Another disappointed customer at Morrisons

I REFER to your article (Yorkshire Post, January 10) about Morrisons’ trading problems.

My first recollections of Morrisons are as a young boy in the 1960s when they occupied an old cinema in Thornton Road, Bradford. Thinking back it was “Lidl-ish” products in cardboard cases on the floor – pile it high sell it cheap etc.

Fast forward 50 years. Until recently I still shopped at Morrisons, the most accessible for us being the store at Boroughbridge.

In November, I wrote to the company pointing out that their collector card system for weekly shoppers was unfair to rural shoppers where we did not spend £50 a week shopping fortnightly, however shopping monthly our shopping amounted to nearing £400 and a 50-mile round trip times two. Fair? I don’t think so. I did get a response from a lady telling me how fantastic the collector card scheme was – obviously not judging from the Christmas sales figures i.e. down 5.3 per cent.

Given this along with such experiences as frequent stock problems, such as two bottles of their own ginger beer in the whole supermarket, two loaves of a particular type in stock when we wanted six, a belt breaking down on the checkout and no staff to assist or move us to an empty checkout, tipped us over the edge, along with a 20-minute wait for food in the café when it was about empty.

I might also mention the fuel the week before Christmas at local garages in Helmsley and Kirkbymoorside the week before Christmas was cheaper than Morrisons’ fuel stations at both Ripon and Boroughbridge. In point of fact, while at the Ripon outlet, I phoned my wife who told me how much fuel was in Kirkbymoorside. It was cheaper so I put a tenner in at Ripon and then supported my local garage.

So there it is, Asda online gets our business and we save 100 miles a month.