To think Ocado with M&S is a bit pants?

[lemons888]

I've been a regular Ocado customer for 11 years. I'm trying to place an order this morning and am already really missing Waitrose - particularly the Essentials range, which offered really good value IMO.

Ocado is advertising some of the new M&S products as "great value" when they aren't. Take cucumbers for example - the M&S "great value" cucumber is 60p and the Ocado one right next to it is 45p. How does that make M&S great value, unless it's a significantly bigger cucumber (not clear from the website?)

I will miss the convenience of Ocado (including next day delivery and the easy to use website) but will be switching to Waitrose own delivery after this shop.

AIBU?

Waitrose are building a 3rd warehouse for online shopping

Waitrse definitely have better "cooking" ingredients, but m and s do have a very nice gluten free range, where waitrose is a bit rubbish tbh.

I boycotted Ocado a few years ago and have used Waitrose ever since. My delivery on Friday had three substitutes in it. One of them was a larger size tin than I had ordered, one was a different brand of mini brie portions and one was swapping baby corn, broccoli and green beans for baby corn and sugar snap peas.

I’ve never had bad substitutions except once during lockdown when they had new staff.

Love it with M&S I usually find their fruit and veg is so much nicer than anywhere else.

Same have my first Ocado shop coming tmw. I prefer M&S crisps, sweets, etc & always have found Waitrose over rated. Appreciate the Swedish section too. I already do a Sainsburys delivery for my main stuff & like Lidl too so have a good mix now.

Best thing ever in my opinion but then I love m&s food and think the quality, particularly the fruit and veg, is a million miles times better than most other places

Ocado always said they don't deliver to my area so I've never had a delivery with them before.
When they swapped to M&S I tried again and could get a delivery.
I was quite excited because we only have a Tesco and Lidl in our town so was looking forward to getting some M&S treats.

I had to cancel my order in the end though because there was so much unavailable stock and when I went to amend my order half my basket was missing.

I will leave it a while and hope it settles down in a few weeks.

We’ve been with Ocado for 9 years and have got our first Ocado/M&S delivery coming today. I must admit I was underwhelmed by the choices on offer especially as I’m not a big M&S food fan and it seems more expensive now.. .We’ll give it a couple of goes and may move to Waitrose. I liked their stuff.

I think Ocado have made a mistake moving away from Waitrose.

I shopped with Ocado for over 10 years but swapped to Sainsburys when I realised how much cheaper it is... I reckon 20% cheaper across a weekly shop... quality is better than Ocado own-brand but possibly not quite as nice as Waitrose.

I associate m and s with ready meals and Waitrose with cooking, and I think that's a fair association.

I'm not keen on this change.

Going to check if I can get Waitrose delivery from a warehouse.

How can you tell if your order will come from warehouse rather than shop?

I've not used Waitrose delivery before but apparently there is awarehouse near me!

I am so pleased to get M and S instead of Waitrose with Ocado. Had my first delivery and all my old favourites were there from when l used to go shopping before virus. As PP said, M and S have a very good range of gluten free stuff. I have eaten so much better this week and l haven't needed snacks between meals.

I like Ocado mainly for the French products due to their partnership with a big French supermarket company (I think). If this changes I'll be looking elsewhere.

My main shop comes from Tesco but I ordered from Ocado occasionally purely to stock up on Waitrose treats. I’m very disappointed by the switch to M&S, it’s not as much of a treat and they don’t have the same posh products available. Waitrose doesn’t deliver to my address so now I can’t get Waitrose stuff at all.

I liked the Ocado-Waitrose partnership but it became very diluted over the past year as a lot of Waitrose products became unavailable. I like M&S products so I'm fine with the changeover, I'm not interested in ready meals but they offer a lot more than that. I've got my second order this week, the first one was fine, arrived on time and nothing missing.

I've had no problem with the Ocado website today - I edited my order twice with no issues. I've had no problems getting delivery slots either (anytime smartpass).

