Incorrect goods received

Annie309

I ordered online from a baking company as I couldn't get any flour in stores due to demand.  I ordered 2 lots of brown and 1 lot of white along with other things.  My order was delivered today with a dispatch note in the box.  My brown flour was crossed out and where my white flour was listed the 1 was crossed out and replaced with a 3.  They substituted  my brown flour with white flour.  I have emailed the company in question to receive an email back stating....Sorry we are out of Wholemeal for 6 weeks – we have had to make substitutions so you don’t go without – there should have been a little note in the box explaining this.  The only thing in the box with my order was an invoice with brown crossed out and white changed to 3.  My question is do they have to give me what I ordered?  Can I get a refund, the items were online when I ordered them, it took them 6 days to deliver my order (which is very acceptable with what is happening in the world at the moment), I have now sent them an email asking for them to replace the white flour with wholemeal flour which I ordered I await their reply.....

MysteryMe

A lot of businesses with websites have been caught out with being swamped with orders at a far, far higher level then they normally experience so regardless of what it said when you ordered, the wholemeal flour may well have been out of stock.  I am aware of one company that got the equivalent of 6 months orders in the space of 4 days and that was a very large company.  Most allow for some extras in stock but unless they have a super sophisticated stock control and website it's difficult.

In an ideal world they would have contacted you prior to dispatch but we are not in an ideal world at present and as they said they thought it better to send substitutions rather than just send you the one bag of white. They will not be able to accept the flour back so I suspect they will refund you if you are not willing to accept the substitution and you get to keep the 3 bags, it's more cost effective then them having to post another 3 bags of flour to you.

It's one of those scenarios where only you can decide what you consider the right thing to do is in the current circumstances.

GaleSF63

If you order from them again - or from any other online company - make sure you tell them you don't want  substitutions. 

It still doesn't mean you will get everything you ordered though. Your order will be picked within a certain number of hours before it is sent out, not at the point they receive the order.