Online Clearance & Short dated Grocery sites

No_Future

I tried Approved Foods once, but never again. A glass bottle broke, spilling sauce onto EVERYTHING and I phoned them. The guy offered me a 33p gift voucher.

frugal_shopper_2

Big Brands for Less

This is an unusual policy for a short dated food site.



Shortened quote here, full text at:
http://www.swinco.co.uk/epages/es136752.sf/en_GB/www.swinco.co.uk/www.epayments.co.uk/epages/es136752.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/es136752/Categories/LATEST_NEWS/Our_First_Blog

We're going to publish specific blogs on:

• Ex Customer Blacklists and Current Customer Bans

Customer Bans occur when any account holder breaks Golden Rule Number 4 (ZERO TOLERANCE) - We have zero tolerance for disruptive abusive members. We are a friendly online company with family values and expect the same level of respect from visitors and customers. Any account holder that does not appreciate this will have their account suspended and their money saving privileges removed with immediate affect.

We currently have a very small blacklist of account holders who have breached this rule and have been banned from the site for various reasons

Presumably disruptive/abusive customers are the ones who are unhappy with the service provided, banning customers seems somewhat unusual to me but if they prefer to turn away the business rather than deal with a stroppy customer then it's up to them it's their company after all.
What is concerning is their stated intention to publish ex-customer blacklists and current customer bans on their website which would breach the data protection act. Would you deal with a company that shows such disregard for personal data?

pipk62

Swinco

jo58 wrote: »

Great Idea pipk62!:-)

Short poem...

Credit where credits' due
Someone else had input too
So hearty Thanks go to You :T

I'll never make Laureate

she_who_can_not_cook

Approved Foods

BB4L is an exception to that rule, they seem to purchase huge quantities of goods so take ages to sell out however they don't add new products anywhere near as regularly as the other sites do.[/QUOTE]


i too dont think that there is that much variety of there even with the 300/200/100% bogof

she_who_can_not_cook

Approved Foods

I have purchased from the big four above and am happy with what i have got. Yes mistakes happen and i have had refunds the one pet peeve i have is that i always opted for subs .. fair enough i have paid for the postage i dont want refunds ... but when you go back of the site and see the item still their it makes you think that the packer could not be bovvered kwim , and i dont buy for a while and then get some more when something else too good comes on....

frugal_shopper_2

Big Brands for Less

Foodbargains are seeking feedback from customers on their forum about a new shipping policy & any features that people would like to see on their new website which is due to be finished in the next couple of weeks. If you have any opinions on either subject then you may want to sign up for the forum or email them your suggestions.

johnnyblount

Well we thought we would give one of these a try again but had our first delivery from Approved Foods and much of the order is wrong and a few damaged items even though the packaging it was delivered in had not been damaged in transit

I cant say Id recommend them at all , if the whole order does not arrive then the amount saved due to the postage becomes less .

Working it all out now We really havent saved in the long run no more than buying the reasonable supermarket value items or bogof items that would also be in date of course

A voucher to use doesnt really help and neither does a refund for missing items when an order has been calculated to save money taking into consideration the delivery .

Hardly worth it some of these places unless you live near one , the savings are nothing like some list , nothing at all if the quantities dont arrive and some are damaged

If items are not going to be sent they should contact the customer and give them the option to cancel

its awkward to compete for them I know when delivery has to be included but Ive just done a calculation and using a supermarket 8 hour delivery slot we have saved about £ 2.00 because of the "problems" with our order if that and for that the stuff we have is out of date too , the cost of some this out of date stuff has to come down or in my opinion or they have to be more careful with customers orders otherwise there can be no real big saving


Feel pretty conned really and sorting it is going to be time consuming , book it down to experience , no point in having a voucher and having to buy again and any refund for missing items wont put possible savings right :mad:


Id say be careful with some of these places unless you can collect and see the goods before paying there are questions to be asked about packers and whether they can be bothered to include some items that are STILL showing in stock

Hopelessly_Hopeful

Approved Foods

johnnyblount wrote: »

Well we thought we would give one of these a try again but had our first delivery from Approved Foods and much of the order is wrong and a few damaged items even though the packaging it was delivered in had not been damaged in transit

I cant say Id recommend them at all , if the whole order does not arrive then the amount saved due to the postage becomes less .

