My Waitrose

Oh, Marshall and Snelgroves! My cousin and I used to drive the nice sales ladies mad by going in and trying on all the hats.

I am a (word of the week) pleb! But I do use Waitrose - and Morrison's, Sainsbury's, Aldi, Lidl and very occasionally M&S if they happen to have what I want when I want it at a price I consider reasonable. I find the huge Tesco stores rather threatening and it takes ages to find what I want.

Nelliemoser I have washed my vertical blinds in the machine. Fold carefully to avoid creasing and place in one of those mesh wash bags that zip up. Do on a gentle wash. Then hang back up straight away and any slight creasing will drop out.

dottiegran glassortwo Good grief! It sounds as if Gransnetters are tutting at me at me because my nets are not white enough and its letting the street down. Well I will confess now that I haven't whitened my doorstep in years! Now that should cause some gossip for the tea shop!

Well at least my dirty nets and dirty doorstep show I am not obsessed with appearing to be posh!

Ha Ha! I never thought I would see the day when Gransnetters would be virtually peeping through the curtains to see how clean the nets and doorsteps are! Hilarious

As for My Waitrose - I have today received 2 vouchers each worth £5 off my shopping. Great! Until I saw the small print - 'when you spend £50 or more in a single transaction'. Bah! Living alone, I rarely spend anything like that even on a whole week's shopping, unless I'm expecting visitors. Maybe I should stock up on wine or ice cream or frozen fish.... Oh yes, there is also a voucher for £1 off a bottle of wine. I will make an effort to use that.

anno I get Waitrose online vouchers by email and always ignore them until they offer me something like 20% off if I spend £60 or more. Then I shop only from the offers and deals sections to save even more, and buy items like wines and spirits for birthday presents or suchlike, to get the most I can from the offer. I can usually manage to get £100 of shopping for about £70, delivered free, which will cover a couple of weeks, stock up on tins and packets in my store cupboard, and provide the odd birthday present of decent wine.

Anno by coincidence, this Ocado voucher has just turned up in my emails. They also sell Waitrose products but charge delivery. This one is for 20% off but you only need to spend £40. Here's part of the email to illustrate:

Saving you even more on your weekly shop with the best deals around.
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SHOP | FAVOURITES | OFFERS | WINE

Voucher code: VOU2861520
Valid for deliveries: 25/09/2012 to 27/09/2012
Minimum spend: £40Maximum reward: £12
To use your voucher:
1. Click the link to go to ocado.com
2. Place an order for delivery between the dates stated above.
3. Add your voucher code during checkout.
Start shopping

This voucher cannot be used in conjunction with any other voucher offer, or redeemed against tobacco products, postage stamps or infant formula.

Waitrose is half a mile away from where I live, M & S is just down the road. John Lewis is ten miles away.

There is an excellent service from J L where you can order most things online and the next day it is delivered free of charge to Waitrose for collection.

Oh dear, far too easy to spend money now.

I like Waitrose because they have standards regarding animal welfare. This latest thing where rabbits are bred in awful conditions (abroad, France I think) crammed battery -like into cages so that a third of them die is quite disturbing to me. However, Waitrose makes it clear that although they sell rabbit meat it is farmed here from rabbits bred in humane conditions and they don't access the meat from France.

nelliemoser [grin

I've never used Ocado, when because I live so close to the shops that I haven't needed to shop on line except when I was ill in January. I have just had a success with Hotter shoes. I had a £5 off voucher which I wanted to redeem for an on line purchase but there was no code on the voucher to insert at checkout. So I emailed customer services and they have rung me to say that they will honour the voucher and knock off the postage! Mind you, I must be one of their most devoted customers!

Hi everyone, I'm new here. Had to register with Gransnet to respond to this thread. I think the myWaitrose card is a waste of space. 1p off your food bill no matter how much you spend. Its not like other loyalty cards - if you forget it you can't add 'points' at a later date, in fact I don't think you even get any loyalty points. You can't even use it after you have paid - it has to be handed in before you pay. I have written to Waitrose about this and guess what, no reply. However if you buy the Daily Mail ... you can get it free Monday to Friday if you spend over £5.00. Maybe they will have other offers in future.

Talking about John Lewis good service - a couple of years ago I ordered 6 x Panettones in lovely pretty tins to give to friends at Christmas, When they arrived the tins were all dented so I phoned up JL and they said they would send out 6 more. I asked them how I would send back the dented ones and they said that they couldn't have them back as they were food goods. So they sent me 6 more! - so I had 12 large Panettones in my spare room - managed to distribute them eventually to family etc.

I ordered from Waitrose for the first and only time in January when I was ill. I was surprised to receive a phone call from the store to tell me they didn't have any small wholemeal loaves but would send large ones instead if that was OK with me. It was. I got two large loaves for the price of two small ones. fluffy - didn't you try making bread and butter pudding with the panettones? Delicious!

I think the fact that I can pick up my John Lewis orders from Waitrose is great. Our nearest JL branches are Reading and High Wycombe, neither of which is terribly convenient, so a short trip down to Waitrose is much better and saves waiting in for the delivery man as well.

I think Waitrose really do try their best with customer service.

Several years ago we bought one of those Bronze Turkeys for Christmas and in spite of cooking it exactly how you are supposed to , you know - cover it with muslin, baste every hour blah, blah, blah!!! It was as dry as you can possibly think and was so sad because my husband really loves turkey!

I cut off a large slice and took it back on the first day I could after Christmas. The Manager took one look at it, and then went away, returned with £100 of Waitrose Vouchers (even though the turkey cost about £50) and did not even ask to see the receipt.

So here's hoping for another DRY turkey!! No joking apart, they never ever question returns and always go the extra mile when you ask about anything.

I was very impressed with their party food too.
Last year after DD2 got married we had a lunch party at home for everyone who had travelled from a long way away, about 30 people. I didn't want to do the food myself because I just wanted to enjoy the wedding without worrying about catering for the next day.
Waitrose were fantastic - the food was delivered to our house exactly when they said it would be, beautifully presented and all I had to do was put it out on the table.
I have had M&S party food too which was nice but you have to collect it yourself from the store and our nearest one is about 5 miles away.

I know everybody thinks Waitrose is expensive but I used to do all my MiL's shopping there because she liked the food and all though she only had her state pension to live on she was easily able to afford it. Admittedly the fact that she was pretty much vegetarian will have helped keep the cost down, but Waitrose are quite good for things like Ox Tail and Ox cheek.