Ocado customers let rip as pureplay publishes open letter

Ocado has published an open letter to its customers, entitled ‘What a pickle’ and addressing the coronavirus outbreak.

“The last few weeks have been unprecedented in that an unprecedented amount of unprecedented things have happened: us temporarily suspending our website and grocery delivery being a question in a Prime Minister’s news conference, to give just two examples of things we’ve filed in the ‘say what now?’ folder,” the letter says.

It ends by thanking customers for their patience and support. Cue an onslaught of disgruntled people lashing out on Twitter, with sample comments including: “You certainly are in a pickle Ocado!! You cancelled my weekly reserve with no communication/explanation. Apparently I have priority access but there are NO available slots. It’s very disappointing as a loyal smartpass customer. I can’t tell you how much of my time you have wasted.”

And: “I'd say it's more than a pickle.... The customer service is about as good as trying to talk to a pickle and expecting a reply.... To be fair I'd probably get a better response.”

‘Nobody will starve’

As the coronavirus intensifies, Ocado Chairman, Stuart Rose, has called on Brits to stop stockpiling groceries.

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “There is no shortage of food. Nobody will starve. There is a £1 billion more food in people’s larders than there was a couple of weeks ago. What are they doing with it? How much do you need to eat? How much do you need to store away?”

Ocado CEO Melanie Smith, meanwhile, commented last week: “We currently have 10 times more demand for our services now than we did before the outbreak began, and with every announcement, we see a further extraordinary surge of customers to Ocado.com. No matter how hard we work, we will not have enough capacity to serve the unprecedented levels of demand.”

Test kits

Yesterday, we reported that Ocado had bought 100,000 Covid-19 test kits for its grocery packers and delivery drivers.

It has stumped up £1.5 million for these, with 40,000 already delivered and a further 60,000 to come.

Ocado did not state from which company it had bought the tests. It said that it would hand them over to the NHS (where many frontline workers have been critical of a lack of vital equipment) if required.