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Recently I've been trying out a couple of supermarkets
that let you order online and have the groceries delivered to your door for a
£5 charge.
Tesco is far and away the leader in this field here in the UK. Whereas others
have set up cumbersome special warehouses, Tesco simply delivers from a nearby
store. In fact, I believe they are now the most-successful online grocery store
in the world.
The first time I tried them, Tesco was pretty good. Though they supposedly had
no loose tomatoes. Whoever heard of a supermarket running out of tomatoes?
And this is part of the problem with the whole idea. If you went to the store
and found there were no tomatoes, then you would go on to another store...
True, you can ask them to supply an alternative, but that isn't always practical
(what alternative is there to loose tomatoes?).
On the second occasion, I tried Sainsbury's. This was a total disaster. There
was no receipt and half the order (all the dairy produce) was missing. I ended
up having to go down to the shops to get milk after the delivery.
They attempted to deliver the remaining items the following day, but still didn't
manage to supply everything. Worryingly, they didn't seem to know what had and
hadn't been delivered...
I doubt I'll ever use them again and I was interested to see that the Sainsbury
service got a bad review in The Times recently.
So it was back to Tesco. But my second experience with them wasn't ideal either.
There was no receipt and the order arrived 90 minutes early, while I was still
out, and was left in a centrally-heated room. Plus a couple of items were wrong
or missing.
However, despite this, I'm probably going to stick with Tesco. My sister uses
them regularly without a problem and so far the advantages far outweigh the few
problems I've had.
The whole thing is ideal for when you need to stock up on heavy items: bottles
of wine, cartons of juice or milk, potatoes etc. The range online is much greater
than can be bought in any city centre Manchester store, so I probably save the
£5 delivery charge through buying less-expensive alternatives (eg. loo rolls).
Going back to the days of home delivery is a great idea especially if, like me,
you don't have a car. It's environmentally friendly too.
In fact I wish I'd used Tesco Online today. I bought far too much and ended up
carrying four big bags of shopping home in the rain. I was soaked to the skin,
but laughing about it -- as you can see above.
Manchester city centre isn't the greatest place for buying groceries. There used
to be a Safeway, but that closed in 1998 as part of the demolition following the
bomb in 1996.
There are a couple of small Spar stores and delis. Other than that, the food department
at Marks and Spencer, which is good quality but doesn't provide everything I need
and Tesco Metro, a medium-sized supermarket which caters a little too much to
office workers at the expense of essentials.
I see that from the end of April, Tesco Metro will be open 24 hours. Which is
ideal for people who have a weird timetable.
Guess where I'll be at 4am!
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