Coronavirus (COVID-19) Panic Buying?

[lovetravellingoz]

Indeed, I get the impression Aussies are too busy emptying supermarket shelves to go on holiday!
cheers skip

Not at the supermarkets I frequent. And at Costco, when don't shoppers here have full trollies?

I think it is more that hand sanitiser has a run on.

 

[mrsterryn]

We actually got the toilet paper at the servo. They had quite a bit

 

[I love to travel]

For the last 4 weeks I have only seen toilet paper on the shelf once and that was only because a colleague sent me a text message as she knew I was desperate. It was at Aldi, I think I almost broke the speed limit getting there, it was a 4 roll pack. I work, so originally I could only go after work and I have never seen it on the shelves in the afternoon. I have been to my local IGA 4 times one day, no luck. On wednesday I went to the IGA at 7.15am no toilet paper.

I have been to my local woolies at many various times on the weekend still haven't seen any on the shelf. I sent my DH early on Wednesday morning he is over 65, he lined up with everyone else and just before they all went in to the store an employee told them no toilet paper.

A friend told me that they went into Coles and someone was handing out toilet paper, they didn't need it but they took it anyway. I spoke with a shelf packer the other day who said they have pallets of shampoo and other unnecessary products out the back with no space on the shelves.

I saw on TV that a Coles man showed all the rows and rows of toilet paper at their warehouses. Why don't they just stock toilet paper on their trucks for a week, break the cycle of empty shelves, still limit it to 1 pack and maybe people may calm down the panic buying.

I work in a school and have to go to work everyday, but we are not classified as essential services. Even though we remain open because parents have the right to send their children, which I understand and support. Feeling frustrated.

@ellen10 there is a do you need a hand thread. Post suburb where you live and if they can people will help. I live in Brisbane if that helps.

 

[JessicaTam]

@ellen10 there is a do you need a hand thread. Post suburb where you live and if they can people will help. I live in Brisbane if that helps.

The "Do you need a hand?" thread

 

[ellen10]

Thank you @I love to travel and @JessicaTam about the thread. I feel like I should be the one to volunteer to help others ( other than toilet paper of course!) I live in Wollongong.
Fortunately there are only two of us at home so quite frugal with the TP and I managed to get tissues. I guess I am just feeling a little frustrated with the whole TP situation.
We have plenty of food, we have a great local fruit shop and butcher, a safe roof over our head and are healthy. So many positives. So I am trying to be grateful.
Thank you

 

[tgh]

ellen where r u ?

oops too late...

 

[Denali]

For the last 4 weeks I have only seen toilet paper on the shelf once and that was only because a colleague sent me a text message as she knew I was desperate. It was at Aldi, I think I almost broke the speed limit getting there, it was a 4 roll pack. I work, so originally I could only go after work and I have never seen it on the shelves in the afternoon. I have been to my local IGA 4 times one day, no luck. On wednesday I went to the IGA at 7.15am no toilet paper.

I have been to my local woolies at many various times on the weekend still haven't seen any on the shelf. I sent my DH early on Wednesday morning he is over 65, he lined up with everyone else and just before they all went in to the store an employee told them no toilet paper.

A friend told me that they went into Coles and someone was handing out toilet paper, they didn't need it but they took it anyway. I spoke with a shelf packer the other day who said they have pallets of shampoo and other unnecessary products out the back with no space on the shelves.

I saw on TV that a Coles man showed all the rows and rows of toilet paper at their warehouses. Why don't they just stock toilet paper on their trucks for a week, break the cycle of empty shelves, still limit it to 1 pack and maybe people may calm down the panic buying.

I work in a school and have to go to work everyday, but we are not classified as essential services. Even though we remain open because parents have the right to send their children, which I understand and support. Feeling frustrated.

If youre in Sydney Hills district or West I can help out

Edit. The Gong. I can mail you some if that helps

 

[drron]

Well I picked up my meds today at our pharmac_ and they had TP.A dipsy young chick had an 8 pack plus about 10 large bottles of vitamins and supplements.Kept dropping things.I kept my 1.5 metres so took me a while to exit.

 

[blackcat20]

Thank you @I love to travel and @JessicaTam about the thread. I feel like I should be the one to volunteer to help others ( other than toilet paper of course!) I live in Wollongong.
Fortunately there are only two of us at home so quite frugal with the TP and I managed to get tissues. I guess I am just feeling a little frustrated with the whole TP situation.
We have plenty of food, we have a great local fruit shop and butcher, a safe roof over our head and are healthy. So many positives. So I am trying to be grateful.
Thank you

I already have your address, can I send you a pack? It’s stressful when you can’t find what you need over multiple visits.

 

[ellen10]

@Denali and @blackcat20 thank you for your very kind offers. I have the weekend to investigate a few more options locally. I will let you know if I am unsuccessful and need some. So very kind of everyone!
On another note @blackcat20 should I plant my poppy seeds yet? (I am so looking forward to seeing them grow)

 

[Himeno]

Woolworths will start limiting amount of customers in stores at a time from next week. This should already be in place at the delivery hub stores. Some stores will start on Monday, all stores by Wednesday. There will be a queue system set up outside and staff with counters controlling entry and exit.

I think Coles is already doing this?

Max of 110, 200 or 275 customers based on size of store.

 

[JohnM]

This was in an email to Woolworths Rewards customers over Brad Banducci's signature a few minutes ago:

When will you be back to normal on toilet paper, pasta, wipes and other products?
Amazing as it might seem, we are still seeing almost double our normal demand for toilet paper. Just this week, that was over 20.5 million rolls. So despite much more stock coming in, we’re still not where we need to be. It is slowly improving, but please help everyone by only buying what you need.

