Shoppers have hit out at Waitrose as it emerged the upmarket store does not deliver to vast swathes of Courier Country, considering them “remote”.
Anyone who wants to ship their order to their door in the inner city area of Dundee, Broughty Ferry, Forfar, Montrose or Arbroath will be left disappointed by the rules.
Deliveries are only available in DD1 and DD2 post code areas.
While the supermarket clearly displays which areas it won’t deliver to on its website, the omissions have left several consumers unhappy.
Grant Elliot raised the issue in a letter to The Courier this week after a doomed attempt to send a gift to his family in Broughty Ferry.
He said: “I have today tried to order online a Christmas hamper for a relative in Dundee from Waitrose.
“You may be surprised to learn that my attempts failed. Why? Because Waitrose classify all postcodes in the DD3 to DD11 area as a ‘remote part of Scotland’ and thus are unable to make the delivery.
“I was trying to get a delivery to post code DD5 which is Broughty Ferry.
“Now, when I lived in Broughty Ferry, albeit some time ago, I never considered it to be remote (other adjectives may apply), do you, or your readers, know something that I don’t?”
Waitrose has stores in Edinburgh, Stirling and Glasgow.
Grant added: “Waitrose offered no alternatives except a click and collect service. [This is] difficult as I don’t believe Waitrose have a super store in Dundee and anyway the recipient of the gift would be a pensioner well into his eighties.
“In the end we got a hamper from John Lewis which will be delivered to Broughty Ferry — surprising as John Lewis and Waitrose are the same company.”
A spokesperson for Waitrose said: “Currently we do not deliver to KY, DD or PH postcodes, but we are continually reviewing the areas of which we deliver to ensure we can meet our increasing customer demand.”
Most major supermarkets offer a blanket delivery service across the UK.
The news comes a month after a Dundee woman was hit with a £108 delivery charge from Matalan because it too classed the city as “remote”.
Laura Campbell, 50, had tried to order a flat-pack desk from Matalan Direct but was told the delivery charges would be more than the desk itself.
Despite the company having a branch in the city, the firm said “logistic reasons” meant it considered it remote.
Laura said: “The flat-pack desk only cost £125 but I had a discount code – which didn’t work either – which meant it would actually have cost less, a lot less, than the delivery charge.”
When checked by The Courier this week, it appeared this classification had changed, and deliveries to Dundee were now treated as a standard rate.
