Waitrose delivery man just walked straight in?!

[Brighton5555]

Hello just wanted to hear other peoples thoughts on this. Use Home shopping for food very often, have used all the usual chains such as Ocado, Sainsburys and Asda and decided to give Waitrose a shot with their £20 off your first shop offer...

I booked a early delivery for this morning 7-8am. The guy came within that time, took forever to bring the shopping over from the van to my door, I always order roughly the same amount and I’ve never know it to be this long!

More unnerving was the fact that when he first came I met him at the door he dropped some bags at my step and told me he was off to bring more so I went in closed my front door as I have a toddler running about and a elder son getting ready for school and was standing in my kitchen unloading the bags when he walked straight in the door without knocking which was firmly closed and stood in my hallway with some more bags in his hand.... it made me feel pretty uncomfortable and no other delivery driver has ever done that...

Then I start to smell a lovely aroma of fabric conditioner to see it’s leaked all over a bag of produce which can still be used but all the packaging is slippery and coated in it ... no bottle of fabric conditioner to be seen ..

He informs me on the last bag about the leak and that he is unable to give it to me but he’s going to refund the couple bottles of bleach that he can see have also got covered in the conditioner ... regarding the bag from the kitchen he said take that up with the local branch..

I was expecting Waitrose to be better all round and to be honest they were the worst so far! Even worse than asda and that’s saying something !

Have emailed customer services but surely they aren’t supposed to walk in a closed front door without knocking and without asking ...

As you've got children including one with SN, I would have thought you'd have better things to be doing than complaining about this.

If the chap had already knocked and spoken to you it would be perfectly reasonable of him to assume that you had shut the door to either keeo the children or the heat in. As long as he shut it behind him again on each trip back to the van then what is the problem.

Iamagreyhoundhearmeroar because these are the sorts of people who will crow about how they’ve blagged free stuff by complaining about their shopping, when there’s nothing really wrong with it, to their nonCF friends (or even strangers). Then the normal, nonCF would just think “if Waitrose do that for a non-issue, they’ll probably go all out for a real problem, how reassuring”.

Well done OP. You're about to get some poor man in trouble for trying to be helpful.

I always get them to leave the bags just inside the door and get twitchy if they come all the way into the hall - but that's because I have a horror of shoes on in the house and I can hardly ask him to take them off.

I guess that's a whole other thread...

i don’t expect Waitrose actually need customers like you, you just make everyone’s job harder, expect to pay less and less, probably on another thread saying farmers etc don’t get paid enough but you basically shop where you get the most money off coupons and then complain about the most trivial of matters, when someone is clearly trying hard to do a good job. Pathetic, you are pathetic,

Do let me know if you want to have my user name.

Actually feel angry on behalf of the poor guy. If you get goodwill from their head office maybe you could forward onto him with an apology.

That poor delivery driver was damned if he came in and damned if he didn't!

Firstly, even if you wanted it all leaving outside, he had an obligation to inform you about the spill when he discovered it and so needed to speak to you, and since you'd already answered the door and were expecting further crates I assume he thought you didn't need him to ring/knock a second time.

Secondly, maybe he noticed that the floor was dirty/damp and didn't want bags of shopping getting ruined - I always unlock the front door so I can put bags of cat litter onto the carpeted hall rather than the slightly damp pavement so that it doesn't affect the structural integrity of the packaging not just because I once had an experience of the entire bottom of a bag falling out all over the hall because it had disintegrated from sitting in a small pool of water I hadn't noticed

Thirdly, he probably didn't want to just leave a load of bags outside your door and drive off, but if he was finished bringing the crates to the door and you were still faffing inside, he probably thought you meant for him to just bring them all to the door to save time, but since you hadn't come out to collect them yet so him bringing them inside was being helpful.

