Asda have fucked up my Christmas food shopping: a rant.

[EwItsAHooman]

Need to rent here so that I don't end up losing my temper with some undeserving person on the customer services helpline.

Booked my online food shop several weeks ago to be delivered tonight. Have gotten an email from Asda now detailing everything that has either been substituted or is not available. Out of 100 items, 28 have been substituted and 5 are unavailable.

Fucks sake.

And the substitutions.... What in the actual fuck!?

40 cocktail sausages, for making pigs in blankets, have been substituted for 12 cocktail sausages. How far do they think 12 will go!?

Frozen party food. A box of mini pizzas has been substituted for one pizza. Selection of Indian snacks has been substituted for spring rolls. Duck rolls have been substituted for spring rolls too. We'll be drowning in spring bloody rolls.

Sausage rolls have been substituted for a pack of Richmond sausages.

A pack of mixed "festive" cheeses has been substituted for a single block of Wensleydale.

Pickled gherkins are now pickled cucumbers.

Extra special fancy flavoured stuffing is now normal Paxo.

Turkey gravy has become chicken gravy granules.

Pretzel stars are now tortilla rolls.

Mint vienetta has become lemon ice cream.

These are just the ones I can remember without going back over the email.

And the kicker, the Birds Eye dippers have been substituted for Asda chicken nuggets. The dippers are for DS because he only eats fucking dippers (ASD) and only Birds Eye fucking dippers.

Unavailable items include cranberry sauce, goose fat, chicken skewers, and a few other things.

So 33% of the shopping is wrong and/or missing.

Customer services have been next to useless and I'm waiting on a manager calling me back (which is why I need to unload so that I can get all my fucks out now and then discuss it calmly when he/she does). Said to give any unwanted items to the driver and they'll refund them, which is all well and good but why have they fucked it up so badly in the first place? When it was ordered weeks ago, why wasn't the stock available? I expected one or two missing or substituted bits but thirty-fucking-three!?

So now I need to get the DC sorted, including one with ASD who hates the supermarket and is going to screech at top volume all the way there and all the way around (enjoy that, fellow shoppers!), will probably the violent somewhere between the checkout and the carpark so I can have a few festive thumps, and might even run off depending on exactly how busy it is. Which is why I shopped online in the first place.

And I can't even pour myself a gin and calm down because I've got to go to the fucking supermarket.

Sorry.

My ASDA order wasn’t too bad although the unavailable items were all on the shelves when DH nipped in just after delivery this morning so go figure.

Because the order will have been picked many hours before delivery.

I have no idea why people leave everything til the last day or two?

Today is my first Sunday off since the end of October (been doing my usual job plus working bank shifts weekends as need the money)
Everything needs doing today, back at work tomorrow, then Wednesday through til Monday.

That’s just me. I’m sure others have similar or completely different reasons but ‘nunya business’

Mine was delivered this morning and thankfully subs weren't too bad or random.
Asda man did give me a funny look for all the beer though.......

Ah OP you sound great. I hope you have a nice Christmas, even if it isn't all as planned 🎄🎄

It's the worst when you've ordered ages ago and then on the day the items are unavailable. Yours is a very high percentage though, hopefully they will at least give you a voucher as an apology!

I always use Ocado and every year they've had a couple of unavailable/subs. This year I was really lucky though, today's delivery only one sub and that was for a different brand of the same item and no issue for me at all.

*I have no idea why people leave everything til the last day or two?

We currently only have a small kitchen and my freezer is four drawers big so I can't put the Christmas food in there until most of my previous food shop is gone. A few months from now when we get finished extending into the utility room and incorporate the outhouse I'll have more storage space but in the meantime it's a council house sized kitchen (i e., small).

Asda man did give me a funny look for all the beer though.......

The booze I've ordered is on the safe list.

they don’t put the subs in one bag, no, you have to go through the entire shop to hand back what you don’t want.

The driver is going to be waiting until I've done that then, I'll have to break open the mince pies so he can have a snack while he waits.

He makes us laugh, he's like a caveman, he see's the turkey and immediately wants the two legs all to himself so he grabs them and runs

That made me laugh, gives me the mental image of him legging it with the legs and the rest of the turkey trailing behind.

I made a trifle last year and DS decided he'd have some. Didn't tell any of us that he was having any though and we only found out when I went to get it out the fridge and there was a fist-shaped hole hidden underneath some hastily applied squirty cream. We did wonder earlier why he'd been ages making himself a drink and that explained it. In his defence "I didn't like it so I put it in the bin, it's still there if you want it back."

I don't do online deliveries any more. Three were really memorably bad, and it was always booze and chocolates that I'd been charged for that were mysteriously missing.

