(no subject)

[rivka]

We usually have our groceries delivered. The delivery charge ($7-12, depending on how much we buy and when we order) is more than worth the savings in time and hassle. Usually. (Lately they've been giving us some trouble.)

Last night our delivery was more than an hour late. I was pretty annoyed, because we had scheduled our delivery window to fall in between when Michael came home from work and when he had to leave for a meeting at church. Instead the groceries wound up arriving when I was alone with both kids. It took the driver forever to bring them into the house, and when I went into the pantry after he left, it was so full that I could hardly open the refrigerator door. Huh.

I started to shift things around. Right away I came upon a giant supersaver 5lb package of boneless chicken breasts. We didn't order that. Then I noticed a head of lettuce. We didn't order that either. I started to sort the bags. Sure enough, the driver had delivered our order and half a dozen bags of someone else's order. Specifically, their perishables.

As soon as I realized we had some of the wrong groceries I called Safeway's 800 number to tell them to turn the driver around. He'd only been gone about five minutes. She came back to tell me that the driver said he didn't have time to come back, so oh well.

"Well, I've got about fifty dollars worth of someone else's meat, here," I said.

"Really?" Her voice faltered.

I started adding up. "Fifteen-dollar package of chicken breasts, here's a ten-dollar package of ground beef, two pounds of bologna, some pork sausage, bacon, link sausages..."

"Um," she said. "Do you think you could store the groceries and we'll pick it up tomorrow?"

I explained that on grocery day my fridge is pretty much full. She wound up saying that she'd see if the operations manager could order the driver back to pick it up, and otherwise they'd just have to take the loss and I could donate the food to someone.

I managed, with difficulty, to wedge the most perishable stuff into the fridge, and went to put the kids to bed. When I came down, there was a phone message from Safeway. They had been unable to reach the driver. Could I please call them back to schedule a time when they could send a driver in the morning.

What would you do?

They schedule their drivers with a two-hour window. Two hours that I'd be waiting around for their driver to fix their mistake - if the driver wasn't running late like last night's driver. Plus, I think it's totally disgusting from a food-hygiene-and-safety perspective that they would consider taking back and selling to someone else food that had been out of their possession and stored in a customer's home under unknown conditions. Seriously, as their customer? The idea that they would put this food back on the shelf so as not to lose $50 makes me not want to eat their food anymore.

I did not call them back. Instead I called My Sister's Place, a homeless women's and children's day center across the street from my church. Yes, they take fresh food donations. Yes, they would be delighted to accept anything I can give them. I'll pack the stranger's groceries up with some leftover baby food Colin isn't going to eat, and drop it off this afternoon. And I will feel guiltless about it.

Edited to add: Safeway called back this morning to schedule a pickup, and when I brought up the food safety issue they said that they can't sell food once it's been out of their store at all. So they would've picked it up only to throw it out. Whew.

Comments

[naomikritzer]

I used to get my groceries delivered. The times I got someone else's perishable food, they just treated it as a random bonus for me. I never got $50 worth of meat, but I did once get this absolutely enormous container of Tropicana OJ. The super-jumbo size. They may have accepted the return of someone else's nonperishable items.

I can't imagine them trying to get a customer to wait around during a two-hour delivery window to fix THEIR mistake.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

You did the right thing. You told them you couldn't refrigerate the stuff, they wanted to pick it up anyway. If they'd come back to pick it up that evening, that would have been one thing. But after 12 hours it should have been written off as a loss.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Well, you were told you could donate the food somewhere; you're taking them at their word. And, I agree with you - the notion of them taking food that's been out of their control back and re-delivering it is pretty gross.

[rockstarbob.livejournal.com]

Weird! And kind of gross of them. You did the right thing.

Too bad http://fresh.amazon.com/ doesn't deliver to you! We've never had a single problem, and deliver is free if you spend a certain amount. Plus, they'll deliver other Amazon stuff, too.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

You did the right thing. Is there another grocery store in your area that can deliver to you, if you don't want to continue doing business with Safeway?

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

So... regarding the edit, they were willing to make you hang around for two hours, waste a paid driver's time on it, in order to throw out some food they could have asked you to throw out if you had nowhere better to put it? What the hell?

[ailbhe]

I'm glad you donated it. Asking you to hang around for two hours to let them collect it seems very odd, though I suppose you could have left it outside in a sealed box, depending on local temperatures... Yuck.

Lousy bloody driver though. I'm glad I'm not the customer whose groceries are arriving over an hour late and without fifty dollars' worth of meat.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

If it had been other kinds of items, I might have considered it a random bonus. But what am I going to do with two pounds of bologna?

I could have divided up the ground beef and chicken and froze smaller portions, I suppose, but it seems like a better idea to just donate it.

[naomikritzer]

I might've done that with the chicken, but I have no use for two pounds of bologna, either. And we almost never use hamburger. (Also, we have a separate freezer. We got by without one for years and then once we had one we couldn't imagine how we ever survived without it. We NEVER EVER BOUGHT ANYTHING PERISHABLE IN BULK, for starters.)

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Peapod handles that differently. I got my order last Thursday and after the driver was gone and I was going through to put things in the fridge & freezer, I found three things that I didn't order: ribeye steak, giant batch of lettuces, and nectarines. And then I was missing four items I'd ordered.

I called Peapod and they weren't able to have him come back, so they told me to keep the stuff I didn't order, and we worked out another delivery time for the four items. It turned out to be tonight because I don't get up in the morning and they didn't have many evening times free. Those four items didn't cost me anything.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's messed up from the point of view of Safeway. I'm sure that driver's going to get a rocket up his arse. Glad you found a place to donate all the food you didn't order.

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

I'm happy to see the postscript, because I was ready to be really angry with them.

I tried their delivery three times. Once because I didn't have any way to get a bunch of bottled water home for our Burrito Project meals. They showed up with everything but the water. The second time, they forgot half our order, got two things wrong, and gave me shit over the free delivery code I had. The third time, I ordered a Christmas ham and specifically told them that if they were going to substitute, it had to be the same kind of ham (regular ham, not spiral or fully cooked or whatever). They brought me an expensive spiral ham instead. I won't use them again unless there's just no way I can get to the store. Which is a bummer, because on paper, it's a really good service.

[aendr.livejournal.com]

Right call, definitely. And it's good you knew who could take it, as I would have to do a lot of hunting (and possibly a drive to the nearest city) to find recipients.