Be Excellent To Each Other

Or should that be 'off' the internet? Uh. No. Yes. Well. Aargh! *head starts hurting*

Back in those charming, hazy days back at Wo('Bistro' - bored Ed), there were chats about the different supermarkets, and other such companies who who you can order chips n' veg off, online.

I've ordered from Tesco in the past, who frequently brought me the wrong items, or ran out of stock. ASDA isn't middle-class enough for me. I've mentioned Ocado before, who are basically Waitrose, and who at the moment I am thinking I will probably order from. For Saturday. Exciting, eh?

But are there any others? If not, this will be a very short thread.

Well, there's Sainsburys.

I use Ocado. It's expensive, but it's good stuff. They also do 1-hour delivery slots, and charge you less for delivery if the driver will already be coming your way.

Sainsbury's are threatening to deliver stuff using electric vans, which is ace of them.

Sainsburys have online shopping?

Have had for years.

Ocado are excellent, to the point that we use them now for most of our grocery shopping. Even their drivers are unfailingly friendly and helpful (they'll phone if they're in the area before your booked slot and ask if it's ok to turn up early - if not, they'll wait around patiently until you're home/ready; they don't mind helping carry your shopping up two flights of stairs).

The one time I tried to use Tesco online, the server fucked up taking my payment, but not in a way that was apparent at the time. No one contacted me to let me know this had happened, and my order was cancelled without my knowledge. The first I realised this was when I phoned to ask where my shopping was, at which point I was told I should have been called. When I said I hadn't been called, I was basically accused of lying. I decided to stick with Ocado.

We tried Tescos once and they were rubbish. We waited in from 7pm - 10pm for our delivery, and then rang them at about 10,30 to ask "where the heck is our food?" We were then told that the driver was off sick, and no deliveries had been made at all that day. It never seemed to enter anyones mind that telling people that their timed delivery wouldn't be turning up. They were pretty rude on the phone to us as well.

They are, aren't they? When I phoned, they couldn't seem to grasp why I was pissed off that I'd come home from work on Saturday to find no shopping and that waiting until Monday was not really an acceptable solution.

I've never had a problem with Tesco. I am tempted to try Ocado, though.

Last time I used Tesco's online shop (a long time ago, so details may be sketchy), I nearly ordered 20Kg of mushrooms instead of 20 individual ones.

I would try Ocado, but Waitrose is literally half a mile away, and I'd die of shame for being so lazy.

It's not a case of being lazy. My local Tesco is fucking huge and it's a 3 minute drive. However, the actual act of shopping takes around an hour - probably more like an hour and a half to get there, park, shop, pay, come home, carry half the bags up to my floor, go back to the car and carry the rest. Doing it online takes about 15 minutes the first time you do it, then about three minutes after that, for an extra £5.
I'll say my time is worth more than £5 an hour, TBH.

True, but you don't get to rummage for the bread and cheese that has an extra day on the Best Before date. I imagine the short dated stuff is wheeled out on deliveries.

I'm going to sign up for online foods

There was a bit of a hoo-har (is this a word?) about that a while ago, that Sainsburys & co were using online deliveries to ship out stuff that expired THAT DAY.

I think an 'investigation' proved fruitless, but I think you're right. In the past we've had some milk that was due to go off the day before. When you buy 12 pints and expect it to last more than a week the idea of having to drink it all by tomorrow is... not good.

I always buy that Cravendale milk and try not to imagine what chemicals they put in it to make it last a month.

I don't get those Cravendale adverts - what can you take out of milk to make it purer? What can be removed from milk to make it more milky? It's already milk! That's as milky as it can get. By definition, anything you take out of the white stuff that comes from cows makes it less like milk, not more. It's crazyness, I say!

On a semi-related note, does anyone use/know about Hungry House?

It's not entirely shit. It was on Dragon's Den and the concept is that there's this single online site which you can order all your takeaways from. They take the order and charge via card (and there are nifty features such beign able to sort your bill by person, etc) and then the takeaway comes and delivers it. You also have a record of what you ordered in case they mess it up.

The downside is that there aren't enough decent places on the system as yet, and also that you miss out on some 'special offers'. Like the local pizza place does 2 pizzas for X amount deals, which aren't listed online, thus making ordering pizza in that fashion tremendously pointless.

We've had a few decent curries though, and it does give you menus for some places you won't have used before.

Has anyone else tried or looked at it? There's definite potential there, but they just need to get the better takeaways on to it, and, like, advertise.

I don't know - but I buy Cravendale and it does indeed keep a hell of a lot longer and tastes nice, too.

Asda bought our shopping around the other day and I estimate that well over half of the fresh produce was due to run out the next day, so I had to freeze it all down.

Also, I once ordered some yoghurt which wasn't in stick. they were good enough to bring a replacement product. not a replacement yoghurt, as you might expect, but some butter.

"Sorry, but we have no restaurants serving <anywhere in the Ipswich area...at all...> just yet."

Nice idea, but I can't see it taking off.

Curiosity, it's not the first, won't be the last. I have sometimes used meal2go.com, from which I can order nasty cheap pizza from 3 places near me, using Paypal / credit cards.

True, but it was the only one on BBC television's extremely popular reality series, "Dragons' Den".

I know. Just calming you down before you go and tell your folks, and they're all like 'Duhhh! It's hardly an e-commerce breakthrough! God, when are you going back home again? The wrong identical twin survived.'