We've had this before with the major supermarkets. Marks and Spencer is the only place that will guarantee you'll get what you ordered with no substitutions but the price you pay for that is queuing for nearly 2 hours over your allotted time slot (this was DH last night).
We actually went to Tesco yesterday go get most things (other than Christmas Day marks and Spencer's food) and actually there was loads of stock - plenty of turkeys etc. We'd have been fine just going in store to buy the lot instead of pre-ordering.
I always buy pigs in blankets and sausage meat stuffing weeks in advance and freeze.

@DeadCertain I’d normally agree that that was why. However the unavailable items in question were hairspray and lightbulbs. Neither big Xmas sellouts and literally shelves full. Yet all the Xmas stuff I ordered came fine.

I can't understand how they can justify charging you for items missing!

Argh OP that is very annoying! I have only ever done an ASDA online shop twice and attempted click and collect for both.

1st attempt was click and collect at a major ASDA superstore. I arrived with 2 DC in tow to the collection bay in the car park. This is brilliant I though. I don’t even have to get out the car! Well....the machines weren’t working so I had to decant DC and traipse up to the shop and wait in a queue of similarly irritated parents only to be told 20 mins later that oh they didn’t have my shopping ready for collection (despite text and email confirmations to the contrary).
After some time to get over this experience I tried again recently but decided to collect from a local petrol station to minimise traipsing. The guy in the van was perfectly nice but not a clue was had. He didn’t seem to understand who I was and why I was there and thought I was an employee of the petrol station (even whilst I was loading shopping into my car - I still don’t get his logic). He didn’t know how to use the handheld device to check the shopping so I ended up doing it myself. The substitutions (that I had annoyingly forgotten to turn off) include grapes for strawberries, shortbread for shorties, peppers for onions....I won’t be doing that again.

@Fridaydreamer that is weird!!

I think the worst thing about this is that the team who deal with sorting these messes out are not available until after Christmas?! Appalling customer service on what must surely be their busiest online days of the year. Things like this put people off a brand for life. I absolutely respect that people need time off, but I think that they should have a skeleton staff running.

I hope you get something sorted, OP

It was the year Asda missed my turkey, but kindly charged me for it that I realised that online supermarket shopping is basically giving a stranger a shopping list and your bank card. It’s not like Argos where they say if it’s in stock and once you order it’s yours. It’s just Dave wandering around Asda picking what he thinks you might wants instead of turkey for Xmas dinner.

Asda have turned up trumps a whole fresh turkey for £4 im gobsmacked

Asda pickers don't choose the substitutions now. A computer program does it.

I got a slightly different orange juice and a huge turkey substituted for a small one (only pay for the small) so did well by the sound of it. Glad you're getting sorted OP

Asda pickers don't choose the substitutions now. A computer program does it.

I'm not angry at the pickers, I know they're very busy and that they're doing a busy job for probably not very much pay. I'm not angry at the drivers or the manager I spoke to or the warehouse workers or any of those staff.

I'm angry at whichever department it is at Asda who, it seems, couldn't organise a piss up is a brewery because they've ballsed up my day and they've ballsed up the day of the lower-rung staff who have no doubt spent hours getting shit off countless people who haven't received the shopping they were expecting.

Asda have turned up trumps a whole fresh turkey for £4 im gobsmacked

Ah, but how big is it?

Some years ago, I ordered a stuffed turkey breast joint from Sainsbury's entertaining range. It was supposed to serve 6 and cost around £30.

It was actually a single turkey breast cut along one side like a pitta bread with a sausage shaped piece of stuffing. Needless to say, I didn't accept it.

I hope all of you manage to obtain alternatives easily & enjoy your Christmas.

I picked up my ASDA click & collect groceries earlier. In my car with blue badge in the window. Guy dumps the crates on the ground and stands there whilst I struggle to get to them, let alone pick them up. Took me 20 mins to lift 4 bags. All he did was roll his eyes!! Never again

@SoleBizzz Fresh food cannot be 'put aside weeks ago!!!!'

My goose and ham take up 1/4 of the fridge all to themselves. No way could I have stored them for more than a few days on top of having to actually eat normally in the meantime. As for veg, the carrots I bought midweek are already looking a bit sweaty.

The driver looked shattered, asked if I'd seen my list of substitutions then waited while I sorted them out.

Unpacked it and now have a list of items I want refunds on. Pack of yoghurts with three burst ones, I didn't notice until I opened the sleeve/wrap to put them away. Something smelled funny and when I tracked it down it was the dips, one corner of plastic had peeled up and that particular dip had curdled (vom). Eggs, they were at the bottom of a bag of fruit and veg, three were broken and most of the rest were glued to the cardboard with the dried egg gloop. Cheesecake was in a torn box which wouldn't bother me because I can wrap it back up but the cheesecake itself was damaged. Some short dates (27th December) but the items they're on can be frozen.

Oh well. It's done now and after a (hopefully) quick trip tomorrow, that's it's finished.

@&Mummy* did I say it could????!!! I suggest you calm down, drama Queen much?

That's really bad! I'm due to collect my order tomorrow (Morrison's) ar 9am, wonder if they have done any better - I paid £20 to reserve my order!