Several items on long ago booked leading Supermarket home delivery now unavailable!

[DancingDonkey]

I booked an Xmas delivery slot with one of the leading supermarkets in late November. I'd carefully planned the menu etc.

I've just logged back in today to add some more items to this delivery, when I noticed that several of the items I've asked for are listed as 'No longer available'. I wouldn't mind if it was the odd thing here or there but these Christmas staples, such as chestnuts, breadcrumbs etc. All but one of the ingredients I needed for my pudding are also now unavailable.

I'm now going to have to do an additional shop I didn't want to do, as well as totally reconsider my pudding.

I'm pretty hacked off to be honest as I had booked this specifically because it's hard for me to get to the shops at the best of times. I particularly wanted to avoid it at this time of year.

I thought the whole point of them releasing delivery slots early was so that you could ensure you got a delivery and all your hard to get items! I appreciate they can't guarantee items the rest of the year, but I would have thought they would have made more of an effort at Christmas.

Anyway I posted this as a warning really, if you have a Christmas delivery booked you might want to have a double check in your basket to make sure your items are all available.

My order arrived this morning. All there, no substitutions and a lovely cheerful delivery driver.
As I later drove past the Tesco Extra store I could see they had staff directing traffic in the car park and queues half a mile down the road.
I know which I prefer.

To be fair, most of the big supermarkets around here have sold out of Christmas puddings and mince pies.

They said they didn't get any more delivered in the week before Christmas, as they need the store rooms clear for Boxing Day.

We had the same experience last year, so bought the pudding weeks ago.

Tesco delivered the rest of our stuff this morning with no subs.

As PP said, it is the slot you are reserving, not the food.

Why don't people buy things like Christmas puddings, that keep for months, earlier?

My Ocado order just dispatched. I'm missing one of two bottles of milk and one of two boxes of stuffing, both of which I can live without so I'm happy.
Just need to sort it all out now as half of it is my Mums.

My chocolate is all there so sod everything else. Merry Christmas

My Tesco order arrived yesterday - friendly driver who carried everything into the kitchen, and I had no substitutions or anything. Much better than braving the shops!

My Ocado delivery is due now and the only missing item is soured cream so I'm happy.

I have been shopping online for the last few months as i am currently housebound and have to rely on the service 100%. I thought getting a delivery close to Christmas may be a problem so i actually booked a slot 3 weeks ago. I am worried now that i might not have such a good feast this year...

In my experience, the 'available' or 'not available' statuses are not a reference to whether there is stock. It's normally whether that product is stocked at Tesco stores at all any more. I've found that it's usually to do with the packet size and that they still sell the product, but under a different size.

e.g. you might have ordered a 200g packet of chestnuts in November, but come December, they no longer stock that and only have 400g packets. Unfortunately they don't let you know about this. I suppose if they automatically updated it to something similar that is available, too many people would complain.

I find this happens so much. If you use online shopping regularly and go back to previous orders you see it all the time. It often tells me that my bag of apples or oranges that i got last time isn't available anymore but I know they still sell oranges so I search for oranges and low and behold, they are there, just a slightly different pack size.

I don't think the Tesco website is clever enough to know about the stock level in your local store when you place the order. The pickers get the products off the shelves like ordinary customers and there are deliveries several times a day to most stores. You will still therefore get substitutions. I don't work for Tesco - i've just picked this up from being a customer and my ExH used to work at Tesco when he was a student.

Yeah, some of my items for tomorrow are no longer unavailable.

OCAS don't deliver in my area yet. Looks like a trip to aldi is is order tomorrow.

available *

My Sainsbury's ordered arrived (early!) with only one substitution, which I'm happy with. Means I don't have to go anywhere after I've been to M&S tomorrow morning.

I'm not sure how I'm going to get everything in my fridge, however...Tetris was bad enough today!

I feel your pain horace. Just shoved everything in my fridge and realised that there is no room for the turkey which i am picking up tomorrow
This is taking fridge tetris to the extreme...

Mine was delivered this morning intact apart from a cheese substitution, I can deal with that.

This happened to me last year. The bastards didn't have the right potatoes for a roast amongst other things. Had to go in store! Nightmare.

I've just popped a couple go bits in the fridge. We will likely start a new milk tomorrow, so that'll move from the shelf to the door. Then I shall see where I'm up to. Extreme Tetris indeed. :-)

Grrrr

No mincemeat hfgertrtza

We've had the confirmation of our Ocado delivery today. Our substitutions are:

Celebration Paxo instead of normal Paxo. This is really only for DH, so not the end of the world.

Chocolate biscuits instead of ginger ones. Again, not really that bad.

I've just received my sainsbury's delivery. The only sub was walkers crisps instead of their own brand so I'm happy.
I use them regularly and have never had any problem.

I have a sainsburys order coming first thing in the morning, but there's no crucial Christmas day stuff on the order. Just normal boring midweek shop stuff like butter, fish fingers, soya milk (the type I like isn't available in our local smaller store), oh, and bread (which I've only just remembered - my breadmaker is currently on the go! We'll have a lot of that in the morning then!)

Not cancelling anything, though. Not after last night's website outage. Bread will be practically inhaled with the boys off school.

My Sainsbury's order arrived with no mad substitutions or missing items.

To be fair though my critical items like Christmas pudding have been sitting in my spare room for weeks as they always discount them in October and November and then run out a fortnight before Christmas.

My tesco shop arrived and is fine. They substituted the butternut squash I'd ordered with ready chopped butternut squash so I was delighted. My sprouts are the saddest looking sprouts you've ever seen though so I may have to buy others.

I had to nip into tesco tonight but have my main order coming tomorrow (same store delivers to me). Whilst there I noticed they had a large amount of something I've ordered but when adding a couple of bits online tonight they've said it's unavailable. I cannot believe that they sold a shelf full of gluten free crumpets in 90 minutes. Very strange

I always use morrisons and l bloodys luvs um! The app is really easy to use, good use by dates, they dont take the money until after it has been delivered, never had a substitution as the driver explained the shopping is picked in a warehouse, and the driver turned up 40minutes early yesterday he wasnt due until between 2 & 3pm arrived at 1:20 and gave me half a box of xmas gingerbread men as i was his last delivery

My batteries are back online. But £2 dearer. Cheeky fucks.

Another happy Ocado customer this morning. Our Christmas order arrived this morning - no substitutions. The advantage of having a centralised warehouse.