A tale of two shoppies (asda.co.uk)

Member Name: edinburgher

Product:	asda.co.uk
Date:	04/03/09 (318 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good product range, substitution price matching

Disadvantages: Awful, incompetent, rude drivers

The online offering from the leading supermarket chain Asda is a peculiar beast and seems to be highly divided between offering the best and the worst of everything, sometimes simultaneously. On paper it is a fantastic service and I will try and be honest when describing them. That said, I hope that my description of certain elements of their 'service' will have you running for the hills before you'd consider letting them deliver your weekly shop.

*Website and navigation*

www.asda.co.uk Is an attractive website with plenty of bright colours, a user-friendly appearance and a range of intuitive buttons and 'tiles' to aid navigation. The keyword searching for grocery items is pretty effective, although it is easy to become overwhelmed with the amount of products on offer. Unfortunately for most of us the website doesn't handle errors very well and it's far too common for my liking to lose the details of your basket mid-shop.

*Product range and price*

Asda are a leading discounter and sell a wide range of products - some at prices that other stores simply can't match. Many of these (particularly own brands) are very good products and are of comparable quality to the market-leading names. Simply put, there aren't many store that can afford to sell *anything* for 10p these days. Deep discounting, narrow margins and bulk sales would seem to be very much the order of the day. Almost everything needed for daily life is represented, although it can all seem a bit utilitarian at times. By this I mean that the luxuries can be a little lacking with Asda and ingredients for a special meal may be quite hard to track down with them. On these occasions, look to Sainsbury's or Waitrose to lead the field.

As a store Asda have started to offer less multibuy offers these days, but this is justified by supposed general price reductions in store.

*A tactical substitution*

Unique to the market, Asda offer a price match when they are forced to substitute goods in your trolley. This means, in theory, that you can get a bottle of Moet and Chandon priced at £25 (for example), for the same price as a generic non vintage champagne (£10) if said champagne is out of stock. Sorry for the somewhat silly product example, but it's a good indicator of the fact that it's possible to make some real savings thanks to this policy. In addition to this, sneaky/savvy consumers can often pick ranges that are always out of stock that are somewhat unusual in the hopes of getting more expensive alternatives. This can be something of a game and it's usually very easy to do with wine, or good cuts of meat from the butcher!

*Shoddy delivery*

Despite good prices and substitution price matching, Asda is let down by its universally crap delivery drivers (pardon my French). For those of us who don't drive, online shopping is a necessity rather than a luxury and a certain basic standard is required in the people who bring us our shopping. The exhaustive and demanding list of requirements expected would typically include:

1.Drivers should be able to find your house
2.Drivers should be on time, or should 'phone in plenty of time to make you aware of a delay
3.Drivers should be willing to bring you the shopping that you have requested, not 'meet you half way'.
4.Drivers should be vaguely polite

With Asda drivers I have never managed one of these points, God forbid all four. I shopped with Asda online for three months after moving down South and put up with a litany of lameness during the 12-15 times that I made use of the service.

Despite living in a small gated development visible from the main road, drivers could never find my clearly marked flat. They use sat nav and I really see no excuse for this in this day and age. Also, there was no way of sharing details between drivers. This meant that the drill of shouting directions over the 'phone to delivery drivers who often spoke very little English was repeated each and every time.

Our shopping was delivered late on roughly 2/3 of occasions, by as much as an hour. No driver ever called in advance to let us know that this would be the case until they were already running late. This interrupted various plans for Friday nights and was never apologised for. Customer services were not interested when we complained and letters and e-mails were ignored ritually.

Drivers would actively refuse to bring shopping up to our flat, despite the fact that there was a spacious lift that made the job incredibly easy. Excuse my ignorance, but isn't the delivery driver's job to bring you your shopping? It got to the stage where I'd open the door for them and refuse to offer any further assistance as they seemed to be taking liberties!

The staff we met were surly, disinterested and occasionally hostile. On one memorable occasion our driver *reeked* of cannabis. By this I don't mean that he had a background smoky scent about him - our flat stank like a student party after he left. As neither myself or my girlfriend smoke anything this was particularly offensive. We considered calling the police.

*In conclusion, inconclusive*

I'm giving online delivery from www.asda.co.uk two stars. While they have a good website and loads of bargains, our experiences with home delivery have been almost comically bad. We now shop with the vastly superior Sainsbury's and I find it a shame that Asda's delivery drivers let down their in store colleagues who are in my experience chirpy, helpful and polite.

Sorry to offer such a polarised opinion on the positives and negatives of shopping online with them, but I wanted to be honest.

Summary: Asda's strong product range is let down by its home delivery staff