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.

Earliest delivery slot

Delivery charge

Time to complete 1st order

Time to complete 2nd order

Quality of fresh produce*

Sainsbury's

1st 5days
2nd 3days

£5

2 hours 30 minutes

30 minutes

Very good

Waitrose (Ocado)

Next day

Free with orders over£85

2 hours 30 minutes

1 hour 30 minutes

Very good

Tesco

1st next day
2nd 5days

Varies cheapest£4.49

2 hours

45 minutes

Poor

*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

1st 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.

2nd 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

1st 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

2nd 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

1st 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!

2nd 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.

3rd 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.

4th 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.


 

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Date Added: Sunday 13th April 2008

"have just used ocado and were very good. Will try sainsbury next but might steer clear of tesco...they are too big anyway."

R.L

Date Added: Tuesday 1st April 2008

"We used Tesco for the first (and last) time this week. Their computers failed so could not deliver as scheduled, then delivered 2 days later but charged us with the new prices (all bogoff deals finished by then) despite promising not to. £180 more than expected. Customer services were hopeless - we are still waiting for a refund 6 days later."

J ohn

Date Added: Saturday 16th February 2008

"We've been shopping with Waitrose/Ocado for a year now and we are very happy with their produce as well as the customer service."

Mrs M

Date Added: Thursday 31st January 2008

"We shopped online with Tesco for over a year. Consistently the same problems: senseless substitutions (No corned beef? Here, have Steak & kidney pie! No apples? Here, have a pineapple! No cat food that brand in stock? How about dog food!)Produce in poor shape, no paying attention to sales (order one item, there was a BOGOF not seen at time of order, only send one item OR not giving a sale price that was on at time of purchase), poor choices on online menu, problems delivering very early or very late, bringing baskets to door but no futher (I'm disabled); not allowing use of club card coupons (even tho the coupons didn't say 'not for use online shopping')... we stopped after a year because the stress wasn't worth it. One day hubby said "Explain to me why we pay them to torture us this way?" It all depends on who is picking the order and the training they have had. When we called management, they were very responsive and sent flowers, but it still didn't overcome the stress and frustration: three days after the flowers we got our order, and their was dog food instead of cat food. "

Betty in the Black Country

Date Added: Tuesday 11th December 2007

"We use tesco and although bad at the beginning,they are excellent now and all the staff are friendly and the produce excellent. good value as well! Thumbs up for tescos! "

liz

Date Added: Monday 29th October 2007

"Tesco online shopping, easy to use despite costing money to deliver ( i could swear i saw a spend over £25 and get free delivery ), changed address and lost whole order i justs spent 50 mins completing, not bad i have used em before"

Pegmarnos

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