Weirdest supermarket replacements

[pinkksugarmouse]

My husband read an article in the Guardian today about some of the most ridiculous alternatives from supermarkets.

Customer ordered a bunch of flowers and received leeks.
Ordered a steak and received dog food
and my favourite
Customer ordered sanitary towels and received....tortilla wraps 🤣

Can anyone top that?

I ordered black hair dye, and received an ash blonde.

I ordered a bottle of Coke, many years ago and got toilet rolls.

I ordered tampax and got baby formula.

i once ordered 5 kiwis and got 5 pots of kiwi shoe polish! They had chosen random colours.

I had spring greens substituted for cauliflower ... but it was ok as my cauliflower was substituted for spring greens!

DP's Chicken enchilada was substituted for a beef burrito and my beef burrito was substituted for.....a chicken enchilada. This was in the same shop. We both got what we wanted but it was classed as "2 substitutions".

Most weeks I get a £1.30 white baguette subbed with a £1.30 white baguette. Same size, same product. It baffles me.

Cat food swapped for dog food was the best one 😂.

My Tesco is worse than most as they generally dont swap due to 'no suitable alternative'....E.g Bread swapped for heehaw - no way was a huge Tesco totally out of all bread/rolls!

There was a supermarket picker AMA on here a short while back, I think they said the little PDA tells them what to substitute! I imagine most of these weird swaps (kiwi polish for kiwi fruit) can be explained by mediocre supermarket software.

Logical perhaps - flat coke is great for an upset tummy so just in case that's why you wanted coke?

Extra fine green beans with Aubergine
and
Pack of 3 Sweet peppers with Cherry tomatoes

Waitrose - same shop. Must have got a joker doing the picking

Years ago, when internet shopping first started, Sainsburys website simply had to an alphabetical list of items for you to select from, there were no graphics at all.
If an item in your order wasn't available, they sent the next item on the alphabetical list, so you might order two baguettes 🥖 🥖 but you would get two bananas 🍌 🍌
or your carrots 🥕 🥕 🥕 would become cucumbers 🥒 🥒 🥒

It certainly made it an exciting shopping experience!

Four small cans of baked beans instead of two baking potatoes.

I ordered lemon scented toilet bleach. They substituted a bag of lemons 😂

A good while ago but in the same shop I received:

Newborn sized nappies (id ordered size 4 toddler pull ups for a skinny 4 year old)
16 Frozen fish fingers (id ordered 2 packs of 2 fresh sole for a dinner party)
Chicken nuggets (id ordered raw chicken thigh fillets
Washing up liquid (instead of own brand washing machine pods)
Pink coconut mushroom sweets (instead of you've guessed it, raw mushrooms, kids were super pleased with this)

What is worse is the driver didn't want to take the errant items back. I was majorly pissed off and it was over 15 years before I placed another order for online shopping! Tesco however did send me a £25 gift card but that still meant my then dh had to drive the 15 miles to the supermarket to buy the missing items grrr

I swear I’ve read on here before about an OP that ordered sanitary towels and they were replaced with cat litter, which did make me laugh.

There as a poster here many moons ago who bought raspberry jelly and got ky jelly.

A friend's son works for Tesco order packing and he heard of someone ordering tampons and receiving marshmallows.

I suspect that the software is far better now I will add but now you have choices, back when Tesco got my order wrong they were the only ones delivering rurally

My favourite was ordered pizza, got coconut yoghurt.

I plainly do not believe that the large Sainsbury's had literally no pizza that was more suitable.

I started a thread about mine on here many years ago. I ordered a bottle of white wine and they brought me a loaf of white bread instead.

Supermarket pickers are timed and under a lot of stress, time is money and every second is accounted for. I can literally run up and down the isles picking items up to 6 customers at a time, providing items are on shelf and in date l might have a chance of getting the pick rate, but you have constant interruptions customers asking where stuff is, also all the trolleys look exactly the same, it can be very easy to mix the the trolleys up especially if several pickers down same isle.

I appreciate what you are saying. I think a big part of the problem is computer software which is programmed with these alternatives.

Plus BeneathTheSea this is just a lighthearted thread. No shade. Just sharing of funny and bizarre experiences. I've had mostly excellent customer service from supermarket staff and appreciate their work. * *

I wonder how effective they would be. 🤣