DIY shops - Reopening after lockdown

[rockershovel]

Seeing the various reports in the news, and the weather being fine (until today, anyway) I thought I’d look for some wood stain and set about the annual job of freshening up the garden furniture. 

 

B&Q had been advertising that the local branch was open again. I couldn’t make sense of what was, or wasn’t in stock from their website, or what their opening hours were, so I dropped by there this morning about 11:00. There were about 20 bedraggled looking people queueing in the rain in the car park, so I gave it a miss...

 

I’ve now sourced some from a Tool Station, a little way out of town on Click and Collect 

Edited April 29, 2020 by AY Mod
Title edited to be more useful

[Ron Ron Ron]

Many B&Q stores have remained open throughout the lock down, providing a Click & Collect service,

 

It was very well organised from our experience, although their system threw a wobbly on one day and notifications to customers, that their orders were ready for collection, didn't go out.

 

For those who didn't know about it, or didn't avail themselves of the service, it sort of went like this.....

 

The stores were physically closed to customers.

Order online only.

Click & Collect service only.

No home deliveries.

 

Order and pay online, selecting the store for collection.

If the items were available at that store, the order would be processed.

If the items were not available, then the order could not be completed online. i.e. rejected.

n.b. A much reduced range was available to order through this service.

A collection date was given on completion of the order.

 

Visits to the store could not be made until customers were notified by phone, to say that the goods were available for collection at the nominated store.

 

On arrival at the store, the car parks were laid out to provide separated parking, with 1 or 2 clear bays between each vehicle.

The blocked off parking bays had a stack of wooded pallets in them.

 

A member of staff directed cars into vacant parking bays.

No other parking was allowed.

Once in the bay, occupants had to remain in their cars.

A member of staff would approach and from a safe distance, request your order reference number.

They then radio'd this ref. no. to the dispatch staff inside the store.

The items would then be brought out on a trolley by another member of staff and placed on the pallets adjacent to your car.

Once that member of staff had moved away, it was then OK to get out of your car and collect the items and leave the car park, via the designated exit route.

 

In our experience of visits to 2 different, nearby B&Q stores, it ran very well.

The B&Q staff had been well drilled and the whole thing executed perfectly.

 

I've yet to brave the crowds and visit now the stores themselves are open to customers.

 

 

.

 

[MR Chuffer]

Don't know if they do wood stain, but Screwfix has been a good bet for bits and pieces during lockdown, such efficient online ordering, even before lockdown.

Edited April 28, 2020 by MR Chuffer
grammar

[rockershovel]

14 hours ago, MR Chuffer said:

Don't know if they do wood stain, but Screwfix has been a good bet for bits and pieces during lockdown, such efficient online ordering, even before lockdown.

 

Screwfix have been inconsistent, to be charitable, around here. I visited a small local B&Q (Peterborough seems to have no end of such places) and it worked well enough, they had pallets stacked with numbers on by parking bays and you went there. 

 

I never went to the big one. I do know that they only had four or five tills, having enthusiastically embraced self-service tills (which are now closed, apparently) so that must be a pinch point in the operation..

 

[rockershovel]

14 hours ago, MR Chuffer said:

Don't know if they do wood stain, but Screwfix has been a good bet for bits and pieces during lockdown, such efficient online ordering, even before lockdown.

 

Wood stain seems to have gone the way of pasta, rice and toilet rolls, no one has it. 

[Pete the Elaner]

2 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

Wood stain seems to have gone the way of pasta, rice and toilet rolls, no one has it. 

 

Pasta, rice & toilet rolls recovered quite quickly.

Flour seems in shorter supply (apparently it is available if you want a big sack, but not a 1.5kg bag.

I managed to find a small quantity of flour yesterday so maybe that is also recovering?

[rockershovel]

Pasta is still largely unknown on the shelves around here, although you can order small quantities on line. Same goes for rice. 

[rockershovel]

Duplicate post

Edited April 29, 2020 by rockershovel

[Nearholmer]

https://www.wood-finishes-direct.com/info/covid

 

This firm is very good for stains etc, and usually gets the stuff to you next day.

 

Probably simpler to buy varnish than flour at the moment!

[burgundy]

We have been doing click and collects since it all began and have therefore become connoisseurs of the various supermarkets' approaches.  ASDA were hopeless, with the loading point immediately next to the trolley line and two loading bays door to door.  They were the easiest to book a slot with, but we shall only being going there again as a last resort.  Sainsbury's and Tesco both have C & Cs set up in remote corners of the car park with well organised distancing of shoppers and staff. 

