M&S rotten fruit now no BBF date

[OnTheBoardwalk]

I, like every else no doubt, have always taken best before dates for what they are. You see the date, have a sniff then crack on

since M&S have taken the dates off I’ve noticed all my fruit shop has been rotten and end of life. I had a delivery Saturday of 4 apples that usually last forever however they were rotten round the stem today. I've no idea when they were packaged up

i'm going to not buy M&S fruit/veg due to this latest initiative and go back to my own smell tests on BBF dates from other suppliers. Much less waste

is it just me?

Did you have any joy, @Discovereads ?

Our nearest Waitrose is 15 miles away and closing down in a few weeks. No way am I taking mouldy fruit all the way to hexham, 35 miles away, where our deliveries come from.

I got an auto refund for my M&S mouldy fruit. I do think if I start returning EVERY mouldy item I might be put on a dodgy returner list.

won’t stop me I’m returning every dodgy item

Me too @OnTheBoardwalk - but hopefully if enough folk do that they will realise they can't keep dishing out mouldy food and do something about it.

I went into M&S at about 11am yesterday morning (20th) , and the only reduced fruit and veg I saw were 2 packets of very ripe Pomorino tomatoes with a coded date of the 19th.

As I was nearby, I looked again at about 5pm and those two packets were still there, although there were many other food items had yellow stickers by then. Some items had their second yellow sticker, showing a further reduction, but those tomatoes hadn’t.

Perhaps shoppers are noticing?

Brexit

The U.K. used to import most of its bananas via the EU which had a trade deal with the main banana producing countries. Now, we not only have to pay more but we also only get access to the second rate banana that the EU don’t want.

similar tale for many food stuff - especially fruit and vegetables

Seems like getting rid of the dates is counter productive. I would never throw fruit and veg away just because it was out of date. The dates enabled me to eat the food in order of what was likely to go bad quicker, now I don’t know so I seem to be wasting more food.

Yep, we've noticed the same. Used to get M&S fruit as a bit of a treat because it was always great quality but for the past few months we've had endless mouldy, off berries and even apples that looked ok through the packet but were rotten once bitten into. I took 8 quids worth back a couple of weeks ago because I was so annoyed.

Waitrose awkward returns policy makes me not shop with them either.