Online shopping in the UK?

[reddragdiva]

Just went shopping and had an asthma attack from going outside in 1°C. I've heard quite enough horror stories about Tesco's online shopping service (site looks nice, but is reputedly consistently shite at making an actual delivery and would substitute a side of beef for a watermelon). Waitrose-Online doesn't seem to work in Mozilla, and ocado.com doesn't seem to stock obscure items like, ooh, apples. So how is Sainsbury's (whose site at least appears sane)? And are there any others I haven't listed here?

Comments

D'Oh!

[minigoth.livejournal.com]

You get asthma attacks from temperatures like that? And you moved to the UK? Need i make my point clearer?

Re: D'Oh!

[echo-echo.livejournal.com]

I do too. Its pretty common, sharp cold air causes your lungs to close up.

Re: D'Oh!

[minigoth.livejournal.com]

YEah, but you didn't move from your native Australia only to discover this. Did you?

Re: D'Oh!

[mikz.livejournal.com]

Heh—you're the weirdos that build cities in places where it gets that cold! ;)

[diffrentcolours]

Chain-smoke while outside to keep your lungs warm :)

[reddragdiva]

Smoke cloves, to keep my lungs open. Hmm, yes.

[simonb.livejournal.com]

I've had one or two problems with Sainsbury's (see my LJ for details), however they work pretty well. The ability to change an order at any time upto 9pm on the evening before the delivery date is useful.

However they make heavy usage of Javascript which under Mozilla will break if you cause the page to stop downloading before everything is downloaded - ie if you click on a button too soon, etc.

It also seems that the cluster of machines which is doing to serving of pages is unbalanced with some servers having problems at returning full pages.

Still, its a *lot* easier to use now that I've got a list of "usual items" - otherwise known as anything I've ordered from Sainsburys before which I can use to make up an order with. If everything I need is on the usual items list then I can put an order together in around 5 minutes or so.

Sainsbury's have substituted a few duff items - things like ham instead of veggie bacon, but that was the exception. They have done things like give us full fat instead of skimmed milk or 5 normal grapefruits instead of the organic ones we wanted. We've also switched to having our order delivered mid-week as it increases the chance that the items you want are actually in stock :)

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

Tescos are the least-worst of the online grocery shopping sites that I've tried; ocado don't deliver to where we live.

Sainsburys were incredibly bad last time I used them. I got less that half of what I ordered, and most of what *did* turn up was wrong. And they were having 'issues' with some of the computer system, so they weren't able to tell us what was substituted where. And they guy dropped the food at the doorstep and ran away (I don't really blame him). And they were several hours late. That was a year ago, and if they always screw up like that then they'd be out of business now, so I suspect they were having a bad day.

Tescos have been pretty good so far; their substitutes have been fairly sensible, and you can attach substitute notes to everything on your order, or general notes, or say 'no substitutes please' or whatever. Their biggest screwup was losing one of our bags, and they sorted it out straight away over the phone. They've always been on time with deliveries.

I think a lot of the service you get depends on the individual store rather than which chain you use because it's managed at store level.

[naughtypixie.livejournal.com]

Ditto here. Tesco is the best so far. The "no substitutes" option is the best (though they'll still slip one in now and then... but if you're really pedantic you can go through the order when it arrives and had any substitutes back to the driver and not pay for them). We also had the lost bag scenario and had it with us the next day with no hassle (and got some other persons bag of stuff that they didn't want back as a bonus. :)

Our biggest peeve is that if you're ordering for a recipie you can be certain that one ingredient off the list is missing which is annoying. They are the best of them all... sainsbury was a nightmare the two times we went with them, and ocado has the crappiest website from hell.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

I think I've invested so much time into the tescos system that it would be really annoying to try moving to somewhere else; just about everything in our 'what we buy' list is annotated carefully, even the toilet paper and kitty-litter.

I tend to buy food first and plan later, though, so there's very little that'll upset me if I have to live without it. And I've harrased them enough that they've stopped putting my online purchases into their loyalty card thing (although they still can't understand why I don't want one).

[sheilamarie.livejournal.com]

Ickle about the asthma attack. I've heard of people putting layers of scarves around their mouth and nose to attempt to prevent an attack in colder temperatures. Mine seems to do better in cold weather then it does in the heat though rainy days has me sucking the inhaler every few hours.

Can't help with the grocers, sorry. I don't know that the US will ever have that sort of convenience; it'd mean people didn't need huge cars with huge trunks....

[rufus.livejournal.com]

actually the US has had that kind of service for years. My mother had Telegrocery in the '80s and more recently there's been Peapod and others of that ilk.

I think Peapod is dead now, though, ran out of VC funding, or something like that.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

I use Tesco for home delivery quite regularly and we've never had a problem. The one time they were late they rang to let us know. The only stupid substitution I've had was last week - I got a bacon quiche instead of a cheese & onion one, which isn't a huge deal because Jason isn't a vegetarian so he got the whole thing to himself.

