People 'reserving' delivery slots

[turquoise50]

I've recently discovered that apparently lots of people are 'reserving' supermarket delivery slots by just putting a bottle or two of booze which they don't really want into their trolley to take it over £40, and leaving it there for weeks! Then when they're ready to order their actual shopping they edit it and take it out.

Thus just strikes me as dishonest and really very selfish when everyone knows that delivery slots are still in very high demand. I tried to book on Saturday and the earliest slot I could get was Monday 27th. Last week there was a two-week wait and I had to order from my second-choice supermarket instead, where the wait was only a week.

I presume people are doing it the minute their order is delivered, to hold their regular spot for next time. Whereas I tend to be more reactive in my shopping habits, besides keeping a rolling list in my notes.

I feel a bit shocked, but at the same time realise that if I (pre-lockdown) would, say, order on a Thursday for delivery on a Sunday, because that happens to be my preferred day, it's effectively the same thing. But there wasn't a shortage of slots then, going to the shops was no big deal, and I was ordering stuff I actually wanted.

YANBU - it's selfish and sneaky and people shouldn't hog slots; in fact the shops should crack down on it by making it so that slots can only be held for up to a week, and/or make the trolley limit a minimum number of items, not a minimum amount of money. (I know some shops did this for a while but not sure if still continuing.)

YABU - it's really no different from ordering your full shop a few days in advance and editing it several times before delivery as you run out of different things.

(As a side question - when these people forget to update their order and 'accidentally' get a delivery of nothing but a £40 bottle of whisky that they don't even like, should I feel a certain amount of schadenfreude, or be even more annoyed by the totally wasted delivery slot? Or a bit of both? )

And on Ocado, they would just say sold out.

They wouldn’t let you order them two days before is what I mean.

I’ve o my done click and collect since lockdown and did my next order the day after collection. Surely there are things you buy regularly that you could put on it?
I order cat food
Milk
Eggs
Apples
Potatoes
Yoghurt
Cheese
Cereal
And a few other things every shop so I list those then the night before add what I’ve jotted down during the week that we need

And the substitution thing has never made sense to me before but this explains it. There must be a better system than effectively forcing people to hold a basket open with spurious items.

But you don't need to do that now. I 'hold' my basket with items from my 'usuals' list not with random bottles of alcohol.

@AuntyPasta

They wouldn’t let you order them two days before is what I mean.

I see what you mean, but if they think they have enough and then they pick some more orders and it turns out they don’t, they could very well still be available 48 hours before Christmas.

I’m not that much of a chancer

(Available as in saying “available” on the site.)

I hate sprouts

heartsonacake not necessarily. When I edit my Waitrose basket a day before, add stuff, then often get a message that few things are not available anymore and have to take them out. But then if I cancel changes and leave the order as it was (with the apparently not available anymore items) I always get them. So it seems they are earmarked for the checked out orders but if I want to change something then it’s treated like a new order and the things they ran out of are not available to me.

I always book a slot in the future (generally 3 weeks ahead with Tesco) when I've finished filling my basket for the order arriving the next morning. When I book it i put four 6 pints of milk in the basket, and when I check out it adds the £4 surcharge for being under £40 but this is then removed when I complete by basket later.

I thought this was normal, and just being an organised adult.

@DrinkFeckArseGirls

heartsonacake not necessarily. When I edit my Waitrose basket a day before, add stuff, then often get a message that few things are not available anymore and have to take them out. But then if I cancel changes and leave the order as it was (with the apparently not available anymore items) I always get them. So it seems they are earmarked for the checked out orders but if I want to change something then it’s treated like a new order and the things they ran out of are not available to me.

Different supermarkets operate differently, but I know for a fact that’s how at least three of the biggest supermarkets work.

I always shop online with asda and have done for years. I have a favourites list of the items that I always buy each week- milk, bread etc. I book a delivery and add the favourites to the basket and checkout and then a few days before go in and actually add the items that we need. I know if I tried to checkout with a bottle of booze or something that I would forget about it and forget to remove it.
Delivery slots are fine here (Newcastle) I booked a Morrison’s order today to arrive tomorrow with bits and pieces that weren’t available from Asda. Free delivery when you spend over £25.

