BEST SUPPLIER OF COMPOST 2018

I'll now carry out a more detailed check on exactly how much rubbishy Wickes compost I bought last year, and use @shiney 's links to seek a replacement with decent stuff (likes Jacks Magic) .

Will post response on here.

 

Same here, and the same for hundreds/thousands/etc others with the same problem.

 

The Wickes isn't advertised as peat free is it ?

 

Im going to track down some of the Murphys peat compost i used last year. Lovely stuff. Just hate paying full rrp for it.

Looks like i shoild have said clover instead of murphys

 

A local farm shop sells (40L ?) bags of pure 100% Irish peat. They even had 2 differents brands. I was looking at them whilst my wife was buying a sack of layers pellets on Tuesday and remember thinking it was cheaper than many 'peat free' composts. Probably even cheaper if buying the giant 200L bales Clover Peat and Compost Suppliers across the UK

 

The year purchased may differ from the year produced. Early this year (5th Feb) I called into a branch of Wickes for 20 L bags of seed compost, having first checked their stock level online which showed they had over 400 bags (4+ pallets).

As I couldn't initially find any with their other composts on display, I asked at their 'help desk' where they checked their online stock system and pronounced they hadn't got any in stock, but as it was such a large discrepancy I went for a better look around, and saw 4 unopened pallets at the top of their high level outdoor storage racking in their outdoor sales area.

I took a picture of it, went back to their help desk and showed it to them, plus showed them on my phone the stock level showing on their website. They re-checked their instore system which again showed none in stock, then denounced their system as rubbish and admitted this sort of thing happened all the time.

We then went back outside and the member of staff wrote a reference number (SKU ?) on a piece of paper to hand to their forklift driver and get a pallet down for me. The flt driver (who appeared to know more than anybody else in the store) also found yet another partly sold pallet around the back in their private storage area that had been taken back there for some unknown reason.

That, together with the absence of batch codes, suggests to me that Wickes could have old, previous year's stock hanging around over winter, that gets sold after new stock is delivered the following spring, so using terms such as this year's, last year's, 2017, 2018 can be meaningless.

I hope somebody from Wickes is reading this thread.

 

So guess who hasn’t been online for a while/ missed this thread and went to wickes for compost today surprise surprise it was terrible. After checking on here and seeing @shiney ’s post I followed his advise and rang the store. I got a refund in the end. They did say they sell loads and hadn’t had any other complaints I can’t see how anything would grow in it

 

If any compost producer changes their formulation, then I believe it should be made clear on ammended packaging, a revised batch number isn't sufficient.

The lack of batch numbers/QA Codes also has consequences for the likes of another contaminated compost episode (not Wickes previously), but without them how on earth will Wickes (and anybody else) be able to withdraw any stuff that's going to kill your plants? Recall everything and destroy their entire stock, or wait for gardeners to complain that their crops have been ruined and offer a replacement?

Supermarkets have these systems in place for defective product recalls, only yesterday Tesco prevented her from buying some ready meals for her parents when it was flagged up at the till that they must not sell them as the product was withdrawn.