Online shopping delivery slots during crisis

cymruchris

izzitme said:

@dosh37 The majority of delivery sites only have a certain number of delivery vans. They are specialist vehicles & cannot be hired from your local vehicle rental office.They are out for around 8.5 hours in the day & again for around 3.5 hours in the evening. We also have to abide by driving hours laws. It is only the tacho restrictions that have been eased.

Of course there will be many other factors to take into account - including needing more drivers - but an option to consider would be to extend deliveries in the short term to 24 hours a day - I'm sure some younger families wouldn't be too stressed out if they knew their weekly shop was arriving between 2 and 3 am. They are purpose built vehicles - and they are in limited supply - but it could be an option to extend hours (if other resources allow or can be varied to support). 

drspa44

cymruchris said:

izzitme said:

@dosh37 The majority of delivery sites only have a certain number of delivery vans. They are specialist vehicles & cannot be hired from your local vehicle rental office.They are out for around 8.5 hours in the day & again for around 3.5 hours in the evening. We also have to abide by driving hours laws. It is only the tacho restrictions that have been eased.

Of course there will be many other factors to take into account - including needing more drivers - but an option to consider would be to extend deliveries in the short term to 24 hours a day - I'm sure some younger families wouldn't be too stressed out if they knew their weekly shop was arriving between 2 and 3 am. They are purpose built vehicles - and they are in limited supply - but it could be an option to extend hours (if other resources allow or can be varied to support). 

Also, I may be wrong, but aren't the supermarkets still forced to comply with sunday trading laws? We suspended these for the London 2012 Olympics, so I don't see any reason why we are not suspending them now. I'm sure a lot of the existing supermarket staff would happily take the overtime, provided it paid well and was optional.

Gloria_Steeth

mwarby said:

I did see on bbc tv news one of the supermarkets were looking into standardised boxes of essentials, which would be packed at distribution centres and not from the store

Looks like this is available now. Meat or vegetarian box, £35 including next-day delivery via DPD. Contents will vary according to availability but it says it should feed two adults for one week.

https://www.morrisons.com/food-boxes

dosh39

If you try to book a delivery slot on the Sainsburys website today you get this message:-

We’re prioritising vulnerable customers for delivery

We’re really sorry, but we haven’t been able to identify you as one of our elderly, vulnerable or disabled customers.

We’ve expanded our Click & Collect service to more locations, so you can still order online and collect from one of our stores.

Have we got it wrong?

We’ve already been able to identify some of our vulnerable customers through the information that we have about them. But we know that we haven’t identified everyone.

We’re working hard, alongside the government and retail industry, to identify more of them.

If you’re elderly, disabled or vulnerable and think you should be on our vulnerable customer list, please get in touch.

Call us

0800 328 1700

This means that customers who have bought a delivery pass up-front are being denied the service they have already paid for.

It's also impossible to contact Customer services on the phone number given - they are not answering. You just get an endless recorded message and music.

Farway

Gloria_Steeth said:

mwarby said:

I did see on bbc tv news one of the supermarkets were looking into standardised boxes of essentials, which would be packed at distribution centres and not from the store

Looks like this is available now. Meat or vegetarian box, £35 including next-day delivery via DPD. Contents will vary according to availability but it says it should feed two adults for one week.

https://www.morrisons.com/food-boxes

I had this, also had "there are no delivery slots available" so nice try but until they get more slots it's a bit pointless

Gloria_Steeth

^^^^
That's a pity. Had thought there would be more availability than the supermarket delivery slots since the boxes are being delivered by DPD, but I see this message has now appeared on the home page:

"Apologies for any inconvenience but our slots are sold out. Please check again tomorrow for further availability."

Looks like it's going to be a case of fastest finger first.

p00hsticks

I think Morrisons may be re-organising their online shopping at the moment.

I read that they are planning to set up something whereby you can order a box of grocery essentials and they'll deliver next day. You don't get to choose what's in the box - only vegetarian or non-vegetarian options - and it'll cost £35. But their online shopping website seems not to be working at the moment...

lindens

Gloria_Steeth said:

^^^^
That's a pity. Had thought there would be more availability than the supermarket delivery slots since the boxes are being delivered by DPD, but I see this message has now appeared on the home page:

"Apologies for any inconvenience but our slots are sold out. Please check again tomorrow for further availability."

Looks like it's going to be a case of fastest finger first.

I guess its just moving the problem - DPD are going to have their own problems with driver availability etc

witewabbitt

Thank you everybody who has commented. Yes the lack of slots seems to be universal. They will HAVE to do something now that we are all in lock-down. Our Tesco (the only supermarket we have other than M&S) has a so-called 'dedicated hour' for elderly and vulnerable, but it is not the first hour of opening so I don't see how they can turn people out who are already there earlier. Some of the smaller stores have started trying to do some kind of delivery service. I have now arranged fresh milk to be delivered so that's good. Stay safe everyone, and be good!

Stompa

drspa44 said:
Also, I may be wrong, but aren't the supermarkets still forced to comply with sunday trading laws? We suspended these for the London 2012 Olympics, so I don't see any reason why we are not suspending them now. I'm sure a lot of the existing supermarket staff would happily take the overtime, provided it paid well and was optional.

Agreed. The Sunday trading laws also prohibit shops from opening on Easter Sunday, and I notice that at Asda deliveries don't seem to be available on that day. I imagine other supermarkets may be the same.