How reliable are Sainsbos et al for Christmas food deliveries?

[JenniferYellowHat1980]

Thinking of ordering a food shop to arrive on Christmas Eve as I'' hosting this year. Got the dread about them subbing the turkey for Bernard Matthews turkey drummers or some such disaster.

Are they likely to reserve items for an order made well in advance?

I don't think Sainsbury's are doing Christmas Eve deliveries this year. We got our big delivery from them on the Weds before Christmas last year and it was delivered without substitutions.

Well that's good to hear. Perhaps I'll aim for 23rd.

I'm
Doing my delivery 23 with no substitutions. So hoping for no Christmas Eve shopping! I live in London zone 1 though so should get anything I need Christmas Eve. I don't want to though!!

If you are worried about substitutions, They (sainsbury's) do do a specific christmas food ordering service, but you have to collect from a store.

Ocado are generally more reliable. Never had Christmas substitutions.

Did once get a random bottle of champagne I hadn't ordered.

I ordered a cheeseboard board from Tesco and got a cheesecake.

Ocado are very trustworthy, but I must admit that I never order for Christmas Eve. (In fact we eat Xmas Dinner at 6pm on the 24th and have posh leftovers and puddings on the day itself: one of the major advantages of this scheme is that if we find out that we've forgotten the cranberry sauce we still have time to dash out to the shops).

I worked doing grocery online shopping two Christmas,s ago and they were very strict on us not substituting anything with a manager telling us we could. Even if it meant we added to the orders throughout the day as we got new stock in. I don't believe we sent out many substitutions

Ocado and Morrison's work on a warehouse system rather than shopping from a store so are more reliable.

I always do the 23rd.

Asda could not deliver turkey for my delivery on 23rd Dec (Scotland)
Tesco could not deliver Xmas crackers for my delivery on 23rd Dec (2 consecutive years in London)
Sainsburys and Morrisons (they use Ocado) have always delivered a full Xmas shop on the 23rd Dec.

Will you still be able to get a Christmas slot
Most of the online shops are already full booked up

Really? I thought it was only Ocado who did early slots for regular customers?
I think most do 3-4 weeks in advance?

Sainsbury's haven't opened their Christmas slots yet. I've got an order already placed that I just keep pushing back so when the slots for 23rd open all I have to do is amend rather than create an order!

Tesco's haven't released their Xmas slots yet either.

I've ordered meat, cheeses, Christmas puds and a selection of goodies from Booths (for the first time) to be delivered on 22nd. So at least we will have the good stuff if there are any weird subs on the main shopping delivery. There are delivering on the 23rd too. Could you do that?

Blimey, they're slow aren't they?! I booked mine with w'rose at the end of September.

Sainsbury's always good here. It seriously snowed the year we had DD. We had a two day old baby and Sainsbury's couldn't get the truck into the street. The delivery guy carried every single bit down the road to us . Fantastic.

In my experience theres a big fuss over christmas slot booking and then it isnt actually difficult to get an order delivered on say 22nd with everything in date and then time to get last minutes bits before christmas day.