Supermarket shopping online or by phone for over 70’s during Covid-19 period

Bacman

Went to our local large Asda at 6:45am today, place was heaving with people like normally present on a busy Saturday afternoon, car park was almost full, people queuing with their full large trolleys half way into the store into the main isle walkway; a lot of isles empty of items and the other isles getting cleared. Only sections with good stock was fruit and veg. Chaos.

So yes, mac.d whilst your sentiments are right the reality is supermarkets are struggling to get the items from suppliers to stack their shelves, human nature means for most people "look after no.1" (the human species are violent and selfish mostly, it's why we've done so much damage to the world's resources, chuck so much stuff away and also survived as a species after killing off the other human-like species); people like me who are also shopping for elderly parents who are self-isolating for fear of getting infected need to do extra shopping for them too, and they are struggling to get items delivered online so lands on me to help them. (ie don't keyboard warrior comments please, you have no idea about people's circumstances to comment). 

Bottom line is you either join all the panic buyers or you don't get stuff, and soon we'll be all made to self-isolate and also most of us will get sick so have to anyway, if you haven't stock to see you through for a few weeks, you have a miserable time being hungry.

kah22

Fill in an online order from the likes of Tesco or Asda, look at it later and you may see some items marked as no longer available. Go online update the order in anyway and when you get to checkout naturally the non available items are gone from your list.

However, if you do nothing to your order: add nothing to, take nothing away, so you are not updating your order in anyway what will the assistant who is picking your order see ? Will they see your original order so when they get to an item  previously marked as unavailable but now it has become available, will they place that item in your basket ?  Or will they see your order minus those marked as unavailable so when they get to that item, e.g. flour, just walk on by

Kevin

Browntoa

Morrison are setting up a call centre to do just this. 

mac.d

Of course people need to be able to buy enough food/supplies for a week or two (many people shop weekly anyway?), it's just sad that people accept this stock-piling & panic buying as acceptable behaviour. Why? Because we are all facing the same situation, and these actions are why stocks are now being rationed, why shop hours are being cut and deliveries are being suspended. They are not happening simply because shops don't have enough stock.

Wait for a few more weeks and we may all be struggling anyway. This is a different problem. We may end up like it is in Italy with only food shops open and apart from essential workers, people only allowed out to buy food, and there being formal queuing to get inside shops a few at a time.

The fact is, you still need to be able to shop for essential perishables like milk, fruit, bread etc. And in the short term, there are people who are going to be struggling to buy enough of even this food for a week (except fruit & veg!), as well as basics because of everyone panic buying.

Earlier this week someone working with vulnerable adults had to traipse around three different supermarkets with them to buy their usual weekly shop. Other people simply don't have the money to do anything other than buy week to week. I'm sure we all know people in difficult situations. I hope your elderly parents get through this fine, just as I hope all the vulnerable & elderly people in my circle of family & friends are the same. I still hope those vulnerable, elderly or just poor people that don't have any choice other than to buy what they can afford are ok too. 

On a positive note, Morrisons have said they are employing more staff to deal with the home deliveries, including as Browntoa mentioned, a call centre for those who can't access online shopping. And some kind of simple to order food parcels will be available to order from March 23. 

Plus there are lots of Mutual Aid groups being set up on Facebook, hopefully these will be a big help for the elderly.