Waitrose

The new rewards scheme is simply awful, time consuming and complicated to use, having got the vouchers onto my phone the signal was so bad at the till i could'nt access them i was told this was a common occurrence, eventually managed with staff help to get the two discounted offers but delayed everybody else in the queue, this is a truly appalling new scheme

I don't know what has happened to Waitrose but their Customer Services Dept. is truly dreadful. I've had the misfortune to speak to a duty manager called Carol, twice. Patronising in the extreme: she clearly doesn't care about Waitrose customers and has no wish to retain them. Instead, we are seen as irritants to be fobbed off.
This supermarket used to have the very best customer service pre-pandemic. The very best. The sharp decline in caring about customers and listening to their needs is marked. Shame really as the delivery drivers are excellent.

I don't know what has happened to Waitrose but their Customer Services Dept. is truly dreadful. I've had the misfortune to speak to a duty manager called Carol, twice. Patronising in the extreme: she clearly doesn't care about Waitrose customers and has no wish to retain them. Instead, we are seen as irritants to be fobbed off.
This supermarket used to have the very best customer service pre-pandemic. The very best. The sharp decline in caring about customers and listening to their needs is marked. Shame really as the delivery drivers are excellent.

So complicated and very discriminatory as to who can use it. A lot of older customers don't use smart phones let alone the internet. I'm 76 years and fairly IT savvy but what a complicated mess it is. First having to use the website and then open the app after choosing the offers. And then worst of all having to scan each puchase that I've chosen to get the discount whilst I'm trying to pack my shopping and pay without holding the queue up. Both Marks and Boots allow you to add you're chosen offers to your card and that's it. When I'm paying it's a case of scanning my card and hey presto there they are and duducted all in one go with the two shops mentioned. Sadly I think this the Waitrose system will cause resentment with their customers and inevetably take their custome elsewhere out of principle. I'd rather prices were reduced accordingly in the store and forget rewards schemes. I think in PR terms they should abandon the scheme immediately before more harm is done. I really cannot be bothered with it after this week when the scanner didn't reconise my card when I came to pay. I can do without the stress of sorting out why my waitrose card wasn't recognised at payment when the machine recognised it initally to release a handset to scan with.

Waitrose… you expect your customers to learn a complicated system just for your app??!
I see I’m not alone. What a complicated shambles of a loyalty scheme. I’m IT literate but gave up.
Goodness help those who don’t have smart phones.
Wife is returning to the store ‘on principal’ to get the refund in her newspaper that was charged at full price. Despite a well hidden voucher in a sub menu.
Who in earth thought that this new system was a good idea.
What a load of cr*p

Waitrose, where being dishonest, incompetent and stealing money is the new way of operating.
Used Waitrose as an alternative to Ocado, and what an alternative it is. The customer service department doesn’t work and when you complete an online feedback, due to staffing issues and that have lasted for months it will take approximately three weeks to get a response. Now do not be fooled the fact that you get a response doesn’t mean it will be a helpful response. In fact it won’t be and you will end up repeating the same information over and over again and hope that finally you find somebody with just some intelligence. You’re not even asking for a great deal at this point.
Can you be fobbed off, assured of what will happen, only to find it won’t and you are once more left either chasing it or giving up and accepting that this is Waitrose. You’re paying a premium for a service that frankly Aldi and Lidl do better on.
Despite multiple attempts to have monies refunded back to me order cancelled and therefore not received I had to endlessly email getting nowhere with them at all.
Just unbearably difficult, and when you did speak to somebody in there Customer Service, what you’ve got with more like a 16-year-old kid with an attitude he was fresh at school and didn’t care.
That being said I had a conversation with the manager of the Cheadle Hume store and it’s fair to say that if the managers clearly don’t care, and they are on an awful lot more money why should the people on the front line in a contact centre give a damn. They don’t.
Good luck but no thanks.

