Panic buying

[Fat Controller]

5 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 

Very few people bake at all, these days. 

What the heck are they doing with all that flour, then?

[raymw]

playdough

[boxbrownie]

Flour arranging?

[ejstubbs]

5 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

Should have told him you were also going to buy a bottle of hand cleansing gel.........I bet he had loads of those in stock  !

 

Not if the Sainsbury's I was in today is anything to go by - clean out of the stuff, and very low on hand wash soap in the pump action bottles.

 

The Boots just round the corner had groaning shelves full of both!

[tomparryharry]

2 hours ago, boxbrownie said:

Flour arranging?

 

I was going to rise to that joke, but it's plain to see that it's a bit half baked....

[Gwiwer]

5 hours ago, Hroth said:

I'm not sure that they are really allowed to apply such a condition

Nothing in the Government advice states that you may not click and collect - which is in effect what you were trying to do - and indeed by doing so you are saving van-miles and potentially freeing up a delivery slot for something critical.  Sainsbury's does not at any point that I can readily see state a purchase must be made in store in order to collect from an in-store outlet therefore that condition - if it exists at all - is extremely well hidden.  

 

Who is to say that the item you wished to collect was not of itself essential.  Argos offers a very wide range and I could easily advance an argument for some items to be considered essential.

 

I suspect you had the misfortune to meet a "jobsworth".  However given the circumstances it may be counter-productive to lodge a complaint.  

[Gwiwer]

4 minutes ago, tomparryharry said:

 

I was going to rise to that joke, but it's plain to see that it's a bit half baked....

Groan button.  Now.  Please!!!  

[tomparryharry]

Our latest special offers, courtesy of the middle bins at A**I:-

 

Year planners for 2001. Buy one, get one free!

 

Saudi-Arabian snow shoes. Get the bobble hat for the matching set!

 

Senegalese Dictaphones. You'll wonder how you've managed before!

 

Old Oak toothpicks. made from 100% old oak!

 

Crazy prices, they won't last long!

[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, ejstubbs said:

 

Not if the Sainsbury's I was in today is anything to go by - clean out of the stuff, and very low on hand wash soap in the pump action bottles.

Don’t worry.....I was being ironic......

[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, Gwiwer said:

Groan button.  Now.  Please!!!  

I thought the joke a bit stale also.....

 

 

 

Edited April 28, 2020 by boxbrownie

[Reorte]

4 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

Groan button.  Now.  Please!!!  

Send it to the joke thread. Grist for the mill there.

[ejstubbs]

4 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

I suspect you had the misfortune to meet a "jobsworth".  However given the circumstances it may be counter-productive to lodge a complaint.  

 

While the guidance on Argos' website doesn't say you must make a purchase of an essential food item (so to insist on it does seem rather jobsworth-y), it does say:

 

Quote

We would strongly encourage you to order items for home delivery, and to only collect whilst doing your essential food shopping at Sainsbury’s.

 

(My emphasis.)

 

So they clearly would like to discourage folks from collecting at any time other than when they were going to the store anyway to buy food.

 

4 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

Argos offers a very wide range and I could easily advance an argument for some items to be considered essential.

 

Argos still offers an efficient and fast delivery service for the vast majority of the items it sells.  You don't have to use click and collect in order to get your hands on an 'essential' item.  And if Argos can't deliver it then someone somewhere almost certainly will.  Let's face it, Argos doesn't exactly sell exclusive goods that can't be obtained elsewhere.

 

Plenty of online forums are full to the brim with people "advancing arguments" to justify them doing what they would prefer to be able to do in the face of the lockdown regulations (i.e. the law) and guidance (i.e not the law, but what informed advice indicates to be a socially responsible way to behave in the current circumstances).  A depressing number of folks seem to be spending a lot of effort looking for wriggle room and constructing excuses.  Being charitable one could imagine that they probably don't have much else to fill their time with at the moment.

 

At least the people who just don't give a **** about the rules and go partying, have their mates round etc etc are basically honest about being selfish and not giving two hoots about the rest of society, rather than trying to fabricate a facade of justification for their behaviour.