It is noticeable that the ranges of items are more restricted, when you try to buy on line, with a lot of items "out of stock". I could understand if it was a case of carrying a rationalised selection of the same item. But it is beginning to look as though there is a more fundamental hiccough in the supply chains, particularly for items that are imported. I have an uncomfortable feeling that this will become the "new normal", particularly if we fail to achieve any kind of deal with the EU by the end of the year.

Best wishes

Eric     

[Kingzance]

2 hours ago, burgundy said:

But it is beginning to look as though there is a more fundamental hiccough in the supply chains, particularly for items that are imported. I have an uncomfortable feeling that this will become the "new normal", particularly if we fail to achieve any kind of deal with the EU by the end of the year.     

My experience doesn't align with that Eric. My local supermarket stocks two types of large rolled oats (which I like for my porridge). On eis grown and milled in Northern Ireland, the other in Eire. Ordeing online, I get the Eire supplied version, not the Northern Ireland produce. In the case of tomatoes, several growers produce tomatoes indoors in the UK. I ordered a 400gm pack of tomatoes, knowing them to be UK sourced, and the supermarket substituted a smaller pack of Belgian ones for me - two cases where the supply chain had chosen to provide imported goods in preference to home grown varieties.
Trying not to be political I have to say that, regardless of the outcome of Brexit, trade will go on. Dynamic and successful businesses are not going to simply say that they cannot do this because of politics, they will find a workable solution outside the constraints of the EU/UK restrictions - much as we did prior to 1974. Sourcing PPE for European health services seems to have demonstrated that a centralised control (as in Brussels) can neither react fast enough nor directly enough in such circumstances - Germany has plenty of PPE masks whilst Italy and Spain didn't have enough, having to import from the Far East (where similarly we were trying to get much of our stock from).

[rockershovel]

4 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

https://www.wood-finishes-direct.com/info/covid

 

This firm is very good for stains etc, and usually gets the stuff to you next day.

 

Probably simpler to buy varnish than flour at the moment!

 

https://www.wood-finishes-direct.com/info/covid  ... £100 minimum spend and “please expect delays”.....

 

actually it’s not hard to find wood stain inline, but expect to pay about twice the usual price plus up to £15 delivery... I’ve just postponed the whole issue..

[37114]

Most B&Q shops should be open by the end if the week apparently, Homebase have some stores open and Wickes apparently planning to reopen. If buying online from B&Q use the App, there is no queueing on it.

[rockershovel]

I’ve just been on the B&Q website. Stocks of some products are clearly depleted, some items remain unavailable and there is no information about resumption of stocking levels. They might have their doors open, but I suspect that stock availability combined with the effects of social distancing on their (never highly regarded) till service will continue to depress sales. 

[Bill Radford]

Hope the "self"-service tills stay closed! £4.80 in 20ps for change! Last time I used one anywhere.

[Reorte]

5 hours ago, rockershovel said:

I’ve just been on the B&Q website. Stocks of some products are clearly depleted, some items remain unavailable and there is no information about resumption of stocking levels. They might have their doors open, but I suspect that stock availability combined with the effects of social distancing on their (never highly regarded) till service will continue to depress sales. 

The paint I'd run out of after doing half the garden fence is still unavailable... Hope this is just a temporary thing due to the current situation!

[37114]

6 hours ago, rockershovel said:

I’ve just been on the B&Q website. Stocks of some products are clearly depleted, some items remain unavailable and there is no information about resumption of stocking levels. They might have their doors open, but I suspect that stock availability combined with the effects of social distancing on their (never highly regarded) till service will continue to depress sales. 

I presume that many of the suppliers are also having to socially distance and therefore can't produce to the same volumes of demand. Also don't forget that things like power tools probably come from China and thus production will have been disrupted earlier in the year. 

[Mike Bellamy]

On 29/04/2020 at 16:27, Kingzance said:

My local supermarket stocks two types of large rolled oats (which I like for my porridge). On eis grown and milled in Northern Ireland, the other in Eire. Ordeing online, I get the Eire supplied version, not the Northern Ireland produce. In the case of tomatoes, several growers produce tomatoes indoors in the UK. I ordered a 400gm pack of tomatoes, knowing them to be UK sourced, and the supermarket substituted a smaller pack of Belgian ones for me - two cases where the supply chain had chosen to provide imported goods in preference to home grown varieties.
 

 

You may find that the online order is picked at a different store or a central warehouse that holds different stocks. When Tesco first started home delivery, it came from the local store but as the service expanded they started picking the orders from a much bigger store about 20 miles away. A couple of years ago we moved about five miles further away and found out that our delivery was coming from another store about 20 miles in the other direction as in those five miles we had crossed an invisible dividing line between the two.

[rockershovel]

Needed some wood filler for some exterior painting I’m catching up on. 

 

Huge queue outside at B&Q, oddly enough the burger van in the car park was open. Gave up, spent a few minutes on the iPad, sourced it from one of the local Screwfix outlets. 

