Entire online food delivery cancelled.

[Vagessence]

For fuck sake. My whole ocado shop for today has been cancelled. Generally speaking it's tricky for us to get to the shops but by some rare stroke of luck my partner had to bring the car home this weekend (usually kept at his parents many miles away). Thankfully we'll be able to drive to the shops but what about those who can't? People in self isolation or those who have to rely on online shops for other reasons? Slots aren't available until next week, midweek at the earliest!

I've been telling myself to stay calm, only buy what we need, don't add to the problem of shops being out of stock. But now I'm panicking it's really hard to stick to that. I'm now not sure if I'll be able to hold back from panic buying now. We have barely any food in the house and usually we only get enough to last us a week but I think I'll have to stock up on two weeks worth now. We might end up not even being able to get anything today due to shelves being bare.

My son drivers a van delivering groceries- The vans only take a defined volume of ordered goods so if each person places a bigger order there will be fewer people's orders on that van.

...drives a van...

There is absolutely nothing on either Sainsbury, Tesco or Ocado. The sites are crashing. Clearly the government have not thought about how all these elderly self isolating people are supposed to eat, let alone the rest of us!

My neighbour leaves the house anyway and I mean ever other than emergency admission to hospital and has no internet or mobile. I think she has another neighbour or two who pop out for stuff and her son orders is on line.

I have had no trouble popping out each day to various local shops which remain very well stocked as usual other than loo paper and soap which I don't need. (I am not in lock down and not elderly although I am certainly avoiding people)

@wondering7777 if you can just leave your laptop working in the background you can come back to it. It was the same over the weekend, not such long wait though, but once you were in it was no problem.

I'm on my third attempt at the Ocado website. Got through a small queue quite quickly this morning but as I normally use the app, had to ask for a chuffing password reset link, which sent me to the back of the queue. Then DH rebooted the router so its was back to the end again... currently 1223 out of 4000+!

And the website's crashed

I'm 1700th now. I woke up in the middle of the night and got straight in - I wish I'd edited my order then and there!

Why on earth can the rest of the supermarkets manage to have working websites but not Ocado?!

We have no new delivery slots for the next few days so please only wait if you are trying to edit an imminent order.

Ocado also saying this - I wasn't aware they had any delivery slots in the next few days anyway. When I booked mine the soonest I could get was over a week!

159th now - it seems to be moving quickly at least!

I have been around 100th in the queue today since about 6am... there were 500 other people in the queue then... now apparently 5000

I got on yesterday after three hours for about two minutes before I was thrown off again and unable to get back on for the rest of the day, this is Ocado

Could those in these queues just go out to a shop instead if they are not in quarantine? I have been going out every day and there is loads of food in the shops and it is quicker presumably than queuing and you get the food right away (and yes i remember going round supermarkets with twin tiny babies and it's a night mare -even worse with toddlers)

I've given up for now.

@Xenia I'm now in the vulnerable group, hence joining the queue...

I’m in Lancashire. Sainsburys order arrived on time this morning with some substitutes and a few things missing (no bread or loo roll) but not as bad as I expected.

I am number 6575 of 8733

I joined the queue at 10am, when I was 5124 of 5124 (how have I gone backwards!? )

I'm not good enough at maths to work out how long my wait will be (if a train pulls into the station etc.... ).

And I can't go out as we are all in isolation.

(And I'm just wanting to amend my normal weekly shop booked at usual time, no panic buying)

@MummyPop00 that’s the spirit F everyone else haha Jesus Christ

Whoever did capacity planning for these supermarket websites clearly never envisaged the sort of situation we're in now.

I received my Ocado delivery as usual this morning (order placed a week ago). I noticed how hard it is to access the site so usually do my order at around 6-7 a.m. I haven't dared look at the site today, sounds dreadful!

I too wonder how on earth the elderly self-isolating (or anyone self-isolating) will manage for food and supplies.

If anyone has a face mask and eye goggles, they can also try click -and-collect.

Protect the staff working at collection points by wearing eyewear and mask. Even a simple cloth masks made out of 100% cotton will reduce risk by 50-60% as opposed to wearing none.

Lots of tutorials online for diy cloth masks. 20x20cm 100% cotton folded into accordion shape.

I have a delivery coming tomorrow and have just seen that everything is out of stock with no subs available. I wasn't panic buying, just usual stuff like chicken, cooking oil, oat milk. Husband said supermarket was decimated yesterday, almost nothing there so I suppose I am not surprised.

No idea what we will do after as there are now no delivery slots for ages. I need to self isolate from Friday according to GP and my husband may need to with me, not clear yet. All of the family I still have also need to isolate too and friends don't live near. Fun times.

And before anyone tells me they’ve read in the paper that face masks don’t work... They don’t stop the virus completely no. But if everyone wore them, they do reduce chances by at least 1/2. I have no idea why the U.K. is discouraging people from wearing them when they are legal requirement in some EU countries

Perhaps we need to move to those who are required to self isolate as they or a family member has a high temperature and/or new persistent dry cough orders on line and everyone else should try to buy from the supermarket or get their fittest least at risk family member to do so.

I'm now 15946 out of 16424 HOW?!

Xenia how would you police or enforce that though?

Presently there is no law forbidding people to leave their homes. I agree that all we can do is encourage people not to buy on line to allow vulnerable people to do so instead if it gets out of hand. As the supermarkets are probably making a small fortune out of all this ordering and given companies like John Lewis has already diverted 500 staff to on line order work may be the supermarket companies could hire laid off casual bar staff to help in various back office ways. We probably don't need more food than unusual - just differently provided eg workers lucky enough to be able to work from home might be ordering a loaf of bread rather than popping out at lunch time to a cafe.