Online Grocery Shopping

I love the internet!
I'm am internet developer by trade, I've managed to avoid the christmas queues in the highstreet for years by doing all my shopping online. I think ebay is the greatest site in the world and sell all the crap that's clattering up my house on their quite frequently, just to make space for someone elses crap that I buy off there even more frequently.
I love having the resource at my fingertips to search all over the world for information about anything from what the latest is on the North Korea nuclear developments right through the spectrum to finding out what size Keeley Hazells rack actually is (with pictures to back up the information).

So my rant today is not about any of those things but about a compnay who make billions in profit each year, no not Microsoft, nope not BT but.... Tesco!
My wife and I lead quite busy lives, we both work we have two kids to keep us more than occupied when we're not working so it's pretty useful that some of the larger supermarkets can now deliver your shopping direct to your door between designated times to fit your schedule.

Living in Wrexham, there's not a huge amount of choice, Asda are my supermarket of preference because they are pound for pound the best value.
Sainsburys are my second choice but I can't always get a convenient delivery time.
In which case we have started to use Tesco.
There's no doubt that their website is the best. It's easy to use, has some pretty helpful tools to help you build your list etc and once you are in is quite easy to navigate etc.

We were desperate for some shopping to be delivered but could only get a timeslot between 9pm and 11pm. We have never had a delivery be late and so were happy with that aspect.
Our delivery came at about 10:30pm . So far so good.

With it being quite late (10:30 is late when your kids have been up half the night before for the past 12 months!!) we just packed the shopping away and went to bed.

After work the following day I went to make our evening meal.
I opened the bag of potatoes to find half of them soft and mouldy at the bottom of the bag, "bollox!" I thought but never mind we also ordered some Jacket sized potatoes we can have them, I got the bag opened it and found that half of those had holes in the size of Anglesey!
I phoned Tesco, and don't get me wrong they were very polite and immediately refunded the items.
We also ordered some organic cauliflower and broccolli and carrots.
I thought well at least I can cook those and use some of our old potatoes.
I got the packs out of the fridge.
the organic cauliflower was tinged black and starting to rot.
The Carrots and broccolli were exactly the same!

I got back on the phone to Mr Tesco.
Again it was another very friendly customer service person who immediately apologised gave us a refund for the items and said they'd pass my comments back to the store.
I checked the use by date on just about everything we had ordered.
The order came to about £100, the use by dates were all for the day of delivery, or the next day!! Are we supposed to eat all of this stuff within a day?

Online shopping is making these guys £millions, and all they can think of is clearing their shelves of any crap they have left over.

It's not the cost of the items that were refunded that bothers me, what winds me up is that despite spending a huge amunt on getting their website done the infrastructure in place to be able to get the whole thing running smoothly they just do not "get it", the internet that is.

The internet is an incredible tool, which provides the likes of online shopping for convenience.
If I get all my stuff delivered then find none of it is any use I don't care about refunds, I don't care if you say you'll send me new versions of everything that was wrong, I care about the inconveniene it's all caused and totally forget about your fancy website and all it's tools and will remember next time to until there is a slot available at the sainsburys online shopping for delivery because in fairness they have never caused me any inconevenience yet!!!


Grrrrrrrrr Tesco, you just don't get it!