Sainsbury (Not) To You

We thought we'd give it a go this week. I figured they'd had lots of time to sort out the bugs so we'd we safe. Wrong.

First there was the web site, which to be fair to them did work on my browser of choice (Opera 7 on Linux), but did file anchovies under "news agent" in my regulars list. It also didn't offer their own brand low alcohol cider, which I like. So I queried both these things via their web form.

I got an automated ACK back fairly fast but by the time a human got around to replying I'd placed our order. The first question the email reply asked was for my customer id and postcode. Now bear in mind I was logged on at the time, so the web site knew these things, but it clearly hadn't passed them on when the web form was processed. They also asked me to "include a copy of your original mail in your reply" which was tricky as the original mail had been a web form with no opportunity to CC it back to me, but I restated my queries.

Meanwhile the order arrived. Eventually. The delivery window was 4-6pm. At 5:57 the phone rings. The driver to announce he's going to be late so I stopped cooking supper and waited. He arrived at 6:20pm. The good news was that "there had been no substitutions". Apparently this is fairly common. So he left and we un-packed. Only to find that the organic full fat and the ordinary skimmed milk had been substituted for semi-skimmed in both cases. Growl.

By now I was fast losing it and phoned up to shout at them. On the plus side they did refund the cost of the milk and, after a little persuasion, refunded the delivery charge too - on the down side the whole raison d'etre for e-shopping was blown as we had to go out and buy milk.

But that wasn't the end of the tale. A day later I got an email from Sainsburys "explaining" why I couldn't order low alcohol cider (something, bear in mind, which I'd told them I bought regularly from Coldhams Lane). It said "I have checked and unfortunately the Coldhams Lane store does not stock this product, this can be for many reasons, restricted shelf space or low demand for the product in that store.". Sigh, so I'm either a liar or stupid then?

I replied, pointing out the error of this statement and commenting on the poor quality of the whole experience to date. Today (only three days later) I got a reply which began "I'm sorry to hear of the problems you experienced on your delivery of." - yes, that's right, that's where the sentence ended.

So if anyone tells you that shopping for groceries via the Net removes the stress of fighting your way around the supermarket remember it may replace it with another sort.