Wish I could give this company zero stars.
Whilst partially blocking my driveway and mid delivery to a neighbour, the driver decided to expose himself in public and urinate on the side of my garage. Not sure I’d want a food delivery from him, not least because I certainly didn’t see him wash his hands before continuing to handle food. All captured on CCTV unfortunately for him. Told customer services and they just tried to fob me off with a £20 voucher and the “assurance” that it was dealt with but they can’t say how. Sorry not good enough which is why I’m placing this warning on here. If you like your food delivered by someone who doesn’t wash his hands after urinating on your property in public then this is the company for you. I however won’t be buying anything from Waitrose or John Lewis ever again.

Ha! I came to this site to see others' reviews. What is left to say about the new offer scheme? I only just realised that I didn't get my free Times although I was told the offer was extended for me.
I bring an elderly friend who regularly spends over £100 but doesn't have a smart phone. No offers for him then! I assume that Waitrose management are now all under the age of 20.

What a shambles, the Waitrose staff still don’t know how the supposed new ‘improved’ offers work. Whoever designed this system* - logging into Waitrose on phone, adding email address and password on phone, while unloading shopping from trolly onto conveyor belt, then bagging up my shopping and presenting my Waitrose card under card machine and then my phone for chosen offers then tap my credit card to pay I need to be an octopus! - *well that person needs to go back to school!
Oh and then to wind me up even more, joining the queue at customer service because the discount bar codes didn’t work, present my credit card and receipt so the items not discounted (recovered at the bottom of my shopping bag to be scanned again) to be refunded to my bank and then giving customers service my mobile after logging in all over again for my discount and then pay with my credit card for my discounted shopping at the lower price. When I got home my two payments have been taken out of my account but not payment refunded I guess I’ll have to wait for a few days for that!
I’ll be off to M & S on Saturday for my weekend shopping.

What a shambles, the Waitrose staff still don’t know how the supposed new ‘improved’ offers work. Whoever designed this system* - logging into Waitrose on phone, adding email address and password on phone, while unloading shopping from trolly onto conveyor belt, then bagging up my shopping and presenting my Waitrose card under card machine and then my phone for chosen offers then tap my credit card to pay I need to be an octopus! - *well that person needs to go back to school!
Oh and then to wind me up even more, joining the queue at customer service because the discount bar codes didn’t work, present my credit card and receipt so the items not discounted (recovered at the bottom of my shopping bag to be scanned again) to be refunded to my bank and then giving customers service my mobile after logging in all over again for my discount and then pay with my credit card for my discounted shopping at the lower price. When I got home my two payments have been taken out of my account but not payment refunded I guess I’ll have to wait for a few days for that!
I’ll be off to M & S on Saturday for my weekend shopping.

Who did sign that new loyalty suoer complicated card/voucher system? This is the most ludicrous one in the market. 10 minutes spent at the till to save £1. Not even worth the journey to the store !!!
They should send their marketing boss on a training experience at Lidl to find out how to do it !!
Otherwise Waitrose is still the best supermarket in this country (top quality and choice?

You said that people didn't want a free newspaper. I hope you read the comments to realise that most people did/do want a free paper. It is dishonest of you to say this. In reality, I imagine you found it too costly. Don't dress it up with nonsense. Be honest. Times are hard. And as for the new offers available via a phone - how will your elderly customer base deal with that? It's a hassle to have to log in and find the offers when standing at the check-out with others waiting behind. Whose stupid idea was this? At least offers can be loaded onto the M&S card so it's done in one swipe. Didn't anyone research this? Or did your customers say that this is what they wanted in one of your pointless surveys?

A simple arrangement where you automatically got your free newspaper and/or whatever special offer was in place by going to the check out counter has been replaced by an overcomplicated one that needs you to have your phone. No provision for those who do not have this facility. Moreover it is just two items maximum in any week. Waitrose often send out surveys but none regarding this. They have lost the plot and, I suspect, many previous loyal customers. Lidl calling.

