Which? survey finds a third of online supermarket shoppers have been given a substitution

Mushrooms in place of tampons, a frozen pizza substituted for tinned peaches, and cream crackers instead of Christmas crackers. These are among the “bizarre” supermarket substitutions reported by online shoppers in a new poll.

Just over a third of online grocery shoppers (34%) reported having received a substitution in their most recent grocery delivery, the survey for consumer group Which? found.

Asda was the worst offender with more than half (56%) of customers receiving a replacement product in their last order. When asked about the strangest substitution of the past year, one of its shoppers recounted their bemusement at having ordered washing powder only to unpack 10 cans of beer.

So throwing this open to the floor: have you had an silly substitutions?

  • towerful
    3·
    8 months ago

    Probably something like “£5 loss on item isnt worth an extra 5 minutes traversing the shop and a van potentially being 5 minutes behind scheduled departure (thus the whole schedule being 5 minutes behind)”.

    I guess its freakanomics. Cheaper to take a few potential losses if the customer actually rejects a poor substitution than definately miss schedules (and metrics).
    Infact, i bet scheduling metrics (easily and automatically measured) are KPIs (thus bonuses) as opposed to customer satisfaction (much harder to measure).
    When metrics become targets, they fail as metrics