I had a Waitrose order yesterday and I agree with the previous poster - it's comic, they still seem to treat it as a little local delivery service. It was only after I unpacked that I noticed a few things were missing. When I went through the list I realised an entire bag of shopping had not been delivered. They are refunding me, but it's sloppy service (and no offer of a voucher, tsk). They really need to up their game, but I'm not convinced they will. It's a shame as I like their products, but they are not going the right way about keeping my custom. I added all the missing items to my forthcoming Ocado order...

I just don't consider M&S a supermarket. It's for convenience and ready meals. I only ever shop there when I'm popping in for something else (socks etc) and have never been hugely impressed with what I have bought. Would certainly never have done a weekly shop there before now. I cooked an M&S Beef joint yesterday and it looked awful. I'm veggie and haven't eaten meat for 2 years now but I do know what a medium-rare topside joint should look like when cooked! Really tough & stringy, despite following the medium-rare guidelines. Fruit & veg seems okay though. I'm missing Waitrose products. They are far superior in quality IMO. Like others, I found their direct delivery to be a bit iffy which was why I went to Ocado - plus you were given a 1 hour slot as opposed to a 2 hour which I preferred (less hanging around in anticipation).

YANBU

I agree that M&S isn’t a true supermarket, it’s more of a town centre convenience store.

I also agree that its USP is its ready meals/food to go whereas Waitrose’s USP is real food ingredients for a foodie who cooks from scratch and its wide range of ethical/high welfare and organic food.

I’m going to miss Waitrose products so much. M&S convenience food does not interest me one iota. In fact I’m also considering alternating Ocado and Waitrose deliveries.

According to people on twitter Ocado are now substituting the free Percy pigs saying they’re not available but substituting them with an item you then need to pay for.

I’ve had a look at the waitrose app, but the thing I don’t like about it is the fact that everything is in one section, so e.g. they have a fresh/chilled products section but it’s just pages and pages of products not broken down into e.g. meat/fish/veg etc so you have to scroll down loads and loads of products or do a search for what you want....

I'm assuming that M&S want to expand their offer though & become more of a "supermarket" hence the tie in?

@Ranunculi what posh products do you recommend from Waitrose?

"I’ve never had any problems with Waitrose’s own website of delivery."
I advent used Waitrose for years so it may have changed but they used to offer 2 hours slots versus Ocado 1 hour then they'd turn up two hours late (we're rural) so if you were in for a delivery slot between 2-4pm and they don't turn up till 6 that exceedingly annoying. Then stuff would be out of stock. I used to do it Friday afternoon at as it was the end of the week and we're all tired order a ready meals and you could guarantee one or often both would be out off stock and then things like organic milk would be out fo stock and no replacement. I was getting endless -cheap- bottles wine or £10 vouchers "for inconvenience caused." Our driver would carry bottles of wine on the front seat to divy out to fed up customers whose shopping was 2 hours late even he said it was chaotic. I once said to him I don't want a bottle or a voucher I just want my shopping on time and what I ordered. Hence going over to Ocado who are very efficient.

I'm sticking with Ocado for now (but that's partly because DS goes to nursery next to a Waitrose) but it is very frustrating at the moment how much is out of stock - not just M&S stuff but all sorts of ingredients. Struggling, for example, to get fresh herbs in this week's delivery. Like others, I really like Ocado's French products but will have to see over the next couple of months how it goes.

I suspect I will end up moving to Waitrose. This week it was easier to get an Ocado slot so I stuck with it, but found it hard to get what I wanted.

Apparently M&S were desperate to team up with Ocado as their online food delivery has never really taken off. They made Ocado a financial offer they couldn't refuse and Waitrose weren't willing to match it. So it was driven by M&S more than either Ocado or Waitrose really.

I wonder if Ocado will have the full M&S Christmas range this year (rather than having to order it on M&S's website for collection). If they do, I can see that being very successful.

Do they have Alex James cheese at Waitrose online?

Highly recommended

^ JuJu