I’m surprised at their being substitutions.
I used to do a certain amount of online grocery shopping in about 2000 to 2005 while I was living in Paris: flat on the third floor of a 1930s building where adding a tiny, narrow lift had reduced the width of the stair in a way that if you had shopping bags, you couldn’t get in the lift, and walking up the stairs would scrape your bags against the pebble-dashed walls…
An order about every three weeks, never any substitution, hardly ever anything missing upon delivery, but I stopped ordering soft fresh vegetables and fruit as they would arrive either frost damaged or squashed, or right on their sell-by date.
Nowadays, from time to time I push my trolley around the local supermarket and at the checkout I ask for delivery. It costs me €1. But I get to choose the goods: no damaged packaging and nothing at its sell-by date (unless I pull it from the “bargain” section). After the checkout, the trolley goes into a cold room at about 4°C until the contents are put into bags, the bags put into plastic crates and the crates loaded into the van. Delivery is usually about 90 minutes after going through the checkout, leaving me time to go to the bakery, butcher’s shop and still walk home.