I work for Asda and also get a big shop of groceries delivered from our store once a month scheduled for my day off (so I don't have to go in on the one day I'm not being paid to be instore). I have a 9 yo and two indoor cats and also often have my autistic 4yo nephew (I usually schedule my delivery when I know I have him as he likes to order things so I usually give him all the tins to stack in a bottom cupboard and it keeps him happy and occupied for ages while I deal with everything else)

With a large delivery, when the driver arrives they will usually offer to bring them in to the kitchen - a straight shoot from door through to the kitchen, only about 6 steps - but to speed things up I will usually take the first crate to empty in the kitchen and then tell him to just bring the rest and leave them in the hallway until everything is inside rather than bringing every individual crate through to the kitchen one by one.

Whilst this is happening I also close the front door however I always make it clear to the driver that I'm only closing it so the 4 yo/cats can't escape while there is nobody at the open door to see them and to feel free to let himself in if I'm not back at the doorway by the time he's brought the next crate.

Just read your update OP on P3. Wow you must be feeling really smug, Half price shopping, flowers & chocolates. I don’t suppose you’ve ever complained before & you were really surprised at their generosity. You’ll have to try that one again.

I'm not gonna mince my words....your not a nice person op.

He was being helpful and you complain and get chocs and flowers etc just wow .If i have workmen such as the chimmey sweep for example i certainly dont expect them to knock each time they need to go out and come back in .I know it's them .YABVU to get some one potentially in trouble for helping out just not a very nice thing to do at all or something to be proud of 🙄.

Just read OPs final update - and I have to say I suspect she is being a stranger to the truth about the shop managers reaction!

I used to work in management (not a shop but similar) and refunds just don’t work like that. In the case of your complaint then a few items could be refunded, and a voucher or flowers/chocs given as a goodwill gesture. (Mind you would have to have done an awful lot of moaning to get that to be honest!)

But an immediate phone call from the manager, half your shopping refunded, and flowers and chocolates OP?

Are you trying to save face because you didn’t like the reactions you got here? Because that’s a bit daft!

it’s not normally how they do things so he is refunding half my shopping

😂😂😂😂😂

Of course he is, sweetheart. Of course he is.

I feel really sorry for the delivery guy. I actually don't think he did anything wrong but he almost definitely will have got in trouble for this given the apparent apology the OP was given by the store.

From the local branch who was so lovely about the situation and agreed that it’s not normally how they do things so he is refunding half my shopping, sending me flowers and chocolates today before my school run ! Wow ! They may have got the service wrong this morning but I’m super happy with this outcome

This totally didn't happen.

I agree.

Poor chap. Was probably just trying to hurry you along.

This has never happened to me with Waitrose, they are usually brilliant. I would strongly reccomend making a complaint. He was lying about the other bag as well, you can refuse anything at the door and get a refund from my experience.

Why did you close your door, go to your kitchen and start unpacking - why didn’t you wait at the door for him to bring all the bags to you and where you could prevent your toddler walking out?
Your home delivery etiquette was a bit off so he was probably unsure of the right thing to do and he couldn’t read your mind.

ICanNeverThinkOfAGoodUsrname it's okay because it didn't happen anyway, so the poor delivery driver will be fine.

I also don't think the DC having SNs is relevant. DS has SNs and i simply get him involved in helping me with carrying the shopping to the kitchen. This is because he's obsessed with the colour orange and once chased the poor Sainsbury's driver up the garden path back to his van! 😂 (he's a bolter).

YABU. You had already opened the door.

YABU. No doubt the driver losing his job covered the cost of half of your order and the flowers and chocolates.

You sound like a lot of hard work. Nothing would satisfy you.

The manager probably thought you were a pain in the arse and basically agreed with you to shut you up. In retail, they generally will tell the customer what they want to hear. More than likely, you will have a note against you for future orders telling the drivers not to enter the property as you complained about it previously.

I feel for the poor guy, he did nothing wrong. You opened the door to him, what did you expect him to do - knock each time he came back? As for the returns, drivers are only allowed to refund a certain amount of products or a certain value - anything above these levels they cannot do from their devices and the refunds have to be done by customer services.

And it’s unlikely the driver will get more than a “talk”. The managers will probably think your complaint is as ridiculous as the rest of us do!

@Ttbb she already has made a complaint.