On-line supermarket shopping

Corzhens said:
@morning glory, your experience proved that what I heard is true. That replacing with another product other than you ordered is not a good practice. If done here, that grocery would lose its clients because Filipinos are loud complainers - they would seek media attention for that piece of steak wrongly delivered. If and when I try that online grocery, I will post in this thread my own experience.
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As I mentioned in another reply, on the system used in the UK, you can check a box saying 'no substitutes' if you don't want them.
 
It has been around for quite a while in the U.S., but mainly with upscale companies. It can be a big blessing in cities, especially if you live in an upper floor apartment with no elevator. It is starting to try to go mainstream, with Walmart offering it, and I believe Amazon as well, in some markets. I had been ordering a lot of my 'groceries' online from Walmart, but what I ordered was not what others ordered, and the people packing obviously were untrained. I have 4 cats and also feed strays, so I was ordering 70+ lbs of cat litter, 50+ lbs of dry kibble, and 35+ cans of cat food, on top of my other items, such as heavy laundry detergent.

What was happening was that I would unpack the boxes, and discover a bag of potato chips, smashed under 30 lbs of kibble, open containers of oatmeal spilled under 35 lb containers of cat litter, etc. It was a big mess, so I stopped ordering online, because it was a hassle. Every time I needed to return a product, I had to pack it up and have them pick it up and re-ship, because I couldn't even drive it to the store to return, they would only accept it the same way it was originally purchased. Each time I had an issue, I would try to explain the problem (untrained packers) to them, but the issue reoccurred, so I decided it was easier simply to go to the store and do my shopping in person.
 

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morning glory said:
Yes, I did forget Asda. No, Lidls and Aldi don't do any deliveries. Thats one of the ways they keep their costs down. I read somewhere that most of the big supermarkets actually make less profit on deliveries.
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Neighbour had a delivery from Aldi this morning. That's why I mentioned them.
 
morning glory said:
You can check a box when ordering saying 'no substitutes'. I've used all the on-line deliveries (including Iceland, who deliver for free). Asda I found much less reliable. Waitrose, Sainsburys and Ocado are the most reliable. I normally use Tesco because I collect Clubcard points to spend on Cottages4U holidays!
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I didn't know I could do that. I blundered my way round the website. It took me ages to find what I wanted, let alone finding a box to tick :laugh:
 
In Kentucky/tennessee are in the SE US. In the town nearest me there was only one. And it wasn't on the Internet. The elderly could call and place their order. The meat guy or a bag boy would run it out. But they closed down about a decade ago. Now there's nothing around here like that.
 
On-line supermarket shopping saves a lot of hassle. I have never done it though. However, considering the amount of time it would save, it makes good sense. A lot of time is spent in the supermarket searching the shelves for what we want. For any housewife who has other household chores to take care of, online shopping can be a time saver and lots more can be done during that time.

I would have to say, though , that getting out and seeing other people, while meeting up with friends for a little chat while shopping, makes supermarket shopping a kind of social event. This can be refreshing and can add some enjoyment to the actual shopping. If we did all our shopping from home, we would miss out on these contacts with others. So, I guess we could mix the two, go to the supermarket at times, and do online shopping when we are really busy and have other pressing things to take care of.
 
sidevalve said:
One thing to be aware of here in the Uk is if the weather is bad they may not deliver as my friend found out last year [Usual story I'm afraid - an inch of snow [three or four flakes in London] and the country grinds to a halt].
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Or you have the complete opposite. In the hottest part of a very hot summer when we lived in Surrey, we came home one day to an Ocado delivery on our doorstep. There was a note that said, thought I would be helpful and leave it for you give you were out... Only it wasn't ours. We lived rurally and the centre of our postcode for about a 2 mile stretch of road and 10 houses was our house. Someone was throwing a garden party and had ordered organic everything, top of the range everything... There was over £400 of produce including 8 blocks of butter which were still solid. That was the clue everything was safe to eat. Anyhow, we rang Ocado who basically said it was now spoiled goods and we could keep everything except the alcohol - fine by us we didn't drink but could have rehomed it, but it wasn't even our shopping! So we had around £300 of produce to consume that really wasn't 'spoilt' at all.... the butter wasn't even soft and it was +30C outside. There were lots of berries of all kinds, cream, butter, olive oils, aged balsamic vinegars, bread, sugar, flour, wild rocket.... most of the stuff (I could eat dairy then) we could use, but we gave away the veal, venison, some very expensive sausages and a few other meats... :whistling:

We frequently came home to find things abandoned in our driveway, stuff that wasn't for us. The 'best' was over £1000 of speciality wines. The most inconvenient and most curious because they literally dumped it in the middle of the track (we lived up a 1 mile dirt track and they ditched it in the only turning area) was 250kg of chicken feed. Most of the time the stuff would have telephone numbers on it, but there was no mobile signal where we lived.... so things just got ditched despite the fact at the bottom of the track on the gate, there was only the 1 house name and when you got to the top of the track there was only 1 house! :confused: intelligence didn't enter into it! :laugh:
 
@SatNavSaysStraightOn That sounds similar to my situation, workers who either didn't know how to proceed, were untrained, or were lazy and just didn't care that they were wasting the company's resources. After experiencing that, it's pretty easy to see why some people don't get raises.
 
