What on earth were they thinking?!

[PissTakeSubstitution]

Hardly ever tick ‘allow substitutions’ on my online shop because of past experience, however I didn’t want to risk no wine and I’m not too fussy.

AIBU to think this was a ridiculous substitution? There must have been 20+ different white wines in the price range I’d selected, yet for some unknown reason the person picking this shop decided to an Alcohol Free bottle was the closest match.

Worst still DH didn’t notice it was an alcohol free bottle and accepted the substitute

🤣🤣🤣

Young people aren't stupid none of the staff will have the time to be doing this

I’ve had a dozen eggs substituted with…chicken breasts.

So, I guess that answers that age-old quandary.

Wow really

Maybe they thought it would bring tears to your eyes, which may have helped. Just an idea

Nope my neighbour is a 'dotcom' as they call it and you choose yourself whilst using own initiative.

The pickers are probs working late, seeing all these deliveries that have alcohol in and are thinking “if we’re not getting drunk tonight no one is” 😂

I don’t think the younger staff are stupid necessarily but I do think there are times they either don’t care or they thinks it’s funny to make stupid substitutions and do it on purpose. But they don’t realize how much they can affect people’s lives because they’ve never been in a situation where it mattered much to them when it’s mommy and daddy who are taking the brunt of lives stresses.

Most picking for Tesco is done by humans, but in London and (as fair as I know) one other city it's possible it might be done by robots in a warehouse.

If it's done by a human, they are given a suggested substitution - we don't have to choose it, we can override it. But we only get limited detail on what the items are - in that example, it's entirely possible that the alcohol free info was missing from the picking handset.

I would normally go with the wine substitution that the handset suggests, as I don't know much about wine, but obvious issues (like alcohol free vs alcohol, or red vs white) I would choose something that I feel is more similar, in type and in cost. Having said that - if the product that you have chosen isn't where the handset says it should be, then we don't necessarily have any helpful information to go on - we only know the price from the shelf label edge - so the suggested sub is the only info we have.

my Substitute for Habitat poly pockets was a habitat double duvet, this was today from Sainsbury

How dumb would you have to be? Nobody's forcing them to load trolleys for a living.

Oh, and sometimes the handsets do give genuinely stupid suggestions. Like birthday candles instead of vanilla buttercream icing.

I ordered all the components for a Sunday roast when staying with dm.
The meat joint was substituted with a lamb curry!

Or their just reading what the handset is telling them to pick as it's done by computers do honestly think a human being would otherwise pick bread rolls instead of toilet rolls.

apparently It’s done automatically with a scanner set! I just thought my idea was funnier haha

The million pound question!

@CrappyJob we are in a London borough

Perhaps different supermarkets have different policies on this. It was an Asda driver who said it to me.

Did you enjoy it?

The computer just picks out key words

Tesco once substituted a regular bottle of gin for a 1.5 litre bottle, I was charged the price of regular bottle. It was a great day 🍸

@Jasharps winning at life that day.

Maybe that’s why I clicked allow substitutions on that one item… was secretly hoping for an upgrade!

I ordered sugar, they substituted it for birthday candles 🤦‍♀️

I am going to start online shopping but shall definitely buy my own wine after reading this horror story!

That's even better than the day McDonald's accidentally popped a box of 3 chicken selects into my bag!