Ocado v Tesco

[tamaranth]

Have just had my first Ocado order.

Advantages of Ocado over Tesco:

- polite! (no whining about the fact that I live on the third floor, with no lift)
- on time! (and one-hour, not two-hour, slot)
- different-coloured bags for 'fridge' and 'cupboard'!
- free samples! (including, er, four pints of organic semi-skimmed. Got milk, ladymoonray?)
- sensible substitutions (one flavour of tuna-with-sauce rather than another: not a tin of spam)
- free delivery over £75 (which is more or less what my monthly shop came to)
- very, very nice food
- [am not so much of a snob as to sneer at Tesco's for being cheap and cheerful: but if I were ...]

Disadvantages:

- considerably more expensive (they don't do a Value range, and their sparkling water is nearly three times the price of Tesco's)
- no fizzy pink!drink!
- had not realised I would be right in the middle* of The System of the World. But this is probably a one-off.

EDIT Apparently, if I recommend a friend, I get a voucher. Anyone not signed up and wants to sample? Drop me a comment.

Back (batteries having charged again) to Book.

*Actually, just over a third of the way through.

Comments

[incy.livejournal.com]

To quote Sue thing (whose name I have forgotten but is one half of Mel and Sue)

supermarket slogans:
Tescos's- 'Every little helps'
Waitrose - 'HOW MUCH !!!' :)

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

To quote Tesco's recently: "You don't pay to get it to your door, by rights we should leave it all downstairs, I'm not paid to do this, I've got a bad back, I'm going to complain ..."

(To which, of course, my response was, "I'm going to complain first, you nasty little man." I may have muttered the last bit.)

[incy.livejournal.com]

ionteretsing their web site says they will bring it to your door. I do love good customer service though, presuambly he just did not have the charm to work at Moorgate tube station :)

Actually guessing by the number of ocado vans compared to Sainsbury and Tesco's ones that go round where I live I suspect they are the best

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Waitrose is just so much more for our sort of people, darling. And a TESCO van outside ones house? So declasse...

Seriously, Waitrose are very good for certain items that you can't reliably get elsewhere. But they don't have so many special offers or loss-leaders etc. Great for topping up on niceties. But if it's a choice between getting the shopping you want when you want it and delivered up huge flights of stairs, versus sloppy order fulfilment and delivery to the apvement outside, I'd say it's worth every penny.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

People review this supermarket deliveries as though the one chain is the same throughout the country and it's just not.

I've never had an online delivery by anyone but Tesco for shopping but I've experienced 3 different branches. In Fleet the first one we had was wonderful to start with and dropped to just "good" after a while. But they always fixed what they screwed up - vouchers when they were late and when a bottle of washing up liquid spilled over some goods in transit I complained and got the entire lot of shopping refunded. I'd only lost about a fiver's of stuff to the green gloop and they gave me somewhere in the region of 100 quid back! Anyway, after a while they switched the branch that fulfilled orders for our address and the service dropped considerably - they had so little in stock that our order was hugely substituted and the substitution quality was random at best.

When I moved I switched to some Peterborough store and they've been fine except for a few oddities. Not as sterling as the first lot, timing isn't always great (though they've called ahead and asked if I'd mind them being early once), and the substitutions are fairly common but not badly handled. They're vastly better than Fleet area store #2, though not as good as store #1 originally was.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Point taken re different areas behaving differently, but this is the only place I've lived since it became more feasible to have deliveries than not!

Some of this, at least, indicates procedural difference: the separate bags, free samples and the pricing ...

[flickgc.livejournal.com]

One of the things that always boggles me about Ocado is the frequency with which they phone up and say "We're running [an hour or so] early, is that ok or shall we pop back int he right slot?"

Which is terribly nice, I feel.

And, yes, nifty colour coded bags. There are at least three colours.

[reddragdiva]

Around here (E17), Tesco were just a bit crap, but Sainsbury's have been really pretty okay. They also now do one-hour slots, presumably in competition with Ocado.

I see Ocado no longer shut out anyone not using Internet Explorer ...

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

We're very commited Ocado users, and have never had a problem with Ocado and Safari (or not since Safari was in beta, and even then the site was usable just with some wonky pages).

We've been getting groceries delivered for longer than most people (we set up our Tescos account at our old house, and we've been living here for five years). But we were delighted when Sainsburys set up in competition to Tesco, and even more delighted when Ocado launched here.

We're also E17.

We don't use Sainsbury's at all, not since that time they completely fucked up our Christmas shop and didn't even have the decency to apologise. We use Tescos about once every two months to buy sparkling water by the gallon (because, as tamaranth points out, sparkling water is vastly more expensive at Ocado).

[ajshepherd.livejournal.com]

Last time I tried them (a few weeks back), neither Tesco nor Asda sites worked with Safari on the Mac, (not even using IE on the Mac) so I've not on-line shopped with them since I got my iMac almost a year ago.
Sainsburys has worked fine in Safari as long as I've been using it, and when I found Ocado, they did too. I've used Ocado as the one hour slots are a bit easier to plan for, and they do quite often phone you up to ask if they can call earlier, which on the times this has happened has been very useful!
Also, I've been much more likely to get a slot in the next few days when booking with Ocado than with Sainsburys. Which as I am vacuous and often forget to order until later in the week is quite useful!

[ladymoonray.livejournal.com]

I'll definitely take the milk off you - I was about to go and buy some. If I bring the car up tomorrow, I might pick it up after work. Is that OK with you?

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Sure! Shall be BSFAing but you can find the fridge :) Will leave you some strawberries too!

[ladymoonray.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thanks. I may be going pubbing after work, but if so I'll text you when I'm on the way to yours to see if you're back yet.

[camies.livejournal.com]

And Ocado, as far as I know, are not planning to rip down much of the remaining dangly bits centre of my home town, including its only mainstream cinema, to build another arse supermarket and offices.

[drpete.livejournal.com]

Aye go on then. Recommend me. I'll give 'em a whirl. They can't be as pathetic as Sainsburys.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Sainsbury's were very pathetic indeed when I tried them -- complete failure to show up or tell me so.

You are heretowith Invited.