Tesco cancelled my delivery due to severe weather

[GingerBeverage]

It's not much of chat topic but Tesco just cancelled my delivery due in 1 hour - 'because of the severe weather'.

My guess is that this is a school closing or public transport cancelled and they don’t have staff to make the deliveries. We can’t all demand that the little darlings be kept home and then wonder why essential services aren’t functioning when parents have to take the day off. 😂

What are all these other counties doing differently which makes them able to carry on?

Loads of things, actually.

The problem in the UK is that it's usually only the southern part that gets the extreme temperatures and it's not for very long at a time. Nobody can acclimatise, and it's never been worth it to set infrastructure up for long periods of heat. Then you get all the wailing wilmas in cooler areas saying why are you all worried about a bit of heat. Which is easy to say if your heatwaves top out at 28 degrees and you've never set foot on the central line on a 35+ day.

They definitely don't have Aircon in their vans, we regularly chat with the delivery drivers and they tell us every time. Tesco would rather pay the top bosses huge bonuses than shell out for Aircon for the people who actually do the hard work.

No idea where you live where 'lots of small shops' did home grocery deliveries - this has never been my experience.

Milk deliveries became a minority habit decades ago.
I agreed about risks for the elderly and vulnerable in this hear - which is why we do help our elderly neighbours out if required.

DS & DIL both delivery drivers and no, vans don’t have air con!! (Well Ocado might but Asda don’t) so please think of the drivers! A bottle of water is a lovely tip!

It’s also infrastructure, architecture and environment. The kind of road surfacing we use doesn’t do well in extreme heat, but the surfacing we’d need to use for that isn’t suitable for the colder, wetter weather we generally have. Even if we could replace every road, we’d find that would be far more disruptive in the long term as surfaces would fail much more quickly and more often. Our older architecture was designed to maximise solar gain for cooler weather. It’s fine to have shady rooms for a few weeks in the summer, but these become cold and gloomy for the rest of the year. We have many more taller buildings, designed to reduce downdrafts in our windy climate, which reduce the risk of injury for the majority of the year. The down side of this is that in a city there is no breeze in hot weather. There are fewer trees and green spaces providing shade because we need the space for residential and commercial buildings.

There are portable AC units, fans, solar shades etc all available for people to buy relatively cheaply to alleviate the worst excesses of heat, but for some reason people seem to want to point to some vague “they” who are supposed to do it for them. I live in Scotland and we have a portable AC unit which lives in the cupboard for most of the year, we have fans for every bedroom. On the ridiculously hot nights they move enough air to make it livable.

They don't have air con in the cabin. Numerous tesco drivers have told me this. I am in Dorset, don't know if it is different elsewhere. They are frequently sweltering in hot weather. Can't imagine lugging lots of crates up stairs in flats, or having to access difficult residences.

When I was growing up (in Yorkshire in the 80s/90s) we had milk and juice delivered by the milkman, vegetables/fruit/cheese from the greengrocer, meat delivered by the butcher . .. I can't recall getting bread delivered but that's about it

We can (and should) demand that when the government have issued a red weather warning, schools act accordingly.

Quite a few schools round me have closed, maybe Tesco are short staffed due to parents having to care for their children?

Tesco did that to me a couple of times. Haven’t used them since. I do wonder if it’s people taking a sickie to lie in their gardens, lol.

not all Ocado vans have air con in the cabs. I’ve asked in the past.

the refrigerators/freezers give off a lot of heat.

People seem to wait their workplace to shut but then nothing else that could possibly inconvenience them.

@Valpolichella

I remember getting stuck abroad due to “extreme” weather, which was about 2 inches of snow. The Canadians, who fly in and out with 2+ feet of snow couldn’t believe it

As a p p has mentioned there's a reason for that - finances and difference in climate.

Many Candian airports always have umpteen days of snow a year so the accountans can justify having lots of snow clearance personnel on hand and very expensive equipment parked up available for when (and it's a when) a storm hits. Even so and TBF even the Canadians often have to stop operations for hours on end when snow gets really bad.

You can't justify a similar investment at airports in the UK, though TBF places like Heathrow did spend and improve their snow/ice clearance a lot after they got stuffed by a really bad dump.of snow over a Christmas maybe 20 years ago.

Now....back to the heat......

Tesco vans here S Yorkshire/Derbyshire don’t have air con for the driver. Also the power needed to keep the cool, cool and the frozen, frozen in this weather will be much higher.

I’m a supermarket delivery tart so it’s Ocado this week and they do have air con. I will have to cross my fingers as we can’t get out of the house unless by taxi although I’d only be short of salady stuff.

That is an excellent point.

Yes i agree. But we should also affect that that will have a knock on effect on other services, because a lot of parents will have to take time off to look after their children.

I’ve spoken to a driver (Tesco) before they don’t have air con in the vans. Poor driver was melting. I’m assuming the fridge / freezer sections only work in certain temperatures. If they were to be driven above recommended maximum (and break) then it could invalidate the warranty.

I used to work for council and none of our vans/ hgvs had air conditioning. It’s generally an added extra from the manufacturer. If you have it then it though then it needs maintained/ refilled so it’s just another expense.

OP I had a similar severe weather cancellation after a storm and I got a £10 voucher so fingers crossed for you!

How can you be so completely ignorant to not consider the wellbeing of the people lugging it all about. They don’t have magic wands you know.

Yes it’s extreme heat and have to protect workers. Lugging crates /bags in this heat is physical work and seems many drivers are older people from when I see vans being driven

UK can’t cope if it’s snows. Can’t cope if it’s too hot

people will want rain soon

notice would have been nice but not always possible but to have the option to change to click and collect would have been nice

Who is going to pieces? Some deliveries have been cancelled, kids are off school for a couple of days. Hardly Armageddon territory.

In 2022 there were over 4,500 heat related deaths in England. This was the first time we used a red heat alert and largely people have the same attitude as you. “It’s only a bit of hot weather” etc. Summer 2025 was the hottest on record, we had 4 heatwaves but we had half the number of expected deaths because the weather warnings were in place and people paid attention.

The only excess drama that ever happens when it comes to weather warnings is from people who claim it’s the world gone mad and how we are falling to pieces.

@Larsaleaping i agree. There is a massive difference in the “feel” of a sunny day that’s 32 degrees and a day that’s 37 degrees.

I went for an early bike ride in the woods (ie full shade) with cycling-obsessed dc2 this morning at 6.15am, and by 7.15 it already feel sweaty and that wasn’t just from cycling. By 8.45 on the school run, it felt hot - and there’s still some cloud cover.

Next few days will be sizzling .

I don’t think anyone will be sunbathing outside in 37 degrees. The coolest place will be a shady room inside. AndI fully support Tescos being sensible about working conditions for their staff

Are you always so rude? What is your solution? We simply cannot afford to have the country grind to a halt every time we have “extreme” weather, because it is going to become commonplace, rather than extreme.

Personally, I’d look at scrapping the entire waste of money that is HS2 and use that to upgrade the current infrastructure to be more able to cope with the weather we are going to have.

Understandable but what about people vulnerable to heat who can't safely leave the house and now can't have food delivered either?

Must have been a storm because is only in the mid 20s at most at this time