Working it all out now We really havent saved in the long run no more than buying the reasonable supermarket value items or bogof items that would also be in date of course

A voucher to use doesnt really help and neither does a refund for missing items when an order has been calculated to save money taking into consideration the delivery .

Hardly worth it some of these places unless you live near one , the savings are nothing like some list , nothing at all if the quantities dont arrive and some are damaged

If items are not going to be sent they should contact the customer and give them the option to cancel

its awkward to compete for them I know when delivery has to be included but Ive just done a calculation and using a supermarket 8 hour delivery slot we have saved about £ 2.00 because of the "problems" with our order if that and for that the stuff we have is out of date too , the cost of some this out of date stuff has to come down or in my opinion or they have to be more careful with customers orders otherwise there can be no real big saving


Feel pretty conned really and sorting it is going to be time consuming , book it down to experience , no point in having a voucher and having to buy again and any refund for missing items wont put possible savings right :mad:


Id say be careful with some of these places unless you can collect and see the goods before paying there are questions to be asked about packers and whether they can be bothered to include some items that are STILL showing in stock

Sorry you had such a bad experience. Have you told them the strength of your feeling?

I've had two large orders, had one missing item in the first one which they refunded. The second order had two cancellations and I was given choice of credit or refund.

Overall very pleased.

HHx

johnnyblount

Hopelessly_Hopeful wrote: »

Sorry you had such a bad experience. Have you told them the strength of your feeling?

I've had two large orders, had one missing item in the first one which they refunded. The second order had two cancellations and I was given choice of credit or refund.

Overall very pleased.

HHx

Well I was quite pleasant as I dont think it helps getting angry with staff , they were not really too bothered about the fact that even with the refund for missing items that does not cover the damaged items and now made our shopping a loss and not a save , all this for out of date goods , it really is not worth the messing about in my opinion .

Are people actually working it out properly against the REAL prices in supermarkets not the ones that the site lists as RRP those are not real at all , some of the retail prices they ALL list , Ive never seen used never mind when they are on offer

Cant say we were impressed at all especially as they did not seem to see anything wrong with not sending items that were STILL now listed as in stock , items that were calculated into the shopping to make the postage worthwhile without them there is no saving now and no compensation for their mess up or packers laziness to put right that loss to us .

But they can send with "next order" really they are having a laugh , if they had them in stock why not send them they seem to have spent more time carefully inserting a few damaged items that definitely beyond any doubt were not "damaged in transit" definitely beyond any doubt must have been seen as damaged by any packer .

Some of it I wont go into detail with but the contact was pretty patronizing some of it very very silly :rotfl:

Ill book it down to experience and move on now just thought it might be worthwhile reminding others to not take things at face value , saving money at these sorts of places via post relies a lot on a perfect delivery of your shopping list and twice now for us that has not happened.

Aarons_mummy

After much umming and ahhing I took the plunge last month and ordered from Approved Foods, (I actually hadn't heard of the others until this thread so going to check those out).

I made my 3rd order today, there have been some really good buys, juices, biscuits, crisps, sauces. I don't really look at the RRP more the price I'm having to pay. I hate having to pay the £5 odds delivery but has to be done really plus I love (but at the same time HATE) the new products listed. The best buy I've had so far was a case of Smoothie Bite things, my LO loved the bars and they were on a case price £14.96, I paid £1.50 for 24 packs in the case. I ordered 2 and added another in today. Good thing is they have a portion of fruit in them and LO believes they're sweeties