A couple of important bits of info on the way their website works.
As with most online supermarkets, online shopping comes from staff picking your order in your local store, rather than from a central warehouse. Therefore, you are dependent on what is on the shelves when you order gets picked. Remember that fact, but it is not as simple as that. Their online shopping website does a stock-check when you place your order. This makes sense if you were shopping for same delivery but is daft when you are placing an order for a few days out. So unless it is available when you place your order AND available when they come to pick it, then you won't get it. That's OK because you can choose alternatives at the time of order which, fingers crossed, will be available when its picked. If something is not available at the time of picking then the ASDA employee will try to find a suitable substitution, so they at least know what you want when the pick it.
Now here is the really tricky bit you need to watch out for. If ordering a week in advance then there is a fair chance that you will want to tweak your order, to add in a few things you have run out of or remove things that you've got plenty of. BE VERY CAREFUL!. If you amend your ASDA order, it will do a stock check again - and all those carefully chosen items in your basket may now be out of stock. If they are out of stock and you confirm your amended order, the out of stock items will be removed from your shopping, so when your order comes to get picked they won't even know that you even wanted them in the first place and you most certainly won't get them.
The moral of this story:
- Do your utmost to select the right items when you make your original order and choose your own suitable replacements for items that are not available - then and there.
- If you want to amend or add to your order then weigh up whether you are better to go with what you already have or risk losing items already selected. You can do a what-if by clicking on Amend order and seeing what items are now out of stock. If those losses outweigh what you are planning to add in, then leave it and cancel out of the Amend process. There is a fair chance they will be in stock again when your order is picked.
- If you really need to amend your order, then take a note of what you are about to lose and then add in suitable alternatives before completing your order. This is VERY laborious so only if you have to.
Our first order arrived today. Here is the outcome:
- Arrived within the 1 hour delivery window specified. Excellent
- Items were brought to our door but were not bagged up. We had to remove them from the large trays they were packed in and bag them up to take into the kitchen. The ASDA website said they would be delivered in plastic bags. Also the delivery driver helped us to pack them into our bags so we were not necessarily 2 meters apart. However, it only took a few minutes and that was way less close contact than being in a supermarket
- Of 62 items ordered, 44 were exactly as ordered, 12 were substitutes and 6 unavailable
- Of the 12 substitutes, 10 were fine, 1 we can use but not great, 1 of no use so will give to a food bank.
- Of the 6 unavailable items, my wife deemed flour a necessity so made a quick trip the village shop and got some
. - Of the 6 unavailable items, I deemed the 12 pack of Cadbury Cream Eggs a necessity but Mrs C did not return from the village shop with any
- The milk had use-by dates of more than a week so pleased about that
- The fresh fruit was not that great. One of the pack of 4 lemons was mouldy, bananas a bit too ripe and bruised but OK.
- Online supermarket shopping has caused more arguments in our house than anything else for years. See below.
Mrs C likes to see what she is buying and to pick up what looks good at the time. She found it difficult to handle online food shopping and was very dubious about it. So when we started losing items that we had previously put in, you can imagine how that went down. And the process was laborious doing it together. I like to shop with a list, so that makes online quite easy. She prefers to wander round. Without a list, I was trying to go through the different categories methodically, whereas she would say "oh do they have [insert random item from another category]?" There must have been at least 6 occasions where she said that she'd just go out to the supermarket right now rather than stick with the online shopping.
Have we done the right thing? I hope so. It significantly cut down on contact with other people .... and was pretty close to cutting down on contact between us!
Clariman
