Bloody Waitrose!

[Wowbagger]

I'm getting quite pissed off with our stupormarket. They seem to have considerably reduced the variety of ham on offer, and all of the cheaper lines seem to have disappeared. I bought 6 slices of crumbed ham yesterday and it was over £9! The only ham that was marked as less tha £2 per 100g was Brunswick. That was on special offer and we aren't that keen on it. Even corned beef, which I regard as a poor alternative, was £2.20 per 100g! Furthermore, they seem to have discontinued the fruit and chocolate flavoured Geobars, which were our favourite.

I might have to start patronising Aldi more. Waitrose has a much better stock, as it's a massive branch in Southend. It is also much more convenient for car shopping (we tend to buy more at a time than is comfortable to cart about on a bike, as well as which I tend to shop for two households, Aunt Phyllis being the other). I don't want to go to Sainsbury's (town centre) or Tesco (much further away and on the main road to London) as the car journey would be ridiculously time consuming for the distance covered.

[Mrs Pingu]

Online shopping FTW.

[hellymedic]

Online shopping FTW.

+1

I seem to be doing quite a lot of this for Aged Parents too.

[Ian H]

Checking receipts and proofs of passage after the recent Buzzard 600, I was once more amused that Sherborne's Waitrose is in Cheap Street.

[Biggsy]

Or boil your own joint of ham for much, much better taste and economy.

Mmmm, I'm mmungry.

[Pancho]

Sorry, is this the First World Problems thread?

The solution is simple - don't use supermarkets.

[Valiant]

We recently bought one of these except from Lidl for £35 the other day. It lasted several months with 4-20 people for lunch every weekday picking at it., has a shelf life of a year and was very very tasteh.

[Ben T]

We find Waitrose do have an annoying habit of dropping lines. I used to love Simply Sausages, couldn't get them anywhere else, now they've stopped selling them. Why?  Switched to Debbie and Andrews, now they've stopped selling them as well.

The best online supermarket service however imho is Tesco. All the others just get it very wrong, Tescos substitutions are at least sensible when they do make them.

[Biggsy]

Tesco online made many mistakes with my orders.  The last straw was failing to turn up at all one night, with no explanation.  Switched to Sainsbury's, with near perfect service so far.  My plan for a bike trailer is now on the back burner.

[hellymedic]

I have been very happy with Sainsbury's. They have improved enormously in the ten years I have shopped online.
I initially phoned to complain every time I was unhappy but they seem to have learned and I seldom phone them now.
My annual Anytime Delivery Pass cost £50, which seems excellent VFM, also allowing me to order comestibles for Aged Parents at no extra cost.

[Chris S]

First world problems is in Aisle 3 sir.

The rant thread is in Aisle 1, and the POBI thread... well, sir knows where that is, surely?

[Ham]

Yebbut a FREE Guardian newspaper with your shop....

[CrinklyLion]

I've been converted to Morrisons online for the last 7 or 8 months.  Which, when I tracked it, saved me a fortune.

But then I'm a northerner

[Pancho]

I shop at locally owned shops. It keeps money in the community economy.

I keep reading in "the newspapers" about the death of local shops but I'm sure that my house can't actually be at the centre of the UK's only cluster of local shops. I think there's everything I need within 4 miles (and most within 1 mile). Oh, no - for fish I need to go to the quayside along the coast 5 miles. Let me count the ways...

Meat - butcher 1/2 mile away in village or smallholding 1 mile away (but you're limited to what's most recently slaughtered - beef or goat). Plus at least two other indie butchers within 5 miles.
Eggs - 100 metres down road there's an egg stall for duck eggs. Village (or above smallholder) for hen eggs.
Veg etc - the imaginatively named "Village Greengrocers", multiple roadside stalls, or 2 markets (most days) 4 and 10 miles away, or at least 2 other indie grocers within 5 miles
Fish - shack down the coast - 5 or 6 miles
Bread - (I make my own but) two branches of a two branch chain -  of bakers 4 miles either side of me
Nice stuff - WI market weekly plus many of the places above also do local deli type things
Boring stuff (ie bog roll and tins of beans) - the village Coop or 4 miles away, Aldi

[CrinklyLion]

Morrisons and menu planning got my weekly grocery budget down to, reliably and consistently, under 40 quid a week for the lot of us, averaged over the 5 months that I tracked it.  That would be challenging using local shops, and the time overhead would also be prohibitive as a working single parent with a distinctly limited amount of spoons available.

