Ocado Customer Loyalty 27 January 2021 at 2:22PM edited 27 January 2021 at 4:11PM in Praise, vent & warnings 10 replies 404 views

Weetystep

Have been an Ocado customer for many years and have a monthly delivery pass at £5.99 per month. As I am a key worker with a high likelihood of having to isolate frequently I booked a weekly slot some time ago. Today I received an email stating that my slot for tomorrow has been cancelled, no explanation given. When I rang (long wait time) I was told that they are too busy to provide my slot. I explained that I am currently at home with COVID symptoms and therefore cannot simply go shopping. The advisor said that there was nothing he could do and when I asked to speak to a manager I was refused as ‘there is nothing we can do’. I was offered a £5 voucher - not much use as I can’t shop. Next available slot to book is 7th Feb and when I asked about next week’s order I was told that they couldn’t tell me whether this would happen.
It appears that my slot has been given to someone else and customer loyalty counts for nothing with Ocado. Will be spending my money elsewhere from now on. I have experienced poor service from Ocado throughout the past year but thought that the slot booking would ensure supplies when isolating. Not sure if others are also experiencing problems with Ocado?

Spank

What you say is possible, but it could also be that a van or driver is out of commission. 

jon81uk

Your slot may not have been given to another customer, but they may have a driver taken ill, or having to self-isolate. If all drivers are at 100% capacity then they can't just magic more deliveries.

greyteam1959

Customer loyalty counts for absolutely nothing with any company at all these days.
Vote with your feet & get you shopping elsewhere.

IvanOpinion

Weetystep said:

Will be spending my money elsewhere from now on. 

Way to go ... you show them!

JJ_Egan

Its proven via sites such as this that customers have no loyalty either .

As proven by the OP one blip and gone .

Fosterdog

Their delivery drivers are also key workers with a high chance of needing to isolate, most likely thing that's happened is that they are one or more drivers down due to them isolating and cannot just make new drivers appear. Maybe you picked up Covid from the delivery you received last week, or maybe you gave it to your driver if you were contagious but not yet developed symptoms. You won't be the only "loyal" customer having an order cancelled, it will be at minimum an entire delivery route down. They are not going to send another driver miles out of their way to deliver to you, the time it would take to do that for your single delivery would mean they would have to cancel a number of other customers deliveries. They will always do damage control to impact the fewest people possible and unfortunately this time you are part of that damage control. Maybe other weeks other customers orders have been cancelled in favour of you getting your delivery.

IvanOpinion

Just another thought, as a key worker maybe the delivery driver had got a slot for his vaccination jab.  That could one explanation for the short notice.

68ComebackSpecial

IvanOpinion said:

Just another thought, as a key worker maybe the delivery driver had got a slot for his vaccination jab.  That could one explanation for the short notice.

Unless the delivery driver is a septuagenarian he won't be getting a vaccine anytime soon as the only key workers currently receiving it are in the health care sector.

Weetystep

It is possible that there may have been valid reasons for the cancellation but it would have helped if the advisor had had a little more concern. 'We're too busy' isn't really good customer service. Fortunately we have Amazon Prime and I was able to use this to get a Morrisons delivery. Booked the slot on Wednesday and had the items delivered on Thursday. They don't have the full store range available but plenty of essentials so no problem. Free delivery if spending over £40 so will be using this service again. Would cost around the same as the Ocado delivery pass but with all the Prime benefits so good value. Glad I found this option as I wasn't aware of it before.

steveb_123

For what it's worth ... most supermarket deliveries operate on a first come first served approach. So if you have a regular automatic order, I would expect you to be one of the first ... but they are all struggling under the demand and (as others have suggested) the drivers are not immune either ...
To get a slot with a well known supermarket, my elderly neighbor has to log on at 1 minute past midnight when the next 'batch' open up .. sometimes she still fails to get a slot, so she sends her order to her daughter, who lives around 50 miles away in the countryside but where there are, it seems, more slots than customers .. and gets her groceries delivered when her daughter (designated carer) comes to check on her at the weekend. Two of my other neighbors regularly combine their orders (single OAP's so not running into the max. order item count ..)
I go to a well known discount supermarket and queue up to be one of the first in (and out) on Sunday ... (to be honest, I can't be bothered with all that checking of the delivery and the risk something I really need doesn't turn up) 
We are in a 'high demand' area, but lucky we have good neighbors ..