Supermarkets have suffered a social media cold front after the heatwave caused fridges to break down across UK stores.
As the mercury topped 30 degrees in many parts of the country, retailers have spent this week handling customer complaints over chaos in the chilled aisles.
Despite most supermarkets using emergency insulation covers, numerous stores have had no fridges working for long periods in the past week. Supermarket customer service teams revealed their maintenance teams were struggling to cope with the workload.
Some customers expressed frustration that the fridge failures had occurred in the same stores in previous years when temperatures spiked.
In Britain we stand together and can cope with anything… well… except the good weather 😏 pic.twitter.com/EHuTFCRNma
— Storm Huntley (@StormHuntley) June 22, 2017
A shopper on the East Sussex coast tweeted to Mark & Spencer: “Why do all the fridges in your Brighton station store break down every time its hot?”
A London shopper visiting the Tesco store in Hornsey tweeted: “Ah, that time of year again when the fridges and freezers all break down”.
Some customers expressed concern about the impact on food waste.
Frances Davies in Birmingham tweeted: “Just been to Tesco Halesowen. Due to fridges broke down they threw thousands £s food away.”
Supermarkets had their work cut out to cope with the problem, admitted customer service staff.
Staff at Co-op Food tweeted: “We’ve had a lot of fridges go down in this weather so unfortunately they’re being fixed in the order they were reported. I promise.”
A spokesman for Tesco, where stores were affected in areas included Bath, Leatherhead, Putney and Cardiff told The Grocer: “Over 99% of our fridges and freezers are working as normal.
“When our stores report a problem, we have been working quickly to put things right for customers.”
He added: “I am not aware of food being wasted because of these problems. Food waste is something that we do everything to avoid at all times.”
A Co-op spokesman said its engineers had been working to resolve a “very small number of isolated issues” and Asda said it had ”no issues during the hot weather”.
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