Sainsburys Online shopping DOWN!

sooz

calleyw wrote: »

Ok be upset but no one has died because of it, so think people need to keep some sort of proportion here.

Yours


Calley

Calley....just wait for the news headlines to roll in. Atleast 20,000 people MIGHT die of starvation due to this

robbie1412

calleyw wrote: »

And personally I would never leave it until the very last minute to get the food and wine for a party. I would have sorted that out weeks ago and would be stored in my freezer and larder. But each to there own.

We dont like eating food that has been frozen. Most of the food part of the order was for fresh chilled items, the sort that wilt or go dry after a day, thats why we even booked the delivery time to be around midday, so we had just enough time to prepare the party.

The whole issue here is the incompetance surrounding this website crash.

quote from the BBC story :- A company spokesman said: "We froze our online home delivery website late yesterday [Tuesday] afternoon when we identified a technical issue and we are contacting customers whose deliveries have been impacted."

So why did they wait until 10 minutes before the expected hour slot was up on Wednesday to contact people? My message was left on a 1571 answerphone at 12.50pm Weds, because I was using the phone, and I never got it until 2 hours after. I would not have got it at all, had I not telephoned THEM to ask where the shopping was.

All the people who booked received an order confirmation email. Surely it would have been better to do a mass email notification at 8am in the morning to ALL subscribers to their online shop, ( even if they had not ordered ) informing them, that if they had a delivery booked for Wednesday, it would not be coming. The problem was only with the online shop website, NOT any of their other websites, or indeed, their email system, and / or whoever is registered to receive email notifications from them.

I believe that this BLATENT delay, was done on purpose, in the hope that the shoppers would not chose to do a shop elsewhere today, and would just wait for a day with the promise of the £10 voucher reduction tomorrow.

The £10 is way too low compensation, and it should have at least been 10% of the order value. For people who only ordered say the minumum £25 shop, then £10 would seem great. But for those who ordered a £250 shop, then those are the ones who have been let down big time. My wife is currently rushing round Morrisons, ( on her birthday ) trying to get these fresh products for her party tonight.

Sainsburys are totally out of order.

Dont get me wrong, I know in this high tech world website errors are bound to occur, but this has been blatent disregard from Sainsburys management, for FAILING to inform their customers in adequate time to enable them to make alternative arrangements, especially since they knew late Tuesday afternoon of a problem.


:mad:

pullenuk

You have no idea of what systems Sainsburys run. As an Online Driver myself and a bit of a computer whizz (doing an MSCE course at home) I know their systems are complex. There is lots of security involded as well due to the fact there is a lot of personal data on the systems, I got no idea how many systems are involded but its not one!

There are serveral different systems managing your order.
One for the routing which is plotted for all the vans in the company. This plans the routes, times and which customer in order. We need this as it prints out a list of who to deliver to and when. Very important.

Another handles your actual orders, all the orders have a code which can be put through a checkout (very simlier to ones you see in the store) and handles payments. Very important.

There also another that handles your orders that the shoppers need. It the system that the shopper uses to find out which customer ordered what. Very complex system and you have to have training on it. See the shoppers walking around the shop floor getting the shopping, they have handsets which talks to the servers. Those handsets tell the shopper the location of the product, how many they need, what box to put it in, which customer its for, what van its going in and what time!!! Complex system and very very important. This is the system that is possibly gone wrong. Its always in use.

And God knows how many others, I'm not an IT manager on their systems nor do I have access to it.

If any of the systems goes down it seriously affects the entire operation and its hard to fix. Yes there is a backup system for everything, but as many IT experts know that if one system goes down, it can put all the others out. A simple reboot doesn't always work as everything is not in the right place. If the shopping system goes down, you can't get the addresses or telephone numbers for the orders, cos you don't have the actual orders.

What I don't like hearing is everyone blaming and assuming when you do not know the real reason. Even I don't know it. The staff at the call centre are trying to ring everyone and sort it out. Not easy when there 10,000s of customers to contact. The delivery store cannot contact you as they cannot get onto the system.

These things are rare and thankfully most people are ok with it. But some who decides that they should get angry with the staff who are calling them to inform of the problem doesn't help. Its not their fault and they are trying to fix it.

Sorry to hear that some people got informed late on the issue. That is bad planning on Sainsburys part which I don't feel that acceptable. They should've sent out an email first thing this morning. The reason they didn't contact you Tuesday night is sometimes faults happen in the system that can be fixed overnight, in time for the morning. Its easlier as barely no-one using the system after midnight so its better for them to work on it. But I feel sorry for you, they should've contacted you much earlier in the day.