The new Waitrose offer fails totally for me.
1) Did they have to steal the Lidl voucher system?
2) My offers were random things I’d bought in the last 6 weeks, 2 almost identical products and NOTHING i was planning to buy this week.
3) Shopping is my phone free time - I want to SHOP and look for nice things to buy to prepare meals or to enjoy eating - I should not need my phone for that.
I had a routine to do a shop on Saturday and the free paper was a treat to read afterwards - I can get a better and more complete shop elsewhere (I often had to supplement the Waitrose shop anyway) so all I can see is about £2000 annually going from Waitrose to competitors.
It’s the dishonesty that is annoying - just admit the offers are too expensive to run - coffee/tea I never had either while shopping but the crappy algorithm that picks the offers is just hopeless for me.

Worst possible service from Waitrose.
They call themselves a luxury shopping experience. It’s a joke!
Booked delivery today between 5-6pm, I came home around 445 to find driver waiting outside , got out of car and he had driven off without offloading.
Delivery hadn’t arrived until 6pm, called customer service who investigated and said sorry driver tried to deliver no one home!!! I had been home since 445 and NOONE had come to deliver, I can prove it on my ring doorbell.
All I got was apologise we will attempt to deliver tmrw! Mo time slot offered , just it will come when we are free and able to deliver . I have no groceries and 2 small children in the house whom I have have to drag out now in order to buy milk n bread for tomorrow.
Was Offered a voucher which I politely declined. They really don’t care and pretend they are up there high in market when service from Tesco/ Sainsburys is far better.
DO NOT BUY FROM WAITROSE

Sidcup branch - good quality products but dear oh dear the service and management is poor.
I raised several serious concerns about it with head office and they do not have the decently to investigate or offer anything than a cut and paste reply. It really doesn’t take much to show an unhappy customer you care and want to put things right, but that seems beyond Waitrose.
I won’t be going near Waitrose again until they start to offer a level of service that is acceptable.

Really surprised and disappointed at the free newspaper offer - getting a Guardian when I spent £10 definitely made me shop at Waitrose (despite the generally higher prices) - sadly this will send me elsewhere - when times are tough, Waitrose need to encourage loyalty more than ever as they are premium - less and less reasons to go there sadly.

I have been a loyal customer of Waitrose for years. It became a weekly routine - the Saturday shop and the free newspaper. I never ever bothered with a coffee but that was my choice. I have now received the leaflet providing the alternative method of rewarding loyal customers. I haven’t a clue. Something about logging in and finding 2 special offers. A bar code. No thank you. I’ll get my Nectar rewards at Sainsburys and subscribe to the Times. Waitrose what were you thinking. I will not be using my card loyalty card. I am no longer loyal

So..the new Better than ever offer leaflet was delivered. This is just a way of not rewarding your loyal customers. We want to do our shopping and be rewarded simply every now and again for paying the prices that you charge. We don’t want to have to sign in every week to choose 50p off a pack of ham or carton of milk, can get that cheaper elsewhere anyway. I have better things to do with my time, then we are supposed to scan the code lol. It’s a shop not an airport. I might bother to check an offer and scan for a tv but not for 2 measly offers a week. We are loyal for the shopping experience. You are definitely excluding the elderly, those too busy to have to faff around and most of your customer base who aren’t young and tech savvy or tech bothered. Your average customer isn’t young. Still, You won’t need to give as many rewards now. What a waste of my time having a card. Honestly as a loyal customer for 45 years(and I am tech savvy)this is really poor show. Who dreams this stuff up. Just do the right thing by us all and don’t make this a boring chore.

The new customer offer is complicated and frankly not worth the bother. Instead of shopping regularly at my local store, whose staff I have got to know well since the place opened here in Sidcup, I shall just pop in to get the odd bottle of milk and maybe some porridge oats or goods that are marked down. A huge disappointment. Why introduce something without consulting the customers?