Standout service from Sainsbury's (sainsburys.co.uk)

Member Name: edinburgher

Product:	sainsburys.co.uk
Date:	21/02/09 (262 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use website, good product range, great delivery drivers

Disadvantages: Slightly dearer than the competition

My girlfriend and I have been living in London for almost nine months now and as neither of us drive, home delivery grocery shopping is the only realistic option for both of us. In theory we could walk to the supermarket, but having our groceries sharing a delivery van with a few dozen other people's would seem to be an environmentally friendly happy medium.

We were flat broke for the first few months we spent here (my girlfriend didn't get a job straight away) and as a result, Asda was our first port of call. This turned out to be a big mistake and after several months of rudeness, general ineptitude and one (apparently) stoned driver, we decided to call it a day.

Now in our second month of shopping with Sainsbury's online, the difference is night and day. The shopping portal, accessed from www.sainsburys.co.uk is highly intuitive, easy to navigate and makes getting your hands on offers and all your regular shopping easy as pie.

It all starts with booking a delivery slot, which is held for a generous amount of time compared to competitors (the Asda website times out after about half an hour). Delivery prices range from £0 (when you spend a lot of money mid-week), to the more common £5.50 region. While this may sound dear, it's cheaper than two return bus tickets and we can easily justify this. There is a minimum spend (~£25) and the delivery price is dearer if you spend less than £40. That said, it's not hard to spend £40 on food these days, so most people needn't worry. Another good thing about their delivery slots are the fact that they're one hour slots, making it far easier to plan your evenings.

Finding the desired products is easy, and the website allows for keyword searching, browsing by aisles, or seperation of offers from the rest of the stock. There are good quality pictures for most products and it's easy to jump between sections. Also, the website handles errors well. For example, if the page crashes you can re-load it and 99% of the time your cart will have been saved.

While the stock range is perhaps not quite as epic for the basics as Asda or Tesco, almost anything the regular shopper would need is represented. In addition to this, Sainsbury's tend to do ridiculously large ranges of slightly less common goods (10 types of houmous, anyone?) This is good for foodies. They do a good range of own brand products (Basics), but the average spend is perhaps slightly dearer than the competitors. Based on a £50-60/week spend, I'd say that Sainsbury's is roughly £5 dearer. I don't think this is the end of the world.

Checking out is easy and your card details are stored securely for later use. It's easy to register your Nectar card (www.nectar.com) to collect points with Sainsbury's and mine have shot up of late! Also, there are often bonus points to be had (for example, 150 extra points for using the link from www.nectar.com until the end of April). It's a good way to save up for something special and I'm hoping to use my points for a dirt cheap flight to the US in the next year.

Delivery is invariably punctual (they've actually called me as they were early on two occasions!) In our house, the shopping delivery on Friday highlights the arrival of dinner and wine, so this is much appreciated. Drivers are alert, vaguely friendly and happy to wait while you check substitutes. The driver for the most recent delivery even insisted that I check that our eggs weren't bashed). With Asda, we were called more often than not because the drivers were lost and carying the groceries to and from the lift (an easy job), seemed to be a hideous inconvenience!

Unlike the previous reviewer, we get quite a few substitutions, as our local store isn't huge. That said, they are usually fairly sensible and the drivers don't hassle you to sign off on the delivery slip until you are satisfied. Being Sainsbury's, the substitutions are dearer more often than not and this makes it worth checking them carefully. One example would be a meat joint (0.6 Kg requested) being replaced with one weighing in at 1.4 Kg - far too much for two! You can, however, opt-out of substitutions down to the individual product level (unlike Asda et all). I miss the substitution price match offered by Asda, but not the frequent substitutions with inferior versions that they seemed to be fond of!

So:

1. Slightly dearer
2. Sensible delivery slots
3. Good website with plenty of options, easy to use and good range of products
4. Decent offers and Nectar points
5. Easy checkout
6. Efficient and polite delivery

You get what you pay for - I'm very pleased with the service and have no problems recommending them to you all.

Summary: Sainsbury's home delivery service is second to none