[Butler Henderson]

23 hours ago, Fat Controller said:

And therein, the problem; only about 2% of the flour produced in Britain goes to retailers in small bags in normal circumstances; the rest either goes in 25kg sacks to smaller bakeries and restaurants, or by bulk tanker to industrial bakeries. Thus the mills will only carry small stocks of bags for retail, and it will take a while to get new stocks of bags delivered. If you are into baking on a reasonable scale, it might be worth trying to get larger sacks direct from places like Shipton Mill, the Watermill at Little Salkend or Dove's Farm. It's a lot cheaper per kilo; having bagged a few tonnes in my time selling the stuff, I can understand why.

If only - I have asked Dove's Farm when a particular flour will be available and due to "trade demand" they are unable to say

[Hobby]

11 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

Plenty of online forums are full to the brim with people "advancing arguments" to justify them doing what they would prefer to be able to do in the face of the lockdown regulations (i.e. the law) and guidance (i.e not the law, but what informed advice indicates to be a socially responsible way to behave in the current circumstances).  A depressing number of folks seem to be spending a lot of effort looking for wriggle room and constructing excuses.  Being charitable one could imagine that they probably don't have much else to fill their time with at the moment.

 

At least the people who just don't give a **** about the rules and go partying, have their mates round etc etc are basically honest about being selfish and not giving two hoots about the rest of society, rather than trying to fabricate a facade of justification for their behaviour.

 

 

What an excellent summary of what is happening! 

[melmerby]

There has been plenty of forecasts about what the "family shop" will be like after the rush to home delivery, suggesting less personal visits to food shop infuture.

Well from my perspective, as soon as it is safe to go back to visiting the shops, I will.

My experience of online grocery shopping after three deliveries, is that it is totally dysfunctional, the chance of getting anything like the total of items you order is extremely thin.

 

I waited until 30mins before the 10pm cut-off time yesterday before finalising my order, which was picked early this morning.

I ordered 3 different flavour yoghurts, one came back showing out of stock after I submitted the order last night so got removed, this morning the other two flavours have been substituted by the very flavour that was out of stock last night!

A couple of not particularly good subsitutes on other items and 6 items are now OOS this morning that were confirmed last night.

It really is pathetic.

 

 

Edited April 29, 2020 by melmerby

[spamcan61]

10 minutes ago, melmerby said:

 

It really is pathetic.

Hardly normal operating conditions at any level in the supply chain though is it? 

[Hroth]

13 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

While the guidance on Argos' website doesn't say you must make a purchase of an essential food item (so to insist on it does seem rather jobsworth-y), it does say:

Quote

We would strongly encourage you to order items for home delivery, and to only collect whilst doing your essential food shopping at Sainsbury’s. Maintaining your emphasis

 

13 hours ago, ejstubbs said:

So they clearly would like to discourage folks from collecting at any time other than when they were going to the store anyway to buy food.

 

Argos still offers an efficient and fast delivery service for the vast majority of the items it sells.  You don't have to use click and collect in order to get your hands on an 'essential' item.  And if Argos can't deliver it then someone somewhere almost certainly will.  Let's face it, Argos doesn't exactly sell exclusive goods that can't be obtained elsewhere.

 

The other thing, that I didn't mention was that, being cheap, I usually shop at Aldi and as the Sainsburys with the collection point is next door to the Aldi, it made perfect sense to collect the Argos item immediately after I'd done my normal shop at Aldi.  This is what made the "at the shop door" stipulation that I shop at Sainsburys to collect my Argos purchase so petty and irritating. 

 

Never mind, I bought something that could be classed as "essential", that I would consume, and was as cheap as possible.  It also means that I won't be buying anything from Argos until after the emergency has ceased, and that I probably won't buy anything from Sainsburys at all from now on.

 

 

[rockershovel]

We’ve used on-Line shopping for a long while. Substitutions have always been common, in that you generally get SOMETHING substituted, most weeks.

 

Another common problem was that a lot of delivered items were at, or near their “best by” date. This isn’t such a problem now, it was noticed that it affected sales (my wife changed from Ocado at one point, stating that as a reason; Tesco now advertise “as fresh as you would pick yourself” or something similar)

[kevinlms]

15 minutes ago, melmerby said:

 

I ordered 3 different flavour yoghurts, one came back showing out of stock after I submitted the order last night so got removed, this morning the other two flavours have been substituted by the very flavour that was out of stock last night!

