Bloody Tesco home delivery

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Apparently if they don't have the item you have ordered in stock they will give you a substitution of equal or higher value. I have noticed that if you order something from their value range that isn't in stock they claim to not have a substitution (presumably because the alternative would be quite a lot more expensive for them).
I would much rather be offered the chance to pay for a higher priced item than have to go out to the shop to get something essential like bread which kind of defeats the purpose of having your shopping delivered to your door.
And no Tesco - I don't believe you that you had no pasta in the entire shop to substitute for the value pasta I ordered today or no baby wipes of any description the other week.
I'm seriously considering ordering from a different supermarket as it's an absolute waste of time getting home delivery and then having to go out to get the bits they 'haven't got'. Are any of the other supermarkets any better?

Oh and Tesco (I think it was) left 4 crates of grub outside our front door which should have been delivered to an address down the road.

Being neighbourly we went and told them about the mistake and helped carry the goods to the right house.

I have noticed that with tesco substitutions. Totally agree that they won't substitute something that is actually more expensive although they say that they will. I get quite a few of their value things - bananas, carrots, onions, babywipes, pasta etc and they never provide substitutes.

Same with items on offer - I ordered the same half price tupperware tubs THREE times and each week they were "out of stock". Often items that look like a great bargain are "out of stock" this week it was half price lentils - I ordered them, they went into my basket, but then when I logged back in I could not longer order them as no longer available.

We use Waitrose Deliver (can't get Ocado here) and they are very good and sensible about substitutions. They've definitely subbed own brand stuff for more expensive things. We once got Tiptree's jam instead of Waitrose own brand, which was lovely.

I have had stuff a few pence more expensive before but they just won't do it if it's a massive difference I think. They should just be honest and say that they won't substitute with an item more than 50p more than the one you ordered or something rather than them, like a pp said, insulting your intelligence.

I buy value stuff sometimes, but HONESTLY do not be wasting your money on value pasta! Tis not made with 100% durham wheat and its not as if the middle or top of the range stuff is expensive. Tis a saving not worth making imvho.

FYI Tesco have a list of what they call essentials (or something like that) which must always be supplied if ordered. The list includes nappies and potatoes and quite possible pasta (essential IMO). When we ordered tescos own nappies and received no substitution I phoned customer services who told me they should definately have sent nappies as they are on this list. They sent some pampers out to me that night at no extra charge and also gave me free delivery on my next shop. I also have had no problem with them since. Qite often get higher priced substitutions. I would phone and complain.

Well I get wholewheat non-value pasta for me and the little 'uns but dh said he was sick of spending 3 quid on pasta salads at work and asked me to get a massive bag of economy pasta and make some for him to take in. It's not the best quality but at 18p for a massive bag you can't complain (dh will eat ANYTHING).

Didn't subsitute nappies in my shopping one time. Was livid.

I am a recent Online food shopper.

I tried Sainsbos for a while. Very good. Their £5 for 2 bottles of English rose deal was great, the wine was even drinkable!

Tescos the nearest supermarket to mine, so having usually done all my offline shipping there I tried them ONCE. I ordered tesco cotton buds. didn't have them and didn't send a substitute. Fruit and veg was a disaster. melon tasteless, half of the avocado pack was off and had to throw it away.

So, having previously been scared of Asda, but having found myself near a store in Reading and in need of stuff I gargled my Rescue Remedy and took a deep breath and went in and did a shop. I was really impressed by their food, and the prices seemed reasonable too.

I tried an online shop a couple of weeks ago and another that arrived yesterday.

Ok so on the first ship I ordered Tahini, and they sent me a moroccan tomato and herb cooking sauce but the sauce they sent was divine, even if I couldn't make houmous with it! They also replaced pastrami with salami, but didn't connect that I had already bought salami, so was rather well stocked with the stuff in the end, but again, it was fine, we ate it!

They have subsituted a few things this time, but tbh, it's kind of similar items this week, and at least they sent something!

The other bonus is that the first order I did was NOT 10% cheaper than tescos, so they will be sending me a voucher for the difference!

I never thought I'd be advocating Asda, but so far, I'm really impressed!

Asda did this to me recently when I'd ordered their own brand of cat food. So, I called them up and asked them to explain why they had not one single box of cat biscuits in the entire store.

They couldn't so they instead sent the driver back out with an appropriate quantity of Go-Cat. Had they done so to start with it would have saved them and me a lot of unnecessary hassle.

YANBU, OP. I totally get what you're saying and I'd be very annoyed too.

Got my Tesco delivery today - I'd ordered Market Value (ie. el cheapo) white potatoes but they were subbed for Tesco own brand Maris Pipers for £0.89p! So maybe it is a management level discretion?

Any Tesco employees care to shed light on this - there must be someone on MN who works for them?