The variability of Tesco delivery is that each store does its own so quality probably depends on the staff of your particular store.

Their site used to be a lot easier to get around though - it has diversified too much to make it easy to use.

[lnr]

We've always found Tesco to be pretty good. If they can read teh comment on one item and bring me wrapping paper suiatable for a wedding from their selection of christmas wrapping papers as they did this week then they're doing pretty well. And they always list the few things which have been substituted first and give you the chance to give them back. They're not usually completely insane anyway. I wouldn't want to rely on them for the one essential ingreiaent I neeed for an important dinner party or anything, but then you'd have trouble if you tried to rely on a single shop in person too. And their website finally works in things other than IE again. Given they run the service from individual stores it probably depends which one you shop at I guess, your local one might turn out to be OK.

Asda seemed OK at one try, but we weren't so impressed with the food. Given we're happy with Tesco I haven't tried Sainsbury yet, since the slowest thing is compiling the basic shopping list the first time you shop, and after that shopping becomes much quicker.

Apologies for typos, I should have waited and written this at home.

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

We use Suma for wholefood at wholesale prices (minimum order £200, but a couple of cases of Schoko Creme Liquer, which pisses on Bailey's chips, and Cannabia hemp ale, and you're well on the way to that) and The Real Meat Company for whole haunches of venison, organic kebabs, shoulders of lamb, free-range rabbits and the like. May end up doing Tesco Online sooner or later too as supermarket shopping is a PITA.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Tesco.com has been working for me for a while. Main problems are that everything they deliver seems to be at its "display until" date sometimes, and they always deliver the biggest bit of meat they have no matter how little you ask for. Some things they never seem to have no matter how often you ask for them. The substitutions are mad sometimes (eg asked for photocopier paper for the laser printer - got an A4 lined writing pad) but you just go through them when the stuff is delivered and they're always perfectly happy to take it back, takes 2 minutes tops.

It works with Mozilla and Linux fine, if rather slow - in fact, you've just reminded me to put some parmesan (whoops, "italian style cheese") in my basket now, so that we don't forget it next time we do an order.

The overall reduction in pain of shopping is more than words can do justice to.

[reddragdiva]

"The substitutions are mad sometimes"

So can't you actually request 'NO SUBSTITUTIONS'?

"The overall reduction in pain of shopping is more than words can do justice to."

Yes. Oh, yesss.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

You can; you have three options (iirc) - to say 'pick me something else', to attach substitution instructions, or to not have any substitution. And they take back the substituted items if you don't like them.

[lnr]

Adn the printout they hand you while they're bringing the shopping in has all the substitutions listed at the top, so it's really quick to tell if they're sensible or not. I keep substitutions turned on: most times I'm happy with what they replace things with to be honest.

Noooo, not Sainsbury's!

[silverfiligree.livejournal.com]

I just got my last ever Sainsbury's online delivery. I've used them about half a dozen times and the service has got progressively worse.

Tonight's delivery was booked for delivery between 6-8 PM but wasn't even checked out until 7.30, didn't get here till 9.15. The icecream had melted, and it's lucky I had back-up options in hand or we would have had no dinner and Sprog would have no packed lunch tomorrow.

The site sucks donkey balls. I don't know the technical reasons but it's full of bugs and it crashes constantly. The real pisser is that if you amend an order, it goes into limbo until you check out again. If the site crashes in the meantime, the whole sodding order is deleted. Or doubled. Or arbitrarily added to another order.

I was on the point of ditching it but reasoned that delivery is free midweek and I'm too busy to shop. This was false economy, as I have to go shopping again tomorrow to pick up all the bits that didn't arrive or were substituted with something ridiculous. I've decided that in future it would be easier, quicker, cheaper and more effective to do the shopping myself and spend the £5 delivery fee on a taxi home.

[lucybond.livejournal.com]

I'm nowhere near a Sainsbury's, the nearest Safeways is a short walk away, but not so short carrying the tins I need to feed five cats. It costs 2.50 in a taxi.

So I use Sainsbury's Online.

Substitutions: they *always* have no Quorn chunks. I dunno why. I get fillets. That is OK, I can cut them up. I have on some occaisions ended up with heaps of the same curry sauce when I ordered several different kinds. I once got three litres of vanilla icecream when I wanted different fancy icecreams.

I order midweek. I order with plenty of time to spare, but I never seem to get the special offer US-stylee icecreams or the Quorn chunks. I also once got vegan icecream, but found it was actually yummy, so no probs there.

I like the fact that the driver shows you a print-out of the substitutions to OK before you sign & accept. That is good.

On the whole, I like their service, despite my whinging about icecream, but then, I maybe have heavier shopping than most people, what with the lots of catfood tins & dogfood sacks, & the tendancy to buy tinned stuff & dry beans rather than convenience frozen meals. OK< I partially live on cauliflower cheese grills, but...

I get all my veg, laundry liquid, eggs, rice, sugar, etc from Ltd Resources, an organic local delivery firm, & just get the really heavy or frozen stuff from Sainsbury's.