groceries gone bananas

We order groceries weekly online via the website of the chain our local store belongs to. We set it for pickup the next morning: I drive in, park in the designated pickup spot, and phone the automated system which informs the staff that I'm there.

When this service first started up, during the pandemic, there were a lot of problems at the pickup level, but they've gotten sorted out, and save for an occasional glitch - fixed promptly and cheerfully on inquiry - that part works fine.

The new problem is with the store's website. If you type a product into the search box, instead of getting a list of matching items, you're getting a blank. The framing is there, but there's no items in the box. This now is happening for category search as well. Of course I've reported this, but who knows if anyone reads that. (The problem is not limited to one browser either.)

This would happen occasionally in the past, but then get fixed within an hour. But while I was gone on my trip, B. reported it had become consistent. The only things she could order were from the past-shopping list in our account, which gives product entries for most (strangely, not all) of what we've bought lately, and since that's most of what we want, it manages.

I just placed the weekly order for the first time since I came back. Sure enough, both item search and category search are broken, and unlikely to fix themselves.

However, I found a workaround. Anyone with a humanistic soul is going to hate this, but it's the store's own fault for not getting the regular search working.

They have an A.I. search. I'm not doing anything fancy; I just type the name of a product into the A.I. search box, and that brings it up so I can order it. I hate A.I., but I feel forced into this, and at least it's not making me have sophisticated intellectual interactions with it.