A couple of not particularly good subsitutes on other items and 6 items are now OOS this morning that were confirmed last night.

It really is pathetic.

 

 

That all indicates that stock holdings are varying all the time, depending on deliveries to the supermarket/warehouse.

 

It is difficult times and I suspect all suppliers/retailers are doing their best.

 

But I do agree with you, that personal shopping is always better than online, where YOU make the choice where substitutes are acceptable or unnecessary duplications, or wait to next time you shop.

 

Hopefully things won't be in lockdown, forever!

[John Isherwood]

2 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

 

The other thing, that I didn't mention was that, being cheap, I usually shop at Aldi and as the Sainsburys with the collection point is next door to the Aldi, it made perfect sense to collect the Argos item immediately after I'd done my normal shop at Aldi.  This is what made the "at the shop door" stipulation that I shop at Sainsburys to collect my Argos purchase so petty and irritating. 

 

Never mind, I bought something that could be classed as "essential", that I would consume, and was as cheap as possible.  It also means that I won't be buying anything from Argos until after the emergency has ceased, and that I probably won't buy anything from Sainsburys at all from now on.

 

 

 

Am I missing something here - surely Sainsburys own Argos? It's all profit to them, anyway?

 

The only thing that I can think of as a 'reason' for this 'rule' is that, with social distancing producing queues outside supermarkets, the extra queue length generated by Argos customers could discourage grocery shoppers from using Sainsbury's. That, though is a penalty of combining two operations under the same roof!

 

John Isherwood.

[Hroth]

2 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

 

Am I missing something here - surely Sainsburys own Argos? It's all profit to them, anyway?

 

The only thing that I can think of as a 'reason' for this 'rule' is that, with social distancing producing queues outside supermarkets, the extra queue length generated by Argos customers could discourage grocery shoppers from using Sainsbury's. That, though is a penalty of combining two operations under the same roof!

 

John Isherwood.

 

Yes indeed.  It must have seemed a good idea to the beancounters to combine two profit centres under one roof, the current situation making it difficult to operate sensibly.  However, if people are mainly going to pick an item up at the Argos counter, then they will pass through the store more quickly than those shopping. In the current circumstances, a large number of Argos collectees won't prolong queueing unless you make them shop too.

 

[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, spamcan61 said:

Hardly normal operating conditions at any level in the supply chain though is it? 

Actually have to agree, we normally shop roughly 50/50 online and in store (Waitrose mainly) and before the shut down the online shopping was almost faultless, but since the shut down we have only been able to get one delivery (and that was booked before the shutdown as a normal shop, but still could only book 5 weeks in advance, which was ridiculous) since then we've not been able to get one booking despite having all the required reasons, letter etc etc....the system really has failed us in this respect (I don't know if it's the supermarkets or the GOV but have not been able to contact customer service since the lockdown regardless!).

[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

 

 

Another common problem was that a lot of delivered items were at, or near their “best by” date. This isn’t such a problem now, it was noticed that it affected sales (my wife changed from Ocado at one point, stating that as a reason; Tesco now advertise “as fresh as you would pick yourself” or something similar)

This is why we liked shopping online with Waitrose, they actually wander around our local store picking the goods off the shelves for deliveries, so we definitely do get what we would have chosen....give or take. 

[rockershovel]

10 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

This is why we liked shopping online with Waitrose, they actually wander around our local store picking the goods off the shelves for deliveries, so we definitely do get what we would have chosen....give or take. 

 

I thought Waitrose were a better service than Ocado, on the whole, but my wife prefers Ocado for whatever reason, and I don’t involve myself in the decision

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

 

Yes indeed.  It must have seemed a good idea to the beancounters to combine two profit centres under one roof, the current situation making it difficult to operate sensibly.  However, if people are mainly going to pick an item up at the Argos counter, then they will pass through the store more quickly than those shopping. In the current circumstances, a large number of Argos collectees won't prolong queueing unless you make them shop too.

 

The Sainsbury's nearest to me has two entrances, one ofwhich is right next to the Argos area, so if they wanted they could separate the two operations temporararily.