I think it's here as well in some of the major Supermarkets but I have not taken advantage of it. I don't know if they actually deliver but I know some sort of online shopping is involved. From what I remember, you shop online and then collect. That was a while back so maybe things have progressed where they actually deliver. I should ask my husband if he would consider it but somehow I think he likes running around from one Supermarket to the other getting bulk items from one place and single items from other places. It's all about pricing for him which makes sense I guess.

I used to do the bulk of my shopping when I traveled a lot in the past but I don't travel much anyone hence the local shopping which can be very expensive. Yesterday was the first time I shopped at home alone for a while and I stayed so long in the Supermarket the others had to call to find out if I was lost. I guess I was trying to get my head wrapped around some of the prices. Perhaps I should look into the online shopping. It should be helpful to my husband who is always short of time but is still someone wants to continue doing the shopping.
 
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One of our large stores, Giant has online shopping with delivery. I have not tried it because Giant is the more expensive store in my area and I do not shop there often. I don't like going to the grocery store and maybe looking into ordering online at some time soon.
 
Pat said:
One of our large stores, Giant has online shopping with delivery. I have not tried it because Giant is the more expensive store in my area and I do not shop there often. I don't like going to the grocery store and maybe looking into ordering online at some time soon.
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This is the thing. The same is true in my country, It's often the major players in the industry: The Giants, who can offer these services. The smaller businesses who sometimes have better prices usually don't have to infrastructure or resources to offer these kinds of services.
 
In Australia this is really big too -- the two major supermarkets (Woolworths and Coles) both offer home delivery, and I know that Coles also offers a service called click and collect, where you can order everything online and then just pop into the store to pick everything up if you're close by and want to avoid the delivery fee that they charge. Now living in the States it's not as big here - well, locally I'm not aware of anywhere that offers the service. I think it's a great thing when you're pressed for time - and to be honest I actually think it saves money. I know when I have shopped online for groceries it's been good because I've stuck to the list completely -- It's a bit different if you're in store and a chocolate bar or biscuit aisle is staring you down, saying "buy me! buy me!"
 
i think online supermarket shopping is one of the great success stories of modern times. The service seems to be very efficient and reliable and makes a great difference to people's lives. It is unusual for a large scale service like that to be launched in the UK and run so smoothly. We are used to all kinds of problems and glitches with all kinds of service providers in this country, on line shopping is a breath of fresh air. Full marks to the supermarkets for the excellent way they run this service, It is a huge undertaking and they do it very well, a lesson to others who provide a terrible service with rude unhelpful customer service which we have become accustomed to.

The only downside to online grocery shopping is that if an item is out of stock it is substituted for something else that you may not want but you can refuse this and have it deducted from the bill. There is a small charge for delivery but well worth it for such a terrific service.
 
worldmachine said:
i think online supermarket shopping is one of the great success stories of modern times. The service seems to be very efficient and reliable and makes a great difference to people's lives. It is unusual for a large scale service like that to be launched in the UK and run so smoothly. We are used to all kinds of problems and glitches with all kinds of service providers in this country, on line shopping is a breath of fresh air. Full marks to the supermarkets for the excellent way they run this service, It is a huge undertaking and they do it very well, a lesson to others who provide a terrible service with rude unhelpful customer service which we have become accustomed to.

The only downside to online grocery shopping is that if an item is out of stock it is substituted for something else that you may not want but you can refuse this and have it deducted from the bill. There is a small charge for delivery but well worth it for such a terrific service.
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Yes, I agree with all this. Its really rather surprising that it hasn't taken off in the States, especially given the fact that in America a lot of people have to travel very long distances to their nearest supermarket. Maybe thats why it hasn't taken off. Anyone know?

I also agree with the saving money aspect. I stick to a list much more closely when on-line. You can also repeat order your 'usual' items without having to search for them again. Not only that, but some of the supermarkets distribute from a megastore or warehouse (not necessarily your nearest supermarket). This means that you get a wider range of products than in your local store. For example, I can get quite a few Asian products (spices etc.) from Tesco's on-line but not in the local store.
 
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