M&S Christmas Food to Order

[Jakey Neverland]

Ahh that makes sense, i totally did not think about the collection slots.

Difference this year is paying up front, i dont recall doing that before.

[hermione25]

Originally Posted by Jakey Neverland

Ahh that makes sense, i totally did not think about the collection slots.

Difference this year is paying up front, i dont recall doing that before.

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Have you paid in full? I just paid £30 deposit which I’ve always done in the past, though it may have been £20/£25 in years gone by? The total depends on what weight turkey I end up with so I’ll only know that on collection.

[Jakey Neverland]

I only order puddings, so it is usually less than £30.00. I just don't remember paying before hand last year.

[soooexcited!]

Originally Posted by silverfox46

It has been known to happen than on collection some goods were unavailable. How can that happen when they know exactly what has been ordered.
I picked my order up 23 rd last year and a lady ahead of me in the queue had several items missing.

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I don't understand that either. I picked up an order one Christmas with a selection of vegetarian bits for my very fussy sister in law. Most of them were unavailable. The substitutions were ok but not what I ordered. I did the order in October 😬

[Woohoobb]

Originally Posted by soooexcited!

I don't understand that either. I picked up an order one Christmas with a selection of vegetarian bits for my very fussy sister in law. Most of them were unavailable. The substitutions were ok but not what I ordered. I did the order in October 😬

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I can give you the ins and outs of the process from a store perspective. In no way do I think it is appropriate that people don’t get what they order.
However the process is as follows:

The evening before the first collection (22nd) normally around 8/9pm the first food lorry shows up. It contains all cold food for the next day plus the full allotment of ambient products for the whole 3 days. It is a mess and we have teams segregating and time slotting the food overnight. We normally get maybe 2/3hrs into the slots because it takes so long and the fridges are never big enough for the amount of food that comes in!
That process is repeated every evening for the following day. Unfortunately as a store you don’t know you are missing anything until you physically complete this process and by this time we have no ability to source it. Hence the substitutes. It’s annoying for the store as it’s nothing to do with us it’s normally a warehouse issue! If you are lucky to have a large store near you they normally have all the lines so we physically send someone in the car to pick up the right items. But sometimes that’s not possible.
You also have to run the risk of things arriving damaged which happens more often that you realise. I had a driver push a whole stack over off the lorry. He probably wrote off 1K of stock because he was rushing. That stuff can not be replaced until stock counts have been submitted and the system ‘calls’ for replacements.
Like I said I am not defending them at all (more the shop staff that are left to clean up the mess), they need a better system or to at least let the stores manage expectations. I used to call customers in the morning if we didn’t have bits to talk through subs etc so they weren’t raging at me in store. But that’s not normal practice. I’d advise anyone looking at it to stay away from the £100 seafood platter unless you are collecting from a large store. We had 3/4 ordered last Christmas over the weekend and I only got 1. I had a hard time subbing that from a tiny simply food.

[Jan]

Wow! What a nightmare! Thanks for the insight. Good to know.

[Woohoobb]

Originally Posted by Jan

Wow! What a nightmare! Thanks for the insight. Good to know.

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I loved doing turkey team but most people avoid it like the plague. It’s not nice to be told 100 times you’ve ruined Christmas when you are working 14hr shifts. I used to go in around 4am to help the night team, then I’d run the turkey collection (7-7) then stay for the lorry. It’s brutal. Plus I didn’t get paid over my salary so Xmas week I probably did close to 70hrs. By the time Christmas Day rolled round I slept through it 😂 especially last year when I was in my first trimester of pregnancy with twins. I actually don’t know how I did it!

[soooexcited!]

I'm not bashing the staff I really couldn't cope with working in that sector over the Christmas period. My ex husband was a lorry driver he would have been the one rushing most likely. Due to timed deliveries he was always in a rush. The poor ladies were so apologetic and gave me a complimentary bottle of fizz. It wouldn't have been an issue apart from extremely fussy french vegetarian sil doesn't eat garlic, onions and mushrooms. She's not coming this year so any substitution is fine by us lol x