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

[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).