People who order groceries via safe shopping online can sometimes find that the products they originally chose are not available and need to be substituted with an equivalent alternative.

This is not a major issue during most months of the year, but in the days before Christmas a number of complaints were made by customers of various supermarket chains, including Tesco, Asda and Ocado, after substitutions for vital items were made.

Chief amongst the food items missing in action were turkeys, with a shortage of certain varieties meaning that over-subscribed retailers were forced to send out variations which were deemed to be a suitable stand-in.

The Mirror reports that in one instance this meant a Tesco customer found that the extra-large bird that they had paid for was instead delivered as a trio of medium-sized turkeys. When oven space is at a premium, such a swap was clearly not a sensible one.

Other customers have simply found that their turkeys, vegetables and other sundries were not included at all, suggesting that some retailers were simply unprepared for the influx of orders that poured in ahead of the festive season.

This perhaps also points to a problem with Christmas grocery shopping when it comes to supply, since retailers are clearly over-promising on what they can deliver and then ultimately failing to find enough of a specific product which was more popular than predicted.

Of course, millions of households around the UK will have received a festive food order without any hiccups, but the availability of social media means that it is much easier for those who do have issues to air their complaints. This is good for consumers because it gives them more power if problems arise and forces retailers to work harder to meet expectations.