Tesco said such complaints were "very rare"

Loretta Revell, from Plymouth, had ordered �150 of groceries via tesco.com because her baby daughter was ill and she did not want to leave the house.

But when it arrived most of the fresh food was just one day away from the sell-by date.

Tesco said it was "very rare" for such incidents to happen and has offered her vouchers in compensation.

You would expect fresh food to be at least three or four days before its sell-by date Loretta Revell

Mrs Revell, 32, said she was forced to take her poorly daughter Imogen, 18 months, out to the supermarket to buy fresh food.

She said: "You cannot mess about with people, especially when babies' food is involved.

"You would expect fresh food to be at least three or four days before its sell-by date."

But she said that when she questioned the freshness of the goods, the customer services were abusive.

'Rare situation'

Tesco spokeswoman Julie McGuckian said: "I shall be sending Loretta some Tesco vouchers. It will be worth her while.

"All our shoppers that pick the food that you order are trained to act like you would if you were going down to your local store, to look for the code date which is the furthest away in all the products and clearly in this case that hasn't happened.

"It is very rare for a situation like this to arise."

She said that customer services staff should have been courteous and offered a refund.

"In this case we can only apologise if the customer support she had was unsuitable and we shall be dealing with that," she said.