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.

What’s with the hysteria ....you are all winding each other up ... have a plan b & c ...replace your order.... there are lots of people out there offering to help people ... so please stop adding to the OTT panic and apply common sense... I’m sure friends neighbours or relatives can step in to help you get what you need

Oh and just to be some more context on this thread ... I just walked to a food bank this morning to hand over some pasta and tins... never done this before ... seeing poor and elderly people waiting outside a church ... I felt absolutely crestfallen and guilty seeing it up close... how the hell have we come to this ... and it’s nothing to do with the virus ... so pull yourselves together and stop being so self obsessed

Does my customer loyalty count for nothing

Not right now, are you seriously asking this?

@Ferret27 a sobering post.

This sounds serious.
I have sent my butler to buy a couple of Fortnums hampers.

Great idea Stan. I should have thought of that sooner.

Ocado has a facility where you can donate to food banks. Please give a couple of pounds if you can.

I’m an Ocado driver.
We are flat out.
Overtime is being offered daily and most of us are going into overtime on a daily basis to get the job done.

We are on the whole getting the vans out, with very few substitutions etc - but, we are human too. We also have families, and elderly relatives and even as staff, we can’t get slots either.

Operational reasons could mean anything - a sick driver, a late inbound lorry, a broken down van... the possibilities are endless.

Right now I can’t see it improving slot wise.
The app is down, the desktop version is the only way to order and the virtual queues are sometimes at 2hrs plus (I did mine at 6am yesterday and the wait was only 5 minutes).

Our CEO has issued an open letter with regard to the issues we are facing.
All we can do as staff is apologise to those of you having issues. We don’t want to cancel orders, we know you guys need them.

Please do stick with us if you can.
It’s a tough time for us all.

@DameXanaduBramble, yes I am asking. I can see that elderly and vulnerable people should be priority right now, I fall into a high risk group myself and am disabled. I have used the service long term due to my health issues and up until the past week or so was always able to get delivery the next day with no issue?

Who are all these 100s of people suddenly taking up all the slots when they didn’t need them before? I can see some will be self isolating but many will be hoarders and panic buyer's acting selfishly. Anyone who is fit and healthy and suddenly booking online shopping needs to question their motives and think of others!

I see Sainsbury’s have finally woken up and given priority online booking to the elderly and vulnerable - hooray! I hope other supermarkets are going to do this

People still buying and buying and buying toilet rolls in stupid amounts. Why? What they doing with it all? Are they getting so very hysterical they're literally crapping themselves silly?

Can I mention that if you do manage to get an Ocado order put on you can also ‘buy’ a food bank donation as part of your order.

@turkishrose - I understand that, but at the moment loyalty really doesn’t count, which is what you asked about. It’s a service, its up to all of us to use it sensibly.

@turkishrose - I really get your frustration but I suspect that most people are like me - I've just done a big order for an elderly relative who lives 500 miles away from me. He usually manages to get to the local shop to buy a little at a time but at the moment he can't so asked me to do an online shop with long-life milk etc. I haven't dared tell him that the only sort I've been able to get is oat milk. He won't be impressed.

Hang on in there... the army will be called in soon, to drop food parcels. Sounds grim but, it’ll happen.

I see Sainsbury & ASDA have taken the wise decision to limit customers to 3 items (because self-restraint just is not happening) but I wouldn't like to be a checkout assistant having to face some of the aggressive and bolshie types.

I hope they get adequate back-up from store security.

Maybe the drivers or the people who pick your items are poorly.
Crazy scary times 🥺

The attitude is as long as me and mine are ok then who cares about everyone else. If people just stuck to normal buying habits and patterns as much as possible this wouldn't be happening. I am just trying to keep to my normal routine but others are making this impossible :(

it is not an easy issue and I remember my mother telling me about what it was like during world war 2. she said my father's father used to get good on the "black market" from his contacts, off the weekly rations but I am not sure that is true (she wasn't very keen on him).

On stocking up a bit the problem is partly the state's as they are indicating certainly people will need to isolate themselves eg if they get the fever and cough so what happens if you get that tomorrow but have one can of sardines in your cupboard? The state presumably means buy enough food for 14 days. Mixed messages.

My younger daughter went to a corner shop (in City of London) to buy pain killers as has had a headachce on and off for 5 days., It was in stock but was £14 which she felt was very over priced. The offered her loo roll at £20 too. She was not happy, took a picture of it and walked out. Apparently the shop was concerned no one was buying it - not surprising at that price never mind that everyone has been clearing out most offices there anyway so there is not going to be much of a market left for it. Market forces I suppose. Or may be the shop had had to buy it for £13 and £19. I don't know.

The state is saying that a whole load of people have to stay in their house for 12 weeks. Of course people are buying more when no one is telling them how they can practically do this.

I’ve just had a text from Ocado and can no longer make any edits to my delivery booked for Friday, due to demand being high. I assume that stock levels are fluctuating, and their website is maybe not keeping up too well with high traffic.

I am wondering now what will arrive on Friday!

Having to self isolate at home with children due to chronic health issues for 2 of them means no choice other than to online order. No slots at my usual weekly online for 3 weeks so then do the shop and the site crashed...
I am hopeful that the people who have hundreds of food and other goods stored will calm down and stop getting more so the rest of us can order what we need to feed ourselves each day!

My sainsburys delivery was half empty today. Delivery driver said he delivered 24 crates of food to one house which was ordered before the restrictions came into place. He also said that it should get better now with restrictions in place and if they get a chance to restock. However for this to happen everyone needs to be sensible and just buy what they need, no more selfishly thinking the rules don't apply to you. He said he'd seen and heard of some awful behaviour in the store so lets all resolve not to be the arsehole making the supermarket workers life harder!

I just went to my local Waitrose and got every item on my shopping list except eggs by the way, no queues to park or to pay.

It was different from last week when toilet rolls and soap aisles were clear. Now a lot of others were mid morning - bacon, most leafy veg. Luckily everything I needed was in stock.

They had a limit of 3 items person.

Back to work now.