Groceries

During school term time, I do most of my grocery shopping on line. I have, for the past two years, been a regular and happy customer of Ocado, who sell, amongst the regular, every day brands, Waitrose products. And I've been shopping with them for two years because in all that time I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times they've messed up/substituted a product/arrived late. The most recent was the Juicy Apple shampoo instead of the Tea Tree Tingle (yes mums, you know why I'm buying Tea Tree Tingle).  That was a mess up, not a substitution - and I know that because for a substitution the driver will actually make mention of it as he turns up.  I've not included the number of times I've had a call from a driver saying that he's in the area, in fact just round the corner, and would I like an earlier delivery, because, being a bit skint, I have a tendency to choose the rather later night delivery times (22:30-23:30 is usually free if your order is over £75), because I consider this to be a bonus.

On the other hand, since the beginning of online grocery shopping, I've managed to shop with Tesco maybe 10 times. This despite the fact that I collect their club card points so that we can get our crossing to France for free (Eurotunnel) on their 4 for 1 deals. I truly want to shop with Tesco, because I have none of the hatred for them harboured by my mother-in-law, who views them as the Microsoft of the grocery world. I've always enjoyed my forays into their stores, especially my ability to get some items discounted because the date on them is today. Unfortunately, of the 10 times I've used them, I can remember only 2 occasions when they didn't mess up. In fact, the very first time I was actually able to place an order with them they tried to deliver it to my previous address. While I can see that they may have had my old address on their system because that's where I'd been living when I tried to see if they'd deliver in my area (remember the early days of internet shopping - "Put in your post code and see if we deliver in your area!"), I'd checked while making my order that my new address was down as delivery address, and they still messed up.

I didn't use them again until I got to a week when Ocado, for some reason, didn't have a an available delivery on the day I wanted, leaving me with a choice between Tesco or an actual visit to a store. I chose the former. That time they succeeded in arriving just over half an hour later than the end of the two hour delivery time slot I'd chosen. On querying this with the driver, he assured me he was only just late, because my slot was the 9:30-10:30 slot. When, on finding out my assertion that the booked time had been 8-10 was correct, he said, "Oh."

Just "Oh."

Not, "Oh, I must have been looking at someone else's time, sorry."

Or even just "Oh, sorry."

And this doesn't even go into the interesting substitutions the pickers have, on occasion, chosen. It's almost as if they see a note saying, in the case of the 3 toothbrushes I wanted, "No substitutions, and see if you can choose 3 different colours, thanks", and decide it'll be a laugh to mess with it. If I ask you to guess what I got, and if you say, "You got 3 Colgate toothbrushes, all the same colour, didn't you?" I'd give you top marks.

In fact, the latest delivery, on Friday last week, was a complete "I hate my bloody job, and I'm going to make someone suffer!" statement from the picker.

Look:
I ordered Cadbury's drinking chocolate, 2 (cos they were out of the Tesco's own), and received nothing.
I ordered Quavers, cheese flavour, and got mixed.
I ordered a 6 pack of corner yoghurts - got 2 individual pots.
I ordered 2 packs of coco shreddies, got none.

So, my question today - actually, I've got two questions!

1. How can Tesco mess up so often when Ocado manages to be truly fantastic?
2. Should I continue to bang my head up against the wall of frustration just so I can pick up club card points?