To be cross with Sainsburys customer services.

[Foobydoo]

I ordered six bottles of wine with my grocery order, taking advantage of the 25% off six bottles offer. On the day of delivery two bottles of the same wine were out of stock.
The two unavailable bottles were substituted for just one different bottle of wine! This meant I lost the discount and had less wine.

I complained to customer services and did not get a response for nine days.
After chasing I got a very dismissive response saying I no longer qualified for the offer as I only received five bottles.

The customer service representative was dismissive, bordering on rude. No explanation as to why the picker would substitute two bottles for just one and no apology for the inconvenience. She refused to escalate my complaint to a manager and told me to return the wine to store if I wasn't happy.
Am I being unreasonable to be very cross?
I expected more from Sainsburys for some reason and has left a bad taste in my mouth than cannot be washed away due to a lack of wine
I cannot go to store. I get online shopping due to disability.

You have the option of saying no to the substitution, if you accept it then I don't think there is anything that they can do for you.

Something very similar happened to me a few years ago. They had an incredible offer on that seemed too good to be true. Turns out it was. If you spent over £100 online, each time, for three weeks, you got a £50 voucher for the fourth. Lo and behold the last shop I ordered £110 of shopping and got cheaper subs that took the value to £99.73, I then asked about the voucher to the driver and by emailing Customer Services and was told that they ‘were very sorry that I didn’t understand the rules’ and then just ignored any subsequent messages and phone calls. I went from a regular customer, to using them once in a blue moon

I voted YABU, not because you are unreasonable to be livid, but because you seem surprised and disappointed that Sainsbury's take this attitude with you.

Sainsbury's are the worst mainstream supermarket for customer service. Not significantly worse, but you are more likely to have a bad experience than a good one. Morrison's are pretty shocking too, Asda and Tesco slightly better.

The customer services colleague could have been more helpful from your description. I used to be a picker for Sainsbury's a few years ago as a student so can only speak as a picker. I can think of several reasons why mistakes may have been made in this case (and many of the other listed in the thread):

• during the pandemic demand increased so they hired new pickers, the supermarket I currently work in let at lot of the new pickers around October time when demand decreased. However demand was still higher than expected so they yet again had to hire inexperienced pickers over Xmas/New Year and I still keep seeing new hires frequently. They don't get proper training but are instead put on the shop floor with other inexperienced pickers immediately leading to making silly mistakes experienced ones don't make (such as offers, price guarantee, dates, bagging meat, ect).

• They have to pick at a high rate, this relies on the device scanning the shop knowing the right location, product being available and product date. If any of those are poor then it lowers your pick rate. You can and will be fired if you pick rate is poor.

• Product availability is something a picker can't control, just because the product was available when you placed the order 5 days ago doesn't mean it is available now, particularly if it's on offer or a seasonal item like Easter eggs. We can only pick for the same items you could if you came into store. Sometimes we really wish we could help more, particularly items like birthday cakes and Christmas stuff but if it's not there then we have to substitute.

• Substitutions is often what people complain about and this is fair enough when it's clearly and unsuitable alternative like the wash cloths for pillows. If totally unavailable I would have nil picked meaning you got a full refund and no product however new starts might not be told this is an option and just follow the suggestion. The suggested substitutions are not always the most sensible (I had a suggestion to sub garlic for a whole orange once) and experienced pickers will know when to ignore but new might be so focused on just getting the job done that they aren't thinking. It will also tell you the item and quantity and once you've scanned it and bagged it's too late to change anything from the picker.

• Dates, you absolutely shouldn't be getting short dates without the warning. Keep complaining about this. We didn't have to flag items that were 2 days away (same and next day were flagged) but you were expected to try and find the best date possible.

• Offers/discounts was something we're we completely unaware of unless there was excellent signage. When you're picking you're so focused and particularly with alcohol the offer signage if often small and more easily missed. You're also doing up to 8 shops at once so keeping track of how many bottles or bags of something each shop has (there could be multiple totes for each individual spread across several pickers) is nearly impossible. This means offers can be easily missed because a picker isn't seeing the full picture or has so many different shops wanting similar items.

I realise this is super long and doubt many people will read it all but I hope it gets across some of the things (doubt it exhaustive) pickers doing and think about on a normal shift. There are absolutely lazy staff like you find in any job that will just follow the device and not actually think for themselves if it's an appropriate substitute but the majority actually do the pick like they would their own shop and try and do the best they can with the availability.

In this case I think they've correctly picked the last items on the shelf (it's always a popular deal), gone to substitute and the device has offered just one product as a replacement and without considering the deal the picker has followed through. They may have had 3 other shops also trying to get the deal so hasn't realised OP is in fact 1 bottle short of the deal. I'm not sure what Sainsbury's should do, I don't think they have to honour the offer, particularly as the OP had the option to refuse the substitute (not sure if you can refuse the wine? As it's what you ordered) but then the OP probably wouldn't have ordered 4 without the deal. It's a hard place to be in for customer services (who are likely dealing with lots of the same call recently) and the OP.

There was also someone who said they tried to return a corked bottle without a receipt - you know they need to see a receipt for proof of purchase. You wouldn't try and return an own brand piece of clothing because you noticed a defect without a receipt surely? What do you expect them to do without proof of purchase? You could have bought it at any store at any time.

I must be lucky.
I always have Sainsbury's delivery, the customer services at mine are really friendly and helpful.
I've had the odd weird substitution but normally everything is ok and more expensive. I get the difference refunded. They email me any missing or replacements and I can deny anything and return it at the point of delivery.

I've had a few issues lately with Sainsbury's deliveries- stuff too close to the date and already off.

I always contact customer services via Facebook messenger and get a quick response and always polite.

So OP, have you gone back to them?

I have emailed the CEO Simon Roberts.

Sorry if that's a bit dramatic Rainbowthoughts and Sparkling.
We settle to easily for poor customer service in this country. I have higher expectations and am always polite and reasonable.

There was no other option to escalate my complaint, the customer service agent bluntly refused to escalate my complaint to management and closed the thread with a 'how did they do survey'! This was rude and deliberate imo.

I will update if I get a response.

It is the rude and dismissive way the customer service representative handled my complaint that I am cross with.

If I am honest I did think they may offer a £5 voucher or something to soften the blow, even though I lost more than that from losing the discount.
I would have settled for a 'We are sorry and will look into the picking system to try to ensure this doesn't happen in future' type response.
Instead I got 'You dont qualify for the offer as you only have 5 bottles'.

They also initially ignored my complaint until I chased up 9 days later.

This simply isn't good enough.

I recently sent a lengthy email to the email address on their website to complain about a number of things and got an automated reply saying that email address is no longer in use!

• Update I had lovely email from one of the CEOs assistants apologising for the poor customer service and offering a voucher with the equivalent of the 25% discount. Can't say fairer than that really.

Glad you got it resolved satisfactorily @Foobydoo

I once ordered from Sainsbury’s I’d had the slot for 3 weeks because it was near impossible to get shopping slots at the time I waited in looking out the window when it got to an hour past the time the order was meant to be I rang and was told they turned up and I wasn’t in and apparently they’d tried to ring me phone was in my hand the hole time and no one had been it took me 2 weeks to get money back it was a £200 order as it had taken so long to get a slot I’m on a low income they couldn’t give a shit so that’s my experience of Sainsbury’s customer service so can’t say I’m surprised! Sorry op it’s shit.

Try sending a DM in Twitter