Poor availability is putting store rebates at risk, with retailers across different symbol groups all reporting severe challenges in achieving their targets.

Shop owners told Better Retailing that outages had left them scrabbling to balance buying elsewhere to keep shelves full with hitting the thresholds required to receive rebates from their major supply partner.

Andrew Newton, who runs a Nisa Local in Dudley, said it remained unclear whether he would receive his rebate, but he wasn’t hopeful. He said: “It looks like I am not going to get it. I was just below the £13,000-a-week mark, which would have given me around a 3% rebate. I thought it would be no problem to push a bit more business through Nisa, but now with so many availability issues I’ll be well away from that figure.”

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“Why should loyal partners be punished because Nisa can’t uphold its end of the bargain?” said another Nisa partner.

Asked to comment on the claims, a Nisa spokesperson said: “Our Fresh Rewards rebate proposition is built on fairness and partners who have met the criteria will receive their rebate as usual. Rebates are assessed on a case-by-case basis and partners will be advised at the end of this quarter as they normally are.”

In Scotland, Premier retailer Asif Akhtar, who runs Premier Smeaton in Kirkcaldy, has also been forced to change tactics to protect his payouts. “It feels worse than the initial lockdown. We are all running around like headless chickens, and it’s no one particular item that is affected. It’s everything. I have been consistently meeting my rebate threshold, but I have a stockroom and garage to store excess stock,” he said.

Retailers taking part in Booker’s Spend & Save scheme also reported challenges, with outages in cash and carries and some smaller stores being banned from receiving their standard deliveries in order to protect supply to larger stores.

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Julian Baker, of Westwood Village Stores & Post Office near Bradford on Avon, only found out a decision had been made to suspend his deliveries for the whole of August when checking his delivery status. “I was told a senior manager made the decision to cut deliveries being made to smaller shops, it was like our world was ending,” he said.

Earlier this month, Bestway promised it would be taking a lenient approach to rebate payments, and Parfetts promised stores would not be penalised for its outages. Costcutter also told Better Retailing it would be taking a “balanced view”, but store owners said they were “still in the dark” about how this would be applied.

One explained: “My account manager said they’re going to check and there was talk about calculating the rebates based on an average figure. Nothing has officially been confirmed yet.”

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