It's just filtered better to remove bacteria. So rather than have it go off when the bacteria do bacterial things, it has to get in and then do bacterial things, thus giving you a little longer.

Fair enough, that makes sense. Doesn't that just make it like UHT though? Anyway, the bacteria gives it flavour. Hmmm, Streptococcus bovis, my favourite.

UHT isn't to do with filtering though, is it? I thought it was just heating the milk to an Ultra High Temperature...

UHT tastes nothing like 'proper' milk to me, though - it has some kind of sweetness to it.

My experience of online shopping with both Sainsbury's and Asda was mostly "I'm sorry, we didn't have any stock of OVEN CHIPS so we have instead subsituted OVEN CLEANER."

Perhaps I should try Ocado. The only times I've been in a Waitrose store it was really expensive though.

It's about killing bacteria by taking it up to, as you say, an Ultra High Temperature. As opposed to Cravendale with removes bacteria with filtery type stuff. Same goal, different method. And I agree, UHT tastes like skank-me-do.

They don't want any old rifraff shopping in there.

A friend of our family has done a fair bit of retail work in her time, including waitressing, and has spent time behind the tills in Waitrose. She said without question Waitrose was the worst because whenever anything went wrong the customers where just horrible to her. Incredibly rude and condescending.

they don't want any old rifraff working there.

You don't need etiquette and gentility to have money. Just look at Grim...

Ah, but I'm a grafter. That's the new new money.

We use Waitrose
Used to use Tesco but the site sucks balls.

Abel and Cole! Or some other kind of local box scheme. I get my happies (and my food) from it anyway.

If I was to use an online site, I would not order anything fresh from there, as I like to select my own fruit, bread, meat, fish, whatever. But I wouldn't mind them delliving canned/frozen/cleaning/other stuff that doesn't go off. But I don't like the idea of paying more for it (although I guess the petrol money probably amounts to the same thing give or take)

Malc

Abel & Cole bring me my vegetables. They're very good.

Indeed. Also, it's handy if you're a non-driver, and would probably spend more on the taxi home with your shopping than the delivery charge. (Assuming you're buying more than you'd want to take on a bus, obviously.)

I've genuinely not noticed this to be the case with Ocado, but haven't actually gone to the trouble of checking what turns up against what's available in an actual shop that day or anything.

Well it's self evident that minwage boy is just going to grab the first one there rather than rummage, even if he's not actively looking for short dates.

That's fair enough. It would be silly to get your stuff delivered and then high-tail it in your household's fastest carriage to the store to check up on them.

Coutner-point: minwage boy is in the warehouse which, unless the supermarket's stock management is pissed, is going to have the newest stock, certainly newer than the stuff on the shelves. Which may suggest that where supermarkets have sent out near-to-expired stuff for online shopping orders they've actually gone to some lengths to do so.

My sister works at Waitrose (somewhere near Stevenage, I assume, as that's where she lives), working as as the Head Chef. Waitrose, she says, is a terribly unfriendly work environment, as is John lewis. I, myself, have had a run-in with someone at John Lewis who told me to 'run along now, little girl' last year.

Anyway, If you work at Waitrose you get a staff discount, which you can use in any Waitrose or John Lewis (I think slightly less of a discount in John Lewis). When doing the shopping, if she is with her partner (they are not married) then they will only give her the discount off of HALF their shopping, as he will be using half of it - if they were married, however, then they could get the full discount. This means that she has to shop alone or he has to scuttle off whilst she goes to the tills, and has to wait in the car.

I was with her in john Lewis in brent Cross once where she used her staff discount and the woman was so unbelieveably rude. She asked no less than eight times if the goods were for her, pointed at me and said 'because you can't use it it buy things for her, you know' and when it came to filling out the discount slip, held it aloft and said 'what's that supposed to say? Why have you written some kind of code where your surname is supposed to be. What does that code mean?, 'H O Y?'. My sister, a bit wound up by now 'that's my name!' to which the woman replied 'your surname .... is... HOY?!'. I had to stand on Lucie's foot to stop her from completely losing her rag.

They can't have any old rifraff...

Hmm,

My Brother used to work for Peter Jones (The sloane square branch of John Lewis) and never had any issues, and one of my friends mum used to work at waitrose and she was always singing it's praise. I guess it must depend on which branch you go to.

Malc

That's just it, though, she's been to a few branches and they've all been arses (the Brent Cross one I can testify to).

With Sainsburys any items with a shorter than average shelf-life are popped in a blue bag (along with any substitions) and you can reject them if you want, they take it back and refund you.

A lot of places that can be viewed as a step up the class ladder can be a nightmare to work in.
However the produce is often far superior, and I do love shopping in Waitrose.
Actually I should rephrase that...I love the goods from waitrose. I often have to put my own heirs on to deal with snotty people who think they are higher class than myself.
Websites ftw.

Got online shops from Sinsbury's about three times. The first two times, they were over half an hour late, so we got a tenner back each time. After a third more punctual delivery, we are £15 to the good, and we've cut our losses

I go here, useful for anyone in CArdiff, they are brilliant for veg boxes, try a small organic box for £10.50 with 30% fruit, we never manage to eat it all and the food is seasonal and sourced as locally as possible so you never quite know what you'll get and thing sI avoid like Spinach and Celeriac are fast becoming things I'll factor in to my meals, as that's what I've ended up with and paid a decent whack for. Can't fault it.

http://www.greencuisineorganics.net/

A step up? I shop at Waitrose because Fortnums won't deliver