Unbelievable! Just what are people doing with all that toilet paper?

 

[mrsterryn]

I do have a giggle re the loo paper. However work establishments would have it supplied by cleaners or in bulk non supermarket purchases.
I acknowledge that some would be paper hoarding however some really would be people are at home and actually use more loo paper

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Email from Woolies...

When will you be back to normal on toilet paper, pasta, wipes and other products?
Amazing as it might seem, we are still seeing almost double our normal demand for toilet paper. Just this week, that was over 20.5 million rolls. So despite much more stock coming in, we’re still not where we need to be. It is slowly improving, but please help everyone by only buying what you need.

With pasta, we have an extra 1,000 pallets a week coming in, which is more than half a million extra packs. It will still be patchy for a while, but we are expecting much more stock on shelves next week.

We’re doing our best to keep up with the extraordinary demand for cleaning wipes, including securing extra supply from alternative sources in the short term, much of which will start to arrive in stores in the coming weeks.

And an interesting fact. Two of our highest growth categories this week have been cake mixes and household cleaning products. A lot more kids are baking and parents cleaning as we all spend more time at home.


Though I guess toilet paper consumption at home should be up as quite simply there are more people at home, but double?

 

[Flashback]

Email from Woolies...

When will you be back to normal on toilet paper, pasta, wipes and other products?
Amazing as it might seem, we are still seeing almost double our normal demand for toilet paper. Just this week, that was over 20.5 million rolls. So despite much more stock coming in, we’re still not where we need to be. It is slowly improving, but please help everyone by only buying what you need.

With pasta, we have an extra 1,000 pallets a week coming in, which is more than half a million extra packs. It will still be patchy for a while, but we are expecting much more stock on shelves next week.

We’re doing our best to keep up with the extraordinary demand for cleaning wipes, including securing extra supply from alternative sources in the short term, much of which will start to arrive in stores in the coming weeks.

And an interesting fact. Two of our highest growth categories this week have been cake mixes and household cleaning products. A lot more kids are baking and parents cleaning as we all spend more time at home.


Though I guess toilet paper consumption at home should be up as quite simply there are more people at home, but double?

Flour has been very, very difficult to get though (for us in London). Mrs FB has stopped baking Irish soda bread now as we can't find any wholemeal/brown flour. Poop!

 

[drron]

But the email was from Woolworth's Rewards and it didn't even ask the most important question.
When will bonus reward points offers be back?

 

[Must...Fly!]

Flour has been very, very difficult to get though (for us in London). Mrs FB has stopped baking Irish soda bread now as we can't find any wholemeal/brown flour. Poop!

Friends in London have reported the same - absolutely impossible to find.

I saw a whole pallet of 10kg bags at Coles the other day. Seeing such big bags in Coles was a little weird...a lot of the Woolies metro minimarkets are very very quiet now that most people aren't in the office - they are very well stocked, so if you know of one inside an office building then try there for stock!

 

[lovetravellingoz]

But the email was from Woolworth's Rewards and it didn't even ask the most important question.
When will bonus reward points offers be back?

Maybe they need to offer Reward Rolls, rather than Reward Points

 

[blackcat20]

@Denali and @blackcat20 thank you for your very kind offers. I have the weekend to investigate a few more options locally. I will let you know if I am unsuccessful and need some. So very kind of everyone!
On another note @blackcat20 should I plant my poppy seeds yet? (I am so looking forward to seeing them grow)

Now is the time to plant

 

[ellen10]

We (my school) buy from our regular distributors. Some examples and wait times of our purchases are:
- I ordered hand sanitiser on the 27 Feb that order is still awaiting delivery, so I ordered from a different supplier immediately 4 weeks ago and 10 500ml bottles arrived 3 days ago. You can imagine in a school that doesn't go far.
- Paper towel on order for 4 weeks finally arrived last week
- Hand soap ordered 4 weeks ago arrived this week also but won't go far. Yesterday I ordered more soap for our school student hand dispensers, the supplier said it will be a 4 week wait.
- Toilet paper we did another bulk order yesterday out of stock and 4-6 week wait.

To summarise our difficulties for the whole of March we were trying to source all these supplies from anyone and anywhere. We were teaching our students to wash their hands thoroughly with soap and water for 20 seconds many, many times a day and wipe with paper towel. You can imagine how our stocks were depleted so quickly. Yes in the last week our numbers attending have gone down, but we are a NSW school and we are still open. Many of our parents have already told us that if this continues they will be sending their kids back to school as "this home schooling" is too hard. and I can understand for those working from home it is very hard. We receive so many phone calls, emails, messages for support and the main complaint is the children don't listen to them. And we know that this will continue for term 2. Try teaching social distancing to a class of 5/6 year olds!

High school students working from home is much easier, but still a complicated task, however primary schooling is much harder. I spend a lot of time in my day talking to parents reassuring them that they are doing a great job, encouraging them when it gets a bit hard to read a book, play some board games, do some cooking, write letters to grandparents, get out old photographs.
But I have digressed from the topic, I apologise. I love my school, the beautiful children, the wonderful staff and our wonderful wider family community. Just stop panic buying toilet paper!

 

[Denali]

I would be such a lazy parent, I would be booking tutors for 3, 4 lessons per day to save us both the grief.

One coworker says his wife is running the lessons like Mrs Umbridge from Harry Potter, very regimented. Another said theyve given up and are basically "unschooling", whatever the heck that means because last time I saw a family that claimed off schooling, it was a UK Doco where the 9yr couldnt spell his own name