[37114]

8 hours ago, rockershovel said:

Needed some wood filler for some exterior painting I’m catching up on. 

 

Huge queue outside at B&Q, oddly enough the burger van in the car park was open. Gave up, spent a few minutes on the iPad, sourced it from one of the local Screwfix outlets. 

I went to my local B&Q at Chippenham 2 weekends ago and although the queue looked long, I only had to queue for 5 mins to get in. The staff had the store set up really well and social distancing was great and I got 19 out of the 20 things I wanted. Sadly I had the opposite experience in Sainsbury's over the road where there was no queue and the inside of the store resembled a normal saturday.

 

I went to Scewfix yesterday to get a new soldering iron and that was well managed and set up, took me about 5 mins to queue get my order

 

[rockershovel]

the big B&Q in Peterborough has always suffered from a layout which produced congestion around the tills - not enough tills, and not enough space to queue, especially with larger trolleys. There was also no way to check out larger items at the self-scan tills. It was nothing unusual at weekends to find abandoned, loaded trolleys in the aisles, as people simply lost patience and went elsewhere. 

 

I imagine that this is causing them a lot of problems now. No 1 Some went there last weekend, said that once you finally got inside the store was almost empty, but the tills were so understaffed that there were STILL queues to pay. He won't be going again. 

 

An acquaintance of mine had a part-time retirement job there, he reckoned the only worthwhile business they were doing was timber including cut to size, bathrooms and kitchens, and plumbing and electrical sundries for cash-in-hand builders with no trade accounts. 

 

 

[rockershovel]

Interesting piece in the Times a day or two ago, to the effect that only one other country (Spain) is using 2m for "social distancing" and their results aren't much better than ours. It certainly isn't leading the pack. 

 

WHO guidelines actually say "1m where possible, and 1m from persons coughing and sneezing" so what the basis for 2m actually is, who knows? However I rather suspect that after several weeks of almost continuous repetition, especially on TV, it will be extremely difficult to reverse, especially when there is no real statistical basis. 

 

[Reorte]

1 minute ago, rockershovel said:

Interesting piece in the Times a day or two ago, to the effect that only one other country (Spain) is using 2m for "social distancing" and their results aren't much better than ours. It certainly isn't leading the pack. 

 

WHO guidelines actually say "1m where possible, and 1m from persons coughing and sneezing" so what the basis for 2m actually is, who knows? However I rather suspect that after several weeks of almost continuous repetition, especially on TV, it will be extremely difficult to reverse, especially when there is no real statistical basis.

 1 m is only just over three feet - that's standing pretty close to someone, possibly close enough for them to breath into your face. 2 m should at least keep you clear of a casual cough if not a hard sneeze (although most people instinctively direct sneezes downwards). Of course it also makes quite a lot of difference whether we're talking about just passing someone quickly or being sat near them for an extended period.

[rockershovel]

27 minutes ago, Reorte said:

 1 m is only just over three feet - that's standing pretty close to someone, possibly close enough for them to breath into your face. 2 m should at least keep you clear of a casual cough if not a hard sneeze (although most people instinctively direct sneezes downwards). Of course it also makes quite a lot of difference whether we're talking about just passing someone quickly or being sat near them for an extended period.

 

... which is quite a good illustration of the sort of corners you can paint yourself into, by issuing contradictory instructions with no consistent logic or clearly envisaged outcome, repeating them constantly  and asking people to “use their common sense” in interpreting them. 

 

What ACTUALLY transpires, most of the time, is that a range of varying interpretations appear and a general consensus forms, based around any common features and the generally understood goal. 

 

Since there IS no goal which anyone can readily understand from their observed experience, the English habit of obdurate literal-mindedness (remarked upon in Dean Acheson’s historic speech of 1962) tends to come into play... 

Edited May 22, 2020 by rockershovel

[Derekl]

I was surprised to hear on Radio 4 "More or less" that there is some statistical basis for the 2 metre rule. A US study on influenza tested the exhalations of a patient lying in bed, breathing (not coughing or sneezing) and found that the larger droplets were around the head, smaller towards the end of the bed. The physics are that the larger droplets fall by gravity probably within 1 metre of a standing person. The smaller droplets were, somewhat alarmingly, described as akin to dust in a sunbeam which, if correct, suggests to me they can wander all over the place. On the upside it is unclear whether the virus contents of such small droplets can be infectious - in other words it is there to be found, but not in quantities that could infect. Not sure I want to be the first to find out, though. 

You are better off outside than in - outside droplets will disperse quickly, less so in a confined space (as you might expect).

So, woefully off topic, but the 2 metre rule seems to be sort of scientifically based on a 1 metre danger zone for large droplets plus some wriggle room.