Thinking of Forrest Gump when you receive your online shopping isn’t really the norm. However some shoppers will be forgiven for remembering his iconic quote: “Life was like a box of chocolates, you never know what you gonna get”.
Two in five shoppers received a substitute product in their latest online grocery order that left them shocked by its irrelevancy.
Product swaps made by supermarkets include duck paste instead of duct tape and sausage rolls in place of toilet rolls.
A poll found Aldi, which has a click and collect shopping service, was narrowly the most likely of the nine online supermarkets to put substitutions in customer orders, with 49 per cent of its customers reporting that they had received a replacement item in their most recent shop.
One Aldi customer said they received Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream instead of the breaded fish fillets.
Another bemused shopper received cooking oil instead of milk.
Half of customers who had ordered online at Sainsbury’s (48 per cent) received a substitution in their latest shop.
One shopper reported ordering Sainsbury’s sponge scourers but instead received a Victoria sponge cake.
Another was delivered beef stock instead of brandy butter.
Just under half (45 per cent) of Asda shoppers received replacement items. One received sausage rolls instead of toilet rolls and another ordered Cadbury Creme Eggs but discovered a substitute of a “box of bog-standard hens’ eggs”.
About four in 10 (43 per cent) Morrisons’ shoppers reported substitutions, dropping to 41 per cent of online-only Ocado customers and 39 per cent of Tesco shoppers, one of which found duck paste in their basket in place of the duct tape they had ordered.
A third of Waitrose customers (36 per cent) had received replacements in their most recent food order, including one who received tampons instead of shaving cream.
Amazon Fresh customers were among the least likely to receive a substitution at 26%, while online Iceland shoppers were the least likely to get a replacement at 18 per cent.
However, one Iceland-shopping grandparent accidentally gave their charges a spicy snack because they had not realised their plain cheese biscuits had been replaced by a chilli alternative.
Which? found that not all substitutions were bad, however, with one Asda shopper receiving three £60 bottles of whisky to replace three £25 ones that were out of stock.
Which? retail editor Ele Clark said: “While product substitutions in your online shopping can sometimes be genuinely helpful, our research has shown that they can also be downright ridiculous.
“You do have the right to reject substitutions at the point of delivery, or you could opt out of receiving substitutions altogether – though this can result in a real headache if the key ingredient for your dinner that night is missing.
“If you do end up with a substitution that you don’t want, always contact the supermarket and ask for a refund.”
Which? questioned 3,004 UK adults in October, with 1,304 reporting on their online orders including substitutions.
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