I have been using Waitrose for over 10 years and during that time the delivery driver was always willing to: leave the shopping at the front door in a safe place if I wasn’t home at the time of the delivery, to deliver to my teenage children who are under the age of 18 years as a result of my being infirmed and unable to get out of bed, and to use recyclable bags into which I could carry the shopping into the house in small, manageable lots— which are necessary because I have a bad back. However, Waitrose’s delivery drivers are now prevented by strict enforcement of company policy from doing any of the above. That means that using Waitrose online is now no better than physically going to the grocery store— where you have to put the item in the trolley, take it out of the trolley to check in the belt, and then pay for it, and then place it into a carrier bag yourself; now everything must be handled at least three times— four to unpack it into one’s pantry/fridge. Therefore, the “utility value” of the Waitrose online shopping experience has dramatically dropped to almost zero. No wonder Ocado dropped Waitrose for Marks & Spencer. As a long time customer of Waitrose I called customer service to provide them with some constructive feedback to let them know that these policies are having a very negative effect on the elderly, the physically disabled, or the overwhelmed working parent(s), as well as other of their customers. Waitroses’ policies are making it impossible to do business with them. Of course neither the customer service person or supervisor were enabled to help, nor was there any internal mechanism to provide feedback from customer service into the business process managers of the company . Waitrose’s management seems to be making policy decisions in a vacuum without any consideration of its customers; there appears to be not an ounce of common sense among them! Customer Service Reps are completely helpless and are unable to do anything about it but repeat platitudes and make vacuous apologies. In fact there is no business process within Waitrose that takes constructive comments from its loyal customers and uses those to improve its business processes and procedures. As a result, I am no longer going to custom Waitrose; they have lost my business, and I’m going to make a point of sharing this negative experience with as many people on the Internet as I can possibly muster. I am outraged and concerned for the plight of the elderly and the disabled. How was it possible during the pandemic for procedure to have become more flexible and useful and now all of a sudden things have become completely stayed infixed, calcified to the point becoming completely useless? Moreover could the problem of fraud actually have been so great to have justified the inconvenience of so many of its customers? And just watch; in a few minutes someone from Waitrose will be watching this trust pilot review will simply reiterate the company policy which basically means they’re going to do absolutely nothing constructive. The whole point of the trust pilot reviews to try to encourage companies to make change— not to reiterate the blooming obvious. What exactly does this person who is going to provide the review think they’re going to achieve by simply reiterating the company’s pointless and ineffective policy? Do they hope that they’re going to change my mind or change the minds of any of their disgruntled customers? I would put it to you that the person who will answer this trust pilot response is just a waste of space, and attempt at the company trying to soothe with meaningless words and make inauthentic apologies.