days.

[OnlyAFoolsChance]

My friend works for Morrisons and said that this year was an utter shambles. There had been no extra food sent to cover the pre-orders!

I had mine booked for 23rd 9-9:30 and I have to say I was unimpressed. I took my print out of email as requested, the lady dealing with packing the stuff was looking at email list and taking stuff from crates to put in bags. All fine, or so I thought. Wasn't until I paid I said to her "But my order should have been £33 not £26". And she said the price is an approx due to turkey weight etc so I never thought anything of that. Then walking away my friend said to me "Thought you were having a big chocolate fudge cake? She never put one in your bag!"

Back we went again, and turned out the cake and a huge party platter were not packed (nor charged for)

Bit meh about it all, but the shop itself was heaving and I'm more glad I had that small hassle than traipse around the shop trying to nudge my way in for a turkey crown!

[OnlyAFoolsChance]

*was paying (not paid)

[KathArtic]

We've found to our cost that it's not being on the supermarket that's the problem,it's being stuck in the car park for two hours trying to get out. They have to put staff on the direct drivers. Once I had to abandon my car and get DH to pick me up.

[LunaLoveg00d]

Few substitutions like normal Brussel sprouts instead of sprouts with chestnuts so can live with that

But that's crazy - the whole point of pre-ordering is that you get EXACTLY what you have ordered. If the supermarket is organised, they should know precisely how many of each item has been ordered and should have them ready to go when people arrive. There should be no need for substituting anything.

Sounds like someone at Morrisons has had the bright ideas of competing with the other pre-ordering supermarkets, but they haven't the organisational skills to carry it through.

[Narnian]

My mum pre-ordered from M&S. She had aher slot booked for 07:30 this morning and was saying how brilliantly organised the whole system was. She was in and out within ten minutes.

Don't know how bad it would be now though!

[SellMySoulForSomeSleep]

I pre ordered my turkey crown from morrisons. Was there in my time slot. No queue. They had a little walkie-talkie. Called for it and it arrived in a couple of minutes.
Worked really well.
However my local morrisons is a small one.
Getting out of the car park took longer!

[PaulDacresConscience]

I pre-ordered from M&S last year and it was quite slick. Was in and out in 15 mins - and that was with a midday collection slot on Xmas Eve.

However the substitutions annoy me in general, so this year I reverted back to doing it myself. Got up early yesterday, in the supermarket for 6am and was back home for 8am. Reasonably quiet and all of the shelves were full so everything was in stock. I'd forgotten to buy some biscuits so nipped back in today and it was hell on earth.

[Yamadori]

I've never ordered anything in advance, we buy stuff bit by bit and the turkey had been in the freezer for a fortnight. Non-perishables bought a week ago and got everything else yesterday afternoon. Popped out to our Morrisons this morning for loo rolls, green salad and a lemon and it was pretty quiet.
The only thing I had to wait 5 minutes for was the lettuce which was being unloaded from the just-arrived lorry. Delivery late because there had been a nasty crash on the M1 (hope everyone involved is OK) and the lorry had been stuck in the tailback.

[travailtotravel]

I picked up my turkey from M&S last night and it was bedlam. DH went to Morrisons yesterday and it was pandemonium on all counts (but we did get a free little bag of rudolph carrots - result!), but we did our main shop on Thurs at 6pm and all was calm. Missing a few things by then but we managed to pick them up yesterday even so.

I have used Morrisons pre-order before and it was easy peasy. I think doing anything like that on xmas eve is a bit of a nightmare but I appreciate some people don't have the choice.

Hope you're out of the queue soon, OP