And much as I hate hate hate Tesco, they have dropped their prices this week and I did get a pretty big shop for £50 :)
Oh and the delivery man's lovely and always asks after my DD as his DD is the same age

(unlike sweaty Asda delivery boy whose hairy bumcrack I caught a glimpse of once, ugh)

Have you tried actually specifying the sub that you want if the item isn't available? (I never have cos I'm too lazy) but that might work?

Ocado is worse imo - they cancelled (by email) at 1am for a delivery that should've been at 10am that morning. It was bloody inconvenient, I'd ordered on the Friday for a Monday delivery as we were away over theweekend and had no food in. Their apology was a £25 off voucher, which sounds good; unfortunately I'd used a voucher of exactly that value for the order that should've been delivered, so (as I would've had to re-place the order) I wouldn't have actually gained anything.

Did my first ever sainsbury online shop last week, i did not realise that the delivery guy goes through the substituted item list with you. was only butter and shower gel so nothing to get burnt up about, however I had ordered two boxes of durex on offer, just imagine - sorry, no plain old featherlights substituted with nobbly glow in the dark etc etc. Will stick to Boots the Chem in future....

@ calma

It depends on your local store. If it isn't delivered, I usually don't get it, and that includes groceries. I was a Sainsbury regular, until they switched the store it came from. The original one, absolute marvellous, I cannot say enough good about them. I twigged that they had moved me to another store when one 'charming' driver watched me lug forty litres of liquid in various bottles down six stone steps with my arm in a sling (another dislocated shoulder). After the two delivery drivers on the last trip started grumbling that I wasn't unpacking their crates quick enough, and I wasn't even asking them to carry them further than the gate, I decided that enough was enough!

Tescos here are incredibly awful, and I refuse to play 'delivery roulette' with them ever again, but they are fine for my uncle 100 miles away. Ocado are lovely, really and truly lovely, but apart from the cost (not too bad if you are just picking up good quality basics) they don't have a humungous range.

Asda freeze up the money in your bank account up to a week before they deliver, there have been loads of threads on this. One thing I found is that if I put my shop together on mysupermarket (info from the moneysavingexpert) and then go on to Asda from there, I can usually faff and fiddle until I am ready to order, then usually get a delivery for the next day from Asda, saving any worry re bank (or more worry than normal). And so far Asda have been fine. I have had good quality stuff with plenty of shelf life.

It is always worth shopping around.

It's not just value stuff, I ordered a huge (1.5kg) bottle of Heinz ketchup, it was out stock and they had no suitable substitutions. Okay, it's not an essential (although try telling dh that!) but did they really not have any other heinz ketchup?

Never had a problem with Asda subs. Last week I got double the turkey steaks for the same price.

Sorry but I have to disagree about Tesco. I've had quite a few substitutions that have been for a much higher priced item - the most memorable one being when I ordered a "value" kettle, they didn't have it in stock so got substituted for one worth £20! I also had a brief and wonderful time when I kept ordering Nescafe refill packs and they never had them, so kept getting 200g jars for about £3.

I have serious issues with Asda however, they once left me without nappies, wipes, pasta, potatoes and bread on one memorable shop. Never again.

I have had value stuff substituted with more expensive items. I've had the odd gripe with Tesco delivery but generally find they are pretty good. Tried Sainsburys and Asda once, not very impressed, Sainsburys turned up very early without warning or apology and it wasn't very clear what substitutions they'd made. Asda's frozen stuff was in a cool bag and the ice cream was half melted.

I was a bit dubious about the value pasta, but tried it recently and tbh I can't really tell the difference.

I've stopped using the Tesco deliveries where I live for 2 reasons
1st is that despite me ticking "bags" evey week, they stills end it all loose int the boxes, eggs getting smashed by bottle of wine milk, etc.
2nd - Our "local" Tesco is the same one the home deliveries come from but nothing I buy insotre is ever added to my favorites. 2 months ago i bought a lovely wine, insotre. Went to find it in ym favourites only to find it wasn't there and I cannot remember the name of it

However has anyone else noticed this littlething Asda do. 3 items I ordered just weren't added to my shoping list this week, last week it was 2 things.
For example - I ordered a crispy duck ready meal for DS2. It appeared in the email confirmation shopping list. Yet on the delivery note with the shopping it didn't appear and wasn't delivered, same with a cheesecake, I'd ordered 2,and on the delivery note it says
Ordered - 2
delivered -1.
No explaination at all was given

Tesco are pants, DH had to collect our shoppping from the van the other Sunday, it had our Sunday dinner on it and the van had broken down. Fair enough, however, they rang to tell us about this 45 minutes after our delivery slot ended, we've moved over to Sainsburys.

"1st is that despite me ticking "bags" evey week, they stills end it all loose int the boxes, eggs getting smashed by bottle of wine milk, etc."

This happened to me, and I ended up ringing up. I think in the end I had to go into my user profile and change it in there.

Is this tesco subs cheaper items for more expensive at no extra cost a new thing? I'm sure it never used to be like that - sure last time I used it, you could accept the substitutions (and pay for them!) or send them back.