Linda Crawford, who sufferers from a number of health conditions including a chronic disease, has been self-isolating for more than a month, but last received a delivery from her local Sainsbury’s in Tunbridge Wells four weeks ago.
She told the Times: “I don’t have access to the internet, so I only have the telephone to make a supermarket order, but my last delivery was four weeks ago.
“I have now been waiting three weeks for a delivery. I do have people I can rely on to bring me things round, but I do not like to keep bothering them.”
The 70-year-old added: “I just hope the supermarkets understand there are a lot of people in my position who cannot get out.”
A Sainsbury’s spokesperson explained they were doing their ‘absolute best to offer online delivery slots to elderly and vulnerable customers’.
She said: “Elderly and vulnerable customers have priority over all slots. We have proactively contacted 270,000 customers who had already given us information that meant we could identify them as elderly or vulnerable.
“Our customer careline is working at full capacity to help other vulnerable customers, and we are able to give an additional 8,000 customers a day access to delivery slots over the phone.
“We have already booked in slots for 115,000 elderly and vulnerable customers this week, and this number is growing every day.
“Where we have slots available that are not currently filled by elderly and vulnerable customers, we are offering these to other customers in the short term.
“We will receive the Government database this week which tells us which people the Government considers to be most vulnerable.
“Where these people are registered with us, we will start to write to them next week to offer them a delivery slot.”
She added: “We are doing our very best, but it’s important to remember that home delivery is a very small part of the grocery market and we would ask communities to work together on this issue.
“If customers are able to go into a store to shop, we hope they will also shop for someone else who lives locally if they can.”
