Are supermarket staff able to choose what they substitute items with?

[norahbonez]

Ordered from Sainsbury's today. Coriander subbed with sage. Basil subbed with Rosemary. Vegetarian sausages subbed with pork sausages. Laundry powder subbed with dishwasher tabs (?).

Sent them all back which is fine. Not annoyed. Just curious. How do they decide subs?

I'd like to know what happens to the subs you send back. Do they have to chuck them?
I was sent broccoli stems instead of spinach the other week. I do like broccoli so I kept them as I thought they might go to waste otherwise.

I suppose I could have lost the £2 for the rosemary and sage that I might have found a use for, but I'm veggie and don't have a dishwasher so the two more expensive items I would have had no use for.

The handsets recommend the substitutions, but they're sometimes very bizarre e.g. a pineapple ornament as a substitute for an actual pineapple, or at least they did when I had a student job online shopping

You can turn substitutions off. I always do, as not getting the thing I do want is much less hassle than also getting random other thing probably I don't want.

Have only used Tesco for online deliveries, but next to the tickbox saying a sub is ok there’s space to add a request - e.g. “ Tesco Finest Marlboro Sauv B only plse”.
To be fair, rarely have any substitutions or missing items .

I was a tesco picker for three years.

You click "unavailable" on the scanner and it then suggests a sub. You can then scan the sub and carry on or you there's a "bad sub" option and it will then let you choose your own. If there still isn't anything suitable you can click "unavailable" again and it will let you carry on without the item.

The pickers are timed and the targets are TIGHT so often people will just go with what the machine says for ease as it's usually suggesting something that's right next to your original item on the shelf.

The system knows where things are so let's use your sausage example. It could be that those particular sausages are on a deal so they've been moved to an end chiller with the pork sausages on a similar deal. Once the system has been told that the veggie sausages aren't available it will go to the next thing available which in this case will be the pork ones. Because the targets are so tight in most cases you don't have time to then go wandering down the meat isle, scope out the shelves and find the next available pack of veggie sausages. You just take what is in front of you at that moment.

So short answer, yes you can override it but the picker can't be expected to go wandering up and down every isle to try and find you a "suitable" alternative as that will mess up their targets.

No, the system will tell them what substitutions to use.

It's particularly weird to sub a vegetarian item with a meat one. Surely the software should just block that? It's highly likely to be rejected.

I always wonder if a customer has an obviously Islamic or Jewish name, are pork products automatically excluded from the substitution?

I suppose it probably differs but where my friend works, no, the computer does it. The staff just get a list of what to pick, doesn't always say what it's a substitute for, unless you actually go looking at the original order.

Mostly, they don't have time to do that and the system is quite reliable and just switches brands or size of pack but occasionally they do catch something bizarre and will pick something more sensible so they can override it if they want, it's just that most of the time you don't notice because you have to actually click into it and scroll down to check what the customer actually asked for.

One guy got disciplined once for substituting nappies for condoms. He thought it was hysterical, the customer, not so much.

I have a delivery pass with sainsburys, but our delivery store is massive, so rarely get subs. Last week though, I ordered an eyeliner and it was subbed with the reed sticks you put in a reed diffuser! Not the whole diffuser- just the sticks! £10 difference in price too.

I could understand another make-up product which would be on the same shelf, but surely the packer needed to walk to a completely different section to find reed diffuser sticks? 😕

OP- Do check that you either get the refund or a voucher for the products you returned. This week I didn't, so had to ring customer service because the driver didn't scan that I'd returned the sticks!

@LostGhost - thanks, that was really interesting to read - naively, I hadn’t realised the order pickets were timed and targeted, so it’s made me even more appreciative of my local ones . 🙏