CO OP Completely Empty

[Thegirlinthegreenscarf]

How's your local Co Op ? Ours is mostly empty apart from a few bits here and there on various shelves. Fridges are completely empty. I think Co Op have handled this situation shocking, in our area we didn't know anything was wrong as they said they had fridge issues and deliveries were late arriving. I popped in after work for gin thankfully they had that or I would have lost my shit at those cyber hackers 😅

M&S sent an email apologising and updates. Nothing like that from Co Op not even an apology email for our data being stolen 🙄

We’re not the only shop in our area fortunately and we’re telling everyone who asks.

As I said, it’s all over social media and news outlets. They can’t do any more than that!

Their email system will be hit and miss because they have been hacked. This group get into all the IT systems and encrypt it so Co-op staff cannot log in to anything at all. The same as Marks and Spencer, they are locked out of their own systems and have to rebuild them.

Yeah some stores had their email hacked. Others even lost use of the chip and pin so had to go cash only.

And shop floor staff weren’t made aware from day one either. I’d been away then back in work for 2 days before it was mentioned to me. I’m not entirely sure those higher up were 100% aware. It initially manifested itself as a couple of software issues we all thought was a glitch in the system.

They’ve had a cyber attack which has caused so much wide-spread disruption which they’re still struggling with.

It’s not really a leap to consider that this cyber attack is also probably why some people have received an email and others haven’t. They’re clearly trying their best to reach people whose details they still have in the middle of a nightmare situation, otherwise no one would be receiving emails at all. It’s not like they’re just being incompetent. People’s data have literally been stolen and you’re complaining that you haven’t received an email. Come on OP, a bit of common sense wouldn’t go amiss here. Fair enough if you choose not to be on social media but if you don’t bother to keep up with the news then you’re going to isolate yourself from knowledge that you would otherwise have had. Not sure what else to say really.

I work for a company who suffered a cyber attack last year, I don't think people realise how devastating it can be to companies. We didn't have access to systems that would have allowed us to email our customers, hackers can stay in the system but completely hidden and waiting for you to turn a system back on then will pounce on data. We literally had to turn off every process and system and our IT department had to meticulously check every line of code before turning things back on. We never got our phone system back, we had to have a whole new one built from scratch, while customers were screaming at us on social media for not answering our phones.

Companies also employ specialist cyberattack crisis companies to manage how they deal with it, we were advised to give out minimal information until the ransom deadline had passed.

Do you expect them to come to each house and make them aware?

I didn’t know about it but wondered why my local one was really empty yesterday. I just went somewhere else.

Why all the drama? Try somewhere else or do an online shop for delivery.

Fron what I have been told it’s been over a week now and our own IT people are still battling with the hackers. They are still trying to get in!

Staff are encouraged not to talk about it as a cyber attack, more delivery issues and apologise for the inconvenience

It's this lack of transparency that will annoy people the most.

I wonder whether we could be about to see the downfall of the Co Op. The loss of revenue must be enormous. And the cost of the recovery work for the IT systems. Potentially a ginormous fine from the ICO if they've not reported things properly. People boycotting them because of Shirine's stance re the Supreme Court ruling. They're in a dreadful mess.

A lot of people that use the Co op live very remotely, some on the Scottish Islands, they can't just pop to another shop or just get an online shop, not all Co ops are in holiday places where Tesco is down the road.

I work in a large Coop in a very rural area. Not as bad as the Scottish Islands thankfully but for us it's 18 miles to another supermarket. In another town not too far away it's over 30 miles. Co-op has 5 large stores here and it's becoming ridiculous and unfair on the locals. However there is nothing we can do about it.

The second I opened this thread I got a message from Dh saying he'd popped into M&S Waterloo Station and there was nothing in it!

Surely if they have stock in where houses they can manually process and deliver to stores

Manually process how? How do they know what fridge/freezer/shelf space stores have without the systems?

Well it seems pretty obvious that there's plenty of fridge/freezer/shelf space currently.

Still Arran is a lovely place @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

It's a vicious circle. You plan for this or that but IT changes. Like your new phone becomes old/obsolete. The hackers take the security as a challenge. How much do you budget? 1 million, 100 million? Like all businesses they want to pay the least for the most or what they can get away with.

Companies are going to have to spend a LOT of money trying to hack proof their systems. But then hackers will be spending all their time trying to be one step ahead of the game - working professionally.

The only thing I can imagine would be (smaller) companies having manual backup systems but god knows if that's at all viable a prospect.

How much stock and how many warehouses? Temperature control, sell by dates, stock in/out. It's all computerised. Sending people round with pen and paper doesn't work. Everything on pallets for easy loading. Look at those Amazon warehouses where robots collect the items. All run by software.

X post with @Pedallleur

I thought that I read that the hackers were extorting their targets.

Not obvious at all. Our freezers are rammed. It’s fresh we’re short of. But they won’t know that. And they don’t have the staff to phone every store to find out. Each store has been affected differently. And as our systems are messed up even if they called us to ask what we needed, they can’t access their own systems to see why stock they have. The warehouse is massive they can’t possibly go out on foot to see what they have,

They are. They’re getting into our systems and demanding money. They’ve has M&S and Harrods in the last few weeks. M&S are still having problems a few weeks on!

We’re in the Channel Islands and Co-op, M&S and Waitrose are our 3 major supermarkets. Thank goodness for Waitrose! We’re used to weather affecting fresh supplies but that rarely goes on more than a day or two.

Oh yes. It's been absolutely gorgeous this last week.

Our little Coop is slowly getting fresh stock in. We've had no issues with bread,milk,meat etc.
Sandwich fridge stocked.
It's the fresh fruit and veg that were hammered. Couldn't get Jersey Royals or asparagus.
I shop at Aldi for the weekly shop but our little Coop is usually great for a quick emergency shop.
I hope they bring back the e dividends after this and get rid of the random promotional stuff at the end of the aisles. It's got the same square footage of our garage so they really need to focus on what local shoppers buy.

Always when something complex goes wrong, someone suggests the answer will be simple. It’s the Brexit Boris approach.

Complex things are complex. Whiff whaffing about obviousness doesn’t change that.

Ours (Heart of England) says it is independent of the "Co-op Group" too. But is still affected.