Online supermarket shopping

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Our Secret Shopper takes a look at the online supermarket shopping website's for Tesco's, Waitrose (Ocado) and Sainsbury's (Asda wouldn't deliver to the address) and rates them for ease of use and quality of service.

Our shopper is a 'young' mum (I'll get shot for that!) interested in buying the weekly groceries for a family of four (2 adults and two small children). The attraction is the convenience of shopping in the evening after the children have gone to bed and not having to drag them around the supermarket. The average price of the groceries for the week is typically£80-90.

Each supermarket online store was visited and used twice in the period of a few weeks. The table below compares how quickly the groceries could be delivered for each of the orders, what the delivery charges were, how long it took to initially set up your first shopping basket, how long it took to do the second shop and what the quality of the fresh produce was like.

*Note this is judged on the basis of the samples of produce that were received and may not be representative of all produce from these stores.

Sainsbury's Website

1^st Shopping Delivery 

Pro's

• Time to complete first order 2½ hours
• Although 1 egg was broken I was not charged for eggs but was allowed to keep them.
• All fresh produce looked good and had long use by dates.

Con's

• £5 delivery charge
• Earliest delivery slot was 5 days after ordering
• Four substitution items were sent with option to return or keep these.

Two items of fresh produce did not have a date that Sainsbury's were happy with, had option to return these. Products were of very good quality though so they were kept.

First delivery items were all of good quality.

2^nd Shopping Delivery 

Pro's

• Earliest delivery slot 3 days after ordering
• Free box of chocolates voucher sent through post.
• Voucher also sent for free delivery if spent over £70.
• Time to complete second order 30 minutes

Con's

• Two substitution item sent

Favourites list contained items bought previously in store as well as on line. This helped to make the shop quicker as a lot of the items came off this list.

Again all fresh produce had long use by dates and was of very good quality.

Waitrose / Ocado

1^st Shopping Delivery

Pro's

• Free delivery if order over £85
• Time to complete first order 2½ hours
• Delivery slot next day
• All fresh produce had long use by dates and was of very good quality.
• Received free bar of chocolate with delivery

The delivery man went through whole order to check everything was there. There was one item missing. This was taken off bill immediately

2^nd Shopping Delivery

Pro's

• Incentives sent via email free bottle of wine with next order
• If you recommend a friend then the friend gets £15 off order and you get £5 off.
• Time to complete second order 1 hour 30 minutes
• Received free bottle of wine and samples of fabric conditioner.

Con's

• Takes time to browse through special offers and what's new
  

Tesco's

1^st Shopping delivery

The first attempt to order from Tesco took over two hours to put in shop -Tesco had delivery details from old address. Changed delivery address and whole order was lost. Complained to administration and apparently that's normal. Well its not normal on any other site I've purchased items from!

2^nd Shopping Delivery

The second time I tried to order Tesco had problems with their computer and I could not access their home shopping page after logging on.

3^rd Shopping Delivery

Pro's

• Hooray!
• Very easy to register details.
• £5 off delivery slot with coupon picked up in store.
• Earliest delivery slot next day £4.49 (voucher covered this cost). Costs of delivery vary according to time of delivery slot.
• Special offers such as BOGOF taken off bill on delivery.
• Most efficient site to use.
• Very user friendly.
• Very easy to amend order.

Con's

• Could not access product information.
• Two substitution products.
• Milk had poor use by date only 5 days - normally order milk to last one whole week.
• Peppers were very small.
• Mushrooms were old and needed using with the next couple of days.

4^th Shopping Delivery

Pro's

• £5 delivery charge - 1000 club card points through voucher sent in post
• Time to complete order 45 minutes
• Easy to see BOGOFS and other promotions

Con's

• Ordered 2 x 4pints of milk - replaced with 2 x 2 pints milk so did not have enough milk.
• Much of the fresh produce was old. Grapes were bad. Milk had only 4 days life on it
• Three substitution products.
• Earliest delivery slot was 5 days after ordering
• One item missing completely from order although after informing Tesco they have offered to refund my account

• Waitrose/Ocado was able to offer next day delivery on both shops.
• Sainsbury's and Tesco's delivery dates varied depending how busy they were.
• Initial set up time is quite lengthy for all sites but when you return to the site you can view favourites. Along with site familiarity it is then much easier and quicker to use.
• Sainsbury's and Ocado offered very good quality with fresh products with long use by dates on both occasions.
• Tesco unfortunately could not offer the same high standards.
• Once logged on, all sites send through the post promotions such as free wine or extra points which can be used on line.
• Ocado is the only site to offer free delivery as standard on orders over£85.

Overall the shopping experience online is a lot less traumatic than dragging two small (under 5) children round the aisles once a week. Whilst it can be painful to set up and sometimes things go wrong, at least I can sit there in peace and quiet with my cup of tea deciding exactly which chocolate I should buy!

So, who do I use? Currently Sainsbury's as they keep sending me offers of free delivery along with vouchers to cash in my Nectar points. I would also use Waitrose again as the produce is generally excellent, but I'm afraid Tesco's loses out.