Tesco Aldershot Home Shopping (tesco.com)

Member Name: houndour

Product:	tesco.com
Date:	02/11/09 (43 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Simply not having to leave the house - great for people who work.

Disadvantages: You can't choose your meat - so it's a bit of a gamble sometimes

This is a review for Aldershot Home shopping.

I've been getting online shops about once every 3 to 4 weeks for over a year.

Website
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The search engine is pretty good. I assume the odd thing it cannot find is because my store doesn't stock it.

Any offers are labelled really clearly and if you click on the offer it pops up with a box containing the other products related to the deal.

The prices are labelled clearly with a converted price per 100g or kilo to supposedly make comparisons easier, but sometimes they are done differently.

On some items it has a link to display cheaper versions, so for example if you were on Heinz Ketchup and clicked on it, it might show you Tesco Value and Tesco own ketchup as an alternative to save a few pennies.

If your internet connection is a bit slower, you can turn off images.

The bit I like best is the My Favourites section. You can browse through all the usual items you buy making it very quick to do a shop. Also if you buy things in store and use your clubcard, you will see these items come up on the favourites list too.

There is also an option to add a note, or to specify a substitution of your choice. I add notes to my bananas (want the green ones) and they deliver. But they did ignore my request to have a bloomer sliced at the Bakery. The note part is also very limited (30 characters) - it really needs to be longer. Even 50 characters would make all the difference for me. It also remembers your notes from previous shops, so you don't have to retype them.

Delivery Costs
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Delivery charges range from £3 to £6 depending on what day and time you pick.

Delivery
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You get to pick a 2 hour time slot for your delivery. This isn't as good as Sainsburys which was a 1 hour time slot when I shopped there. I've not had a delivery late before, although I had one early but the man called first and it turned out to be more convenient for me.

Fresh foods (meat, vegetables, bread from bakery)
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I do risk it occasionally and get fresh meat etc on the home shop. Mostly they do alright and pick a decent enough bit of meat to satisfy me. When you select these sorts of items, there is usually a drop down selection of different weights and the approximate cost. 9 times out of 10 they take note of this and my comments (e.g. I put green bananas in the comments for bananas and I do usually get green ones), but on my last shop they failed a bit with some lamb I ordered. I had selected 2 half legs of lamb at the £5 price bracket and they brought 2 half legs at £10 each! I felt there should have been a note on the order highlighting this, but there wasn't and I didn't notice until later. Luckily a different store gave me a refund. This is my only problem I've had so far with Aldershot.

Substitutions
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I have online shopped with Sainsburys and Tesco at other locations throughout the years and had some odd substitutions in my time. But I must praise Aldershot here as they have come up with perfect substitutions everytime.

New Price Match policy
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Tesco have a new policy where if your item isn't in stock they will offer the substitution at the same price of your out of stock item. This is brilliant for me as I do buy a lot of value things and usually end up having to reject their substitutions as they would ruin my budget. But now I get the item anyway but the next brand up.

No bag policy
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Tesco have an option to gain extra clubcard points for if you request not to have bags with your delivery. I think this is a nice idea, however they give 1 point per bag and sometimes I feel the number of bags they estimate is a bit under.

The other annoying thing is they end up using about 5 bags anyway, as they put each substitution in a blue bag. They sometimes put raw meat in a bag on it's own and liquids in bags. I can see their logic in a way, but I'm not sure why they can't have trays designed for leakages. The bags have holes in so surely they would leak a bit anyway?

Vouchers and Staff Discounts
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You can use Tesco vouchers on this site. I'm not fortunate to get any by email or in my clubcard statements.

Also for staff out there, if you enter the clubcard details of a staff member it automatically takes the staff discount off.

Returns
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Returns are very simple if you check the shopping as you get it. You can reject any item you like and you get the refund on your card within a few days. I once returned about £30 worth of beer when I told the delivery man I had seen the same beer at another store for £15 - he told me he could take it back and get it refunded!

Changing an existing order
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I often have the need to add things or remove things to my order and it is very simple to do and the order can be changed up till about 4am of the delivery day.

Annoyingly you cannot add a voucher code to an existing order. This was extremely annoying as I once got a £10 off voucher to use and the only way to do it was to delete my order and redo it! If anyone knows any different let me know, please :)

Summary: Easy to use webiste, good features, makes shopping a doddle.