Well on the basis that you will be amending your order anyway if it's booked weeks in advance, I can't see what difference it makes. If they had lots of slots so that you can book a couple of days before, great, but they don't.

I’ve always done this, and in fact just reorder my favourites, then go into it the night before and add or remove stuff. I’ve no idea two weeks before what things I’m going to run out of or need.

I think that Waitrose and Ocado work on the same system as Ocado developed it when they were the sole delivery company for Waitrose food.

If you get priority slots it recommends you do this!

I guess you’re thinking about it like the ticket touts who scoop up all the tickets for concerts and don’t leave seats for normal punters.

It’s absolutely nothing like this.

In the above example those tickets aren’t available for anyone else

With supermarket delivery slots the bottles of booze people add are just a quick way to get to the minimum order level - it’s only the slot which is reserved and those reserving them will absolutely use them

Even if you still want those bottles of booze - if they are not in stock when the order is due for delivery, you won’t get them - it doesn’t ‘reserve’ the stock

I’m as shocked that you don’t get this OP, as you are shocked that this is how online supermarket shopping works

Which do you think supermarkets prefer:-

• someone who commits to having a delivery 3 or 4 weeks in advance, allowing them to plan the required staffing levels for actually making those deliveries and knowing that, whatever they’ve added to their basket to secure the slot, if that stuff isn’t in stock the customer just won’t get it

• someone who thinks they should be able to get stuff delivered with only 1 or 2 days notice

🤔

@Coronabegone

Yes clearly I’m going to have to change my habits, and fully intend to, but you do realise that the only reason you have to do this is because everyone else is doing it?

To use my earlier analogy of train seat booking: when I was a child there was no such thing as booking a seat on a (long distance) train. It was 100% first come, first served. You wanted a seat, you arrived early. You hopped on at the last minute, you had to stand. And everyone totally accepted this without complaint.

Then they introduced OPTIONAL seat booking for £1 extra, and everything went to shit! Everyone was annoyed! People who hadn't booked seats were annoyed because they could turn up on time but still have to stand, despite paying essentially the same price. People who HAD booked seats were annoyed by those who hadn't, especially when they had to hustle them out of their pre-booked seats which the others had sat in for the first half of the journey. The whole business became incredibly stressful and there were loads of arguments.

The only way to stop it was for EVERYONE to book a seat so that everyone knew what the score was, which is what happens now (with the last-minute hoppers once again accepting that they're very unlikely to get a seat), and so things have calmed down, but for a couple of decades it was all a bit Wild West on the Intercity!

All of which is to say, I think it would work much better if the shops MADE people book a regular slot when they open the account. Rather than this system, where to someone who didn't know any better (obviously me!) it looks as though you can just get a slot whenever, but in practice that's not the case. That's all.

I don't see what's wrong with it personally... Thought that was what most people did!

Book the slot early, and then kind of use it as a rolling shopping list to add to as they come up.

Time you followed suit OP!

Well....Sainsbury's has just offered me a regular weekly slot. Guaranteed.
No more chucking 2 bottles of gin in until the night before for me! It's reserved every week.

YABU! I do this and then make a list in t he meantime on Alexa then the day before (or in a panic a few minutes before cut off) I put my Alexa list in the basket. I don’t understand why you would think this is unreasonable?! I don’t know what meals I want right now for two weeks time!

I’m a Sainsbury’s delivery pass customer and have been able to get a weekly delivery throughout lockdown. Availability has been good in my area. I book my next weeks slot once I get my delivery on a Saturday and put my favourites/regular bits in the basket which usually take me over £40. I then add bits over the week up to the 11pm the night before cut off.

the shops MADE people book a regular slot

But I don't always want my shop at 10am on Monday morning. The whole point of online shopping is convenience and flexibility. Just like I don't always want my hair doing on the 3rd Thursday every month etc

But why people should be forced to book regular shops? Now you’re going the other way of extreme, OP.

I've always done this, always!!

I have done this for so long! Well before lockdown etc. I stopped on line shopping during lockdown to let others get spots. Back to it now and plenty of spaces. Tesco tried to deliver 2.5 hours early this Sunday....they only had 8 deliveries for the whole day on their van!