A kind-hearted mum who posted a tongue-in-cheek complaint to Aldi was given a free food shop – and handed the whole lot to her local foodbank.
Blogger Gylisa Jayne had to rely on foodbanks during her childhood and always hoped to repay them as an adult.
So when the supermarket chain offered her a free Christmas food shop in response to her complaint about a pack of juice smoothies, she decided to give it all away.
Gylisa, 25, is known on Facebook as rockandrollmother and has around 33,000 followers on her blog, where she posts about the realities of motherhood and bringing up her little girl, Lily, two.
It was in one of her posts she revealed that she’d picked up a four-pack of juice smoothies in Aldi, but got them home to find there were only three in the pack.
The full-time mum, of Liskeard, Cornwall, wrote: “Imagine the confusion when upon promising the devil-spawn a juice after the park, I cracked open my four-pack box of juice smoothies to discover I have been pied – and there is only three.
“Now I may have lied on every CV I have ever handed in and claimed to have a B in maths, when it was actually a ‘Hoped For The Best E’.
“But there was deffo only three in the box.”
And not only did Aldi reply to her complaint, they offered her a £50 food shop in compensation for the “juice box fiasco”.
She wrote: “Who couldn’t do with a free food shop right? Only it felt a bit like when those well off folks win the lottery….
“Years ago – my family had to use a foodbank….nothing like getting one of those boxes through to get you scribbling off your rather optimistic Christmas list… Eh kids?
“But it was a god send – chocolate, peanuts, shampoo and conditioner, food staples, even the fancy loo roll….! The FANCY LOO ROLL.
“I swore then that I’d repay the karma one day, when I could.
“And then this happened, and it was too much of a coincidence to not take note of.”
She did a full food shop with her partner Ryan and daughter, Lily, including Christmas bits, and dropped it all off at the local foodbank.
She said: “We bought cereal, longlife milk, shampoo and conditioner, long life orange juice, biscuits, crackers, stewing mince, loo roll, and a few other bits – there was a list of what they have shortages of on the website, and what they have plenty of – so we followed that!
“Also we got a few sweet treats (chocolate reindeers etc)
“So Thank you Aldi, for giving me the chance to pay it forward. And thanks to foodbanks, for feeding my family when we needed it years ago, and for continuing to feed people in their time of need.
“It’s the last week before Christmas, and there’s no better time to do some good – if you can.”
Liskeard and Looe foodbank said Monday was the busiest day they’d ever had, with over a tonne of food handed over to them in one day and with demand also peaking just before Christmas.
Manager David Berry said: “We’ve been inundated. It’s all going out as quickly as it’s coming in. We don’t normally have a spike before Christmas but this year it’s going through the roof and there’s no particular rhyme or reason.
“If we get a spike in demand, we will always have seen a spike in donations too. It is quite amazing. It’s a little Christmas miracle.”