Aghhh - Tesco substitutions

[Bellyblueboy]

I know - I should have expected it. Did my online Christmas shop as soon as the slots opened. It’s coming tonight.

unavailable with no substitutes -

mince pies, custard, brandy cream, Parma ham, raspberries, smoked salmon, just roll cinnamon swirls.

know I have to go out again after doing the marks and Spencer shop at 8am.

ordering system sucks. How can Tescos have run out of all these popular Christmas foods on 23rd December!!!!!

the rage I feel seems disproportionate 😂😂

Is it better to have a morning or evening delivery slot for getting items in stock?

5 unavailable and 20 subs here 😭

I can't face the Christmas supermarket crush and I want to drink wine tonight so can't go late either 😕

12 subs with Asda. I rejected 3 the rest were fine. The strangest one was chestnuts being substituted with gravy powder !

No stuffing, parsnips, Turkey gravy or beef gravy in my Asda click and collect at lunchtime. Turkey gravy was substituted with cranberry sauce

I got 21 subs and an unavailable red cabbage 🤦 from Asda, some were reasonable others wtf, had to send DH out for bread sauce, pork pie and Christmas pudding, and said red cabbage was not to be had unfortunately. I think they should prioritise these slots that have been booked for weeks, plenty of people book them because for whatever reason they can't shop. If they made it so you ordered and couldn't change it they would know what stock to have for the orders, not rocket science. I have severe anxiety around crowds so booking this slot I thought would be the best thing, obviously not, the poor delivery driver looked mithered to death he'd obviously been dealing with grumpy customers, poor sod😁 When there were more of us I used to get m and s package for six, they gave you a timed slot and they were like a well oiled machine plus the food was divine, never anything missing, just two of us now so not really worth it.

We got mince pies for Santa... they subbed it for hot cross buns... I kid you not. I can't leave a hot cross bun out for Santa

Honestly Santa loves a change every now and then

Not necessarily. Most stores have the .com starting really early, say 5/6am so they tend to get priority over customers by default. My old store used to look like it had been ransacked by midday (even at non Christmas times) when there hadn't been that many customers in. If a store has a night shift, the majority of restocking is done overnight, occasionally they’re working backstock in the day to try and gap fill. More so at Christmas, although equally there will be some additional day shifts at this time of year.

To me, the distinct lack of stock availability when they’re picking .com is because they’re aren’t enough staff to manage the bumper deliveries, because store managers are incentivised by head office to run as lean as they possibly can. Then only 1 or 2 folk off sick makes a massive difference. Yes, technically the .com are supposed to search for stuff that’s “in stock” out the back, but that’s hard enough even in the middle of the year, let alone the chaos of the warehouse at Christmas.

@MigGirl We had this too. Our Tesco bread sauce was subbed for gravy; like that is equivalent 😂

No subs, everything available yesterday morning for me. Also driver was on time. I've never once in 12 years of online grocery shopping had a bad Christmas delivery.

I was confused as to why my local Tesco was rammed, car park full, queues etc on Tuesday lunchtime? Tuesday? Lunchtime? Did the whole world need to do its grocery shopping right when I needed to run in for a sandwich and some cat food?
Are there suddenly more people in the world needing food? I don't get it at all.

Nothing missing and no substitutions on my Morrisons delivery either - so happy! I’ve still had to pop to the shops today but that was for things I’d forgotten to order

tbh our Morrisons online delivery is pretty reliable all year round and they have the friendliest drivers

This.

0 subs with Tesco today. Mind you I suppose I shouldn't be all that surprised, subs are pretty uncommon with Tesco IME (unlike Asda!).

I got exactly this as well!!! I bought 48 pugs in blankets and panicked😂

One substitution from Sainsbury’s and that was own brand condensed milk replacing Carnation.

No sub for skimmed milk, surely something was available?

Morrisons were the same this year for me! Last year there was nothing that was missing re Christmas dinner.

I had a few substitutes but mostly acceptable. However, this time I got mainly not available (no substitute offered) I was fuming when I got the email!
Here's what's unavailable and no substitute:

Carrots
Maris piper potatoes
Stuffing
Pigs in blankets
Pate
Profiteroles
Eggs

I already had a delivery on Wednesday but some of the stuff was dated Christmas Eve so I handed it back. I went to Tesco yesterday in person and got my meat. I wasn't risking that in an online order.

So we r gonny have to go out tomorrow again to get the missing items!

I got Tesco delivery yesterday with only 1 good sub. Tesco are by far the best here. Asda and Morrisons usually rubbish.

We've had our email from Morrisons ahead of delivery. No double cream for the Boxing Day trifle and no doughnuts. We have gone to the Co op. They had no double cream but have extra thick brandy cream so I got that. The other substitutions were like for like. No Morrisons peaches, Del Monte sent. No Morrisons stockpots. Knorr sent.
Very happy. Well done Morrisons.

I checked mine and loads was out of stock so cancelled it, went myself and there was only one thing not available in the actual store

Waitrose absolutely nailed it this year - everything as ordered bar one packet of 2 croissants, which was subbed with a pack of 4. Perfect.

Asked for regular Pringles - got some kind of low-salt, multi-grain Pringle, which is vaguely similar to the former with all the joy sucked out of it.

I'm sorry, I know that's an annoying sub but that one made me laugh 🙈🤣 I'm sure Santa will enjoy a hot cross bun!

Our tesco delivery came earlier. We have always been lucky with substitutions really, nearly always sensible subs and not too much unavailable. Sounds like we're lucky.
Today's subs were.... wensleydale with cranberry & blueberry not just cranberry. And the slightly odd but not bad one, swapped frozen croissants for another brand of croissants, and then the frozen pain au chocolat substituted for the frozen croissants they just told me were unavailable 🤷‍♀️

I stopped using the xmas slots after the first and last utter disaster about 7 years ago. Never again. Everything substitued for nothing like what it was.

After last year I vowed to never do an online food shop before an important date ever again.
My delivery came on 23rd and almost all of the meat products were 'use by 23rd' and a lot of the veg wasn't available. If it was the snack foods I could have made peace with subs or not being available but key elements for our Xmas dinner?? Had to go to the shops anyways and wait for a refund.

I did my shopping yesterday morning and while yes the shop was insanely busy, the worst bit was trying to navigate around the pickers, but at least I was able to select things with appropriate dates

What?!