Horses for courses.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Similar to Pancho, here:

Meat - 2 butchers within a mile or so
Eggs - from the hippy organic shop next to the Prince of Wales, these are actually the cheapest non-battery eggs around
Veg - recently started using the new greengrocer by the Arches as slightly cheaper than the one about a mile away, but still use the old one sometimes as higher quality. Again, both cheaper than supermarket
Fish - fish shop next to card shop and Co-op
Bread - I make it in the machine. If not, prob from supermarket opposite hippy shop, but there are 3 bakers within a mile or so
Boring stuff - this is the longest trip and the only one in the opposite direction (up hill not down) to Sainsburys by train station
Nice stuff - it's all nice!

About two or three times a year I go to Waitrose a few miles away and buy pannier-fuls of their 'essentials' jam.

For us, this is cheaper and better quality, but I don't think it is possible everywhere; and as CrinkLion says, calves for paths.

[hellymedic]

There are loads of shops within walking distance.
But I can't walk.

[Jaded]

Yebbut a FREE Guardian newspaper with your shop....

...and you get to shop with people like us.

No sweaties in Waitrose 

[hellymedic]

Yebbut a FREE Guardian newspaper with your shop....

...and you get to shop with people like us.

No sweaties in Waitrose 

Oh no, we are too posh to perspire...

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

Waitrose "won't allow" their staff to join unions, and their disciplinary procedure doesn't allow appeals for anyone with under 5 years of service.

[caerau]

Tesco online made many mistakes with my orders.  The last straw was failing to turn up at all one night, with no explanation.  Switched to Sainsbury's, with near perfect service so far.  My plan for a bike trailer is now on the back burner.

How long ago?  When I used them originally yes they were like this, plus they'd show up with things like milk and bread with a  use by date due to expire within minutes of their arrival.


So I stopped using them.  Once they asked me why I stopped so I told them all this.


Years later I've tried again and they seem to have learnt.


There was an amusing feature on Asda's delivery service the other day where they picked on the more ridiculous of their swaps.  Can't remember them all now but a good one was substituting a Man Utd decorated birthday cake for a Liverpool one 


Tesco haven't been that bad with us but they did recently substitute something I'd ordered for er.... exactly what I'd ordered 

[pcolbeck]

I hate Tesco's as a physical shopping experience but we use their online service. We started because they were the only one that delivered here and yes they used to be a bit crap but over the last couple of years they have been pretty good. We occasionally try Sainsbury but they are worse. Would try Morrisons as well but strangely though they are our nearest physical supermarket (5 miles) they don't deliver here.

[CrinklyLion]

Morrisons, like occado, use a centralised warehouse/packing plant.  In fact it is the same plant

I'm a discount tart, so will buy from Sainsbos/Tesco online if there's a good enough offer.  I've attempted about 4 times to take advantage of a '£x discount +free delivery' deal at Asda and have given up and gone to one of the other websites every single time because I hated the ASDA one so much.

[Karla]

Waitrose "won't allow" their staff to join unions, and their disciplinary procedure doesn't allow appeals for anyone with under 5 years of service.

So the first is illegal and the second is at least against the ACAS code of practice.  How do they get away with it?

[caerau]

My wife works in a John Lewis partnership place of business (not a partner herself  -contractor).  Fairly standard practice, you can join a union, they just don't recognise them for things like pay negotiations etc.  Union laws are as weak as US beer these days.
Not heard about the latter in regard to disciplinary stuff.  I suspect that *is* illegal though, you must have  a code of practice with regard to disciplinaries and you *must* stick to it otherwise it's unfair dismissal automatically if it's not adhered to.


From their constitution...
http://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/content/dam/cws/pdfs/about%20us/our%20constitution/john-lewis-partnership.constitution.pdf
 
 
 
 
58. EveryPartner is free to belong to a trade union, although if thereisconflict between a trade union and the Partnership thoseconcernedmustconsidercarefully their responsibilities asPartners.
70  AnyPartner may appeal to the Partners Counsellor’s Office againstdismissal.IfthePartnersCounsellor or Delegated authority judges the dismissal to be contrary to the Partnership's principles he will intervene accordingly.
A partner with more than five years' service who faces dismissal must be told first that he (ed - sexist much?) has the right of appeal to the Parnters' Councillor's Office.