Give you a tip robbie1412 - is your nearest store one with the actual online service? Ask to see the Online Manager when you go in, if you are nice (please be nice!), and explain that the shopping was for a party and stuff and you feel that you been treated unfair as they didn't contact you in time. Ask for some money off your shopping you go and get. If your nice and don't annoy them, they may be able to sort out giving you vouchers to use at the checkouts. What you don't ask, you don't get!!

I'm not going to be of much help, I'm not actually working today anyway. But I can answer any questions if I can if you want to post here?

MoneySavingSpender

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7461526.stm

a) They should of tested their uppgrade before applying it

b) They should of had the systems in place to rollback easily should it fail

c) This makes Sainsburies look poor really.

pullenuk

MoneySavingSpender wrote: »

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7461526.stm

a) They should of tested their uppgrade before applying it

b) They should of had the systems in place to rollback easily should it fail

c) This makes Sainsburies look poor really.

Doesn't say anything about them upgrading anything? Where you get such information from?

hedgehogpenguin

"My wife is currently rushing round Morrisons, ( on her birthday ) trying to get these fresh products for her party tonight."

Maybe you should be rushing around Morrisons for her while she puts her feet up (on her birthday)

robbie1412

hedgehogpenguin wrote: »

"My wife is currently rushing round Morrisons, ( on her birthday ) trying to get these fresh products for her party tonight."

Maybe you should be rushing around Morrisons for her while she puts her feet up (on her birthday)

lol

We have 3 kids and a newborn, there's no room to stretch out, let alone put our feet up.

Anyway, I'm working now, overtime, to have to pay for the emergency caterers we'll have to employ to feed the guests later on! All down to Sainsburys incompetance.

I'll feel better tomorrow when they send me a £25 voucher for the inconvenience. :rolleyes:

pullenuk

hedgehogpenguin wrote: »

"My wife is currently rushing round Morrisons, ( on her birthday ) trying to get these fresh products for her party tonight."

Maybe you should be rushing around Morrisons for her while she puts her feet up (on her birthday)

Bit off! So instead you decided to moan about Sainsburys on here instead of helping the birthday wife. I know what I should be doing....

---

EDIT : Ok looks like I'm slow getting my post in..... fair enough on the kids. A lot of families who order online are those with little kids. I know I would if I had any.

robbie1412

pullenuk wrote: »

Give you a tip robbie1412 - is your nearest store one with the actual online service? Ask to see the Online Manager when you go in, if you are nice (please be nice!), and explain that the shopping was for a party and stuff and you feel that you been treated unfair as they didn't contact you in time. Ask for some money off your shopping you go and get. If your nice and don't annoy them, they may be able to sort out giving you vouchers to use at the checkouts. What you don't ask, you don't get!!

I'm not going to be of much help, I'm not actually working today anyway. But I can answer any questions if I can if you want to post here?

Hi pullenuk , seems i'm not the only one who felt obliged to sign up to the forums today to contribute to this thread.

Thank you for that first and informative post, and yes i will be nice , I always am!! I did say to the call centre girl i knew it wasn't her fault, ha ha.

At least we agree, that this has been a huge management error for the delay in informing customers.

and yes, I will try that at my local store, as that is where the goods come from.

I just feel it could have been handled much more easier, than sifting through 20,000 customers and then phoning them, when an email could have been done in seconds.

robbie1412

pullenuk wrote: »

A lot of families who order online are those with little kids. I know I would if I had any.

Also, not myself, but alot with kids will use their weekly tax credits to buy the weekly shop, usually planning it around everything running out.

Alot also will buy some of the family necessities at the beginning of the week, and then buy all the food offers from Sainsburys, to get delivered mid week.

The offers that Sainsburys had on, are not the same offers available in other stores, so the "expectation" of having these items brought to you this Wednesday, has led some to "desperation" in the fact that they are now over budget to be able to get the same items elsewhere.

Free transportation to a local Sainsburys, would have been the least they could do.

And guess what, yes!! They would still have had the trade !!

Management, hey! who'd wanna be one!

How's the share prices doing anyway. I know they dropped this morning due to the quarterly figures coming out , but it was actually boosted up, by the fact of an increase in 40% from online sales for the last 12 weeks.

I see changes ahead.

You got shares ? Sell ! Sell ! Sell ! ( but not online, its too unreliable :rotfl: )