Ocado tips, tricks subs, M&S shortbread giveaways and defectors..

[Garyunicorn]

Carrying on from the old Ocado thread. www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/a4045676-Ocado-tips-hacks-Toblerone-and-Christmas?msgid=102560793#102560793

I have been contributing, just changed my name to prevent being outed over something!

Has anyone else had tomatoes rationed ? The new loo roll it would appear

I’ve had the app up for a few months too -mused it yesterday even.

Haven’t tried the tomato - I routinely have one punnet in my basket and they have been delivered as expected as late as yesterday.

I was offered plenty of turkey in my flash sale and party packs of sausage rolls. It still seemed expensive to me (and we've zero plans for NYE).

I struggled to find any pitta bread in stock (not something I buy very often, but I am sure there used to be loads of options/brands). Plenty of GF, but the rest were OOS.

I don't trust Ocado with soft fruit/tomatoes these days.

Yes to the big range of gluten free pittas and very little choice otherwise.

I've taken to freezing the Cohen ones as they only last a day or two and go mouldy otherwise.

Can't understand why. No stock in M&S shops either. Perhaps they regard pittas as a summer food and don't provide it over winter.

Who knows ?

My app is working but god knows when it came back. It was off March to sept at least and I only found it was back when someone on here mentioned it was working suddenly for them in the last two weeks

I've moaned about the lack of pitta before but it's even worse now! Especially as m&s pitta is lovely. Interesting that it's not in shops either, though.

"Can't understand why. No stock in M&S shops either. Perhaps they regard pittas as a summer food and don't provide it over winter"

My feeling is that most M&S food halls are quite small & only a few are comparable in size to your average supermarket & so M&S haven't got out of that mentality yet.

So they routinely clear 'summer' food for Halloween, then Christmas, then Chinese New Yeear, then valentine's day etc etc etc. They have never had the ability to behave like a normal supermarket in keeping most lines & just squeezing them slightly to allow for new promotions.

They haven't yet understood that the Internet is immense & so are Ocado warehouses!

I've had the app back for a long time - I remember doing my first M&S shop on the app so must have been back in August?

I’ve been struggling with getting pitta too, the M&S ones are lovely but have disappeared. The Ocado large ones are a bit crap.

They used to do holyland pittas which have gone,

@bruffin

They used to do holyland pittas which have gone,

The holly land pittas are amazing. They make the ultra thin markouk bread and khubz (like soft pitta) too. They supply a lot of the restaurants on Edgware Road. Ocado seems to have stopped selling a lot of the small independent lines that they used to have since the change over.

I guess they cleared space to make way for M&S items as they have more lines than Waitrose own brand but half of the M&S products seem to have never been in stock ever.

I believe the robot system limits the number of different items they can stock. Each product has its own stack of crates that the robots pick from. I guess if a product doesn't sell enough to fill a stack, it isn't worth stocking, whereas, if you had humans picking, you could have just one crate of a product on a shelf.

Loads of missing items today - all the fresh veg and quite a lot of other fresh food as well. Assume it's fallen foul of the ports disruption. Thank God for the Brexit stash.

The new year dine in for 2 deal must be popular as my steak pie is missing from today’s delivery.

@orangenasturtium
Im just north of london and the local turkish shops sell Holyland as well.
They have stopped stocking Dole fruit products as well.

Now I really want a Hoylamd pitta

Holyland even !

Had a delivery today, when I tried to order there was no braising steak of any kind, or pork steaks. Not sure if that's because I left editing a bit late

I can't get a chicken (whole) or breast fillets for Thursday. Which is really odd

Flash sales question -

If you add something to your basket during checkout at a flash sale price, does it go back up to normal price if you make changes and checkout again later?

I think this has just happened to me and I've ended up paying double what I expected for something quite expensive.

Not sure lurkle - can't recall if I've had exactly that happen. But it is a bit infuriating when reduced items inexplicably appear at full price on one's receipt even when you've taken account of cut-off dates.

I've cancelled this weekend's order. Found myself worrying about the slightly chaotic way the last few drivers have approached delivering to me - they're no longer doing exactly what I rely on Ocado for. Looked at my list and realised I was only duplicating stuff I have decent supplies of anyway.

Relying more and more on veg box delivery, and separate suppliers for fish, cheese, beans, flour. Apart from my anniversary bottle I don't get wine from them any more. Coffee subscription elsewhere for years. Just need to take the plunge in organising loo roll and washing powder. And olive oil and bath salts ...

Oh dear.

It's ridiculous actually. I'll be paying far more than Ocado's increase to £9.99 a month in delivery charges. Just hope I can avoid the recurring annoyance. Wish they'd just sort things out and go back to being a joy to deal with.

We have a shop near us which sells non-food and long-life food items in an eco-friendly way. I think the idea is that you take along your own containers to fill. I assume they charge by weight at the till. Must investigate it at some point. I like the idea of using less packaging but as it's only a small place I would expect higher prices as they can't expect bulk discounts from their suppliers.

@PoulePouletteEternellement.
I get toilet roll from Who Gives a Crap. The only downside is you need to have somewhere to store 40 toilet rolls.

@lurklemurkle

Flash sales question -

If you add something to your basket during checkout at a flash sale price, does it go back up to normal price if you make changes and checkout again later?

I think this has just happened to me and I've ended up paying double what I expected for something quite expensive.

I think not unless you delete it from your basket and then add it on again.

lurkle This happened to me yesterday. I had a flash selection pack of cheese already in my basket, edited yesterday and noticed it was back at full price. My other flash sale items were still reduced. It seems to be a glitch that happens for some unknown reason. I have written about it on this (or earlier) thread before and someone else had noticed the same thing happen. I think because it happens randomly and infrequently we think it is something we have done ourselves. Nope definitely something you need to watch out for.

Did anyone else order a Molten Mountain Cheese Bake? I looked over my receipt from the week before Christmas and realised I had been charged £14 instead of the actual price of £7.50. I did think it was expensive when it arrived and I saw the size of it! They have refunded me, but I had to ask. Worth checking what you paid.