Supermarket substitutions

[sashh]

OK this has not been done for a while.

Tesco have just delivered, the item substituted was spring roll wrappers.

Guess what was substituted? Clue it was edible.

Tesco sells spring roll wrappers? misses point of thread entirely

The best we had was ordering a meal deal as part of the shopping (you know the one, main, side, dessert and drink for £10) we'd selected a bottle of Malbec, the one we'd requested was out of stock so they substituted it with a very nice bottle of £12 Malbec at no extra cost - Thank you Tesco!

We received a fish pie as a sub for a chicken pie...I found it hard to believe that there were no other chicken pies in the shop.

My friend’s DS (17) was given the job of filling the orders for online shoppers on his first day working for Tesco. He’d never shopped for food in his life before that! Explains some of the strange substitutions...

I ordered wellies and the substitution was pedigree chum with 'Jelly. Nice one asda. Those tins of lamb and chicken will serve me well in a muddy field. Keeping my feet dry by rollerblading round on tins of dog food. Weeeeee.
It's clearly a shitty app and not a human that matches them up.
On the plus side tho, I once ordered somd really basic crappy pans when i first moved house. I knew they were low quality but thought they would tide me over for a few months before I commit to decent ones. Asda substituted them with heavy based quality pans and I didn't have to pay the difference. I still have them now.

Oh, I don't have a dog 🤯

Surely you just tick the no substitutions box when ordering though?

I once got a spicy chicken pizza as a substitute for a whole chicken from Asda

I ordered cat food once, and got toilet roll instead.
They're on the same aisle in our local asda, so I honestly think the picker just turned round and grabbed the closest thing to hand.

Years ago when first trying out online shopping, I ordered whole lemons for a recipe and got lemon washing up liquid instead - it didn't taste the same at all!

Ha ha. Some of these are so funny 😀

I once ordered cat food from as a and got a blue squeaky dog bone toy.

Possibly the complete opposite of what I had ordered.

Yes POMPOM42, I’m afraid it’s lazy pickers plus lack of training ,, sometimes it’s down to other pickers to shadow newbies and so bad habits get passed on! the scanner suggests what’s been commonly subbed then pickers that don’t care or are being pushed to go so fast that they aren’t allowed to spare the time just follow the suggestion. It seems that the pickers who do want to be helpful can override the scanner and give an appropriate option. However you CAN cancel the substitution process and scan as normal if you find the correct item.

I stopped doing an online shop after several weeks in a row where ASDA subbed chicken breasts for nothing. I just can’t see a supermarket having no alternative for chicken breasts. I had to go to the shop anyway so I just started doing my whole shop myself

I drink caffeine free diet coke as I am caffeine free but Asda substitute it with diet coke every single fucking time.
If I'd wanted bloody caffeinated coke I'd have bloody ordered it!

Whenever I’ve had a sub from Sainsbo it’s been sensible, and they’ve always provided a voucher for any price difference. Seems quite dull in comparison but fine by me!

These are very funny!
I never get a laugh tho, waitrose always email prior to coming with anything they've had to substitute so never a surprise and you can refuse it.

Last year I ordered a chestnut & butternut squash Wellington (veggie dish for my friend who was coming) and they emailed to say they had a beef Wellington coming 🤔 however I said no to that and when it came they sent a huge, serves 4-6 chestnut Wellington for the same price as a small one! Result!!!!!!!!!

Nothing will beat, for me though, double cream being substituted for double cream last Christmas. Same brand, same size carton, same price, same everything as I'd ordered! The delivery lady was as stumped as me

I had that on a previous delivery too. It was a '3 for £6' offer but instead of just subbing one item in the three they subbed who whole three with two originals and a third strange option.

Those of you who work for supermarkets is there a good reason why you can only have substitutions or not?

An extra tick box that would say it's OK to sub or not individual items? Or an option to say you are vegi, eat kosher, don't have dairy?

I also have a mental image of a young teenage picker being told, "if the item's not in stock pick something close to it", meaning close as in similar and the picker thinking it means something close by.

Tesco have a thing now called project evergreen sashh which is designed to cut back on wasted time etc. Basically if the item the pickers want is to I. The place it’s says it isn’t they have to put not available and then the substitution process starts - even if they’d know the correct item is in the next aisle!

That’s why you’ll see them say stuff like chicken is out of stock and can’t be subbed even if the next row has a whole shelf full as it’s in a promotion.

*isn’t in the place

I work for Waitrose and the sub thing is a difficult one, if the customer has selected no subs, there is nothing the pickers can do if the item isn't there. So yes the store might have 10 different packs of chicken breasts, but not the exact one the customer wants, so we can't sub it for anything. However if the customer has allowed subs, then its down to the picker to choose a suitable alternative. This is usually ok when say the customer has chosen essentials chicken breast, and we have none left, so we can sub for organic or free range and they pay just what they had ordered, however when a customer has chosen organic chicken breasts and we select essentials as that's all that's on the shelf, the customer often rejects it as they don't want non organic ones.

Stupid subs will usually be the picker. The only time I questioned one was when it said anti bacterial household wipes instead of anti bacterial (problem skin) face wipes!

My Aunt had 8 packs of printer paper delivered instead of bottles of lemonade for a party once. Very thirst quenching.

Some of it must be done at silly hours, that's the only reason I can think of for the crazy substitutions. We tick no substitutions now after having baby formula subbed a few times.

My favourite Tesco sub was when I ordered a 70cl bottle of Amaretto and received two 50 cl bottles grin]