The home shopping secret: Second time not the charm

About a week ago I posted about my first experience using our local grocery store "Home Shop" or online shopping.  At the time I wrote that post, I was in the process of building up my "cart" doing home shopping for a second time.  I have some new experiences to share as a result of this second time around.

1) It still took a long time to do the home shop.  I was hoping that some of my standard things already being in my "online list" would help quicken things up.  However, since I'm a sale shopper I perused our weekly mailer to find the good deals and then had to add all of them to my cart, and some of them were not easy to find online either.  I didn't time myself, but I'm sure it took me longer than one hour to do my home shop, and that's about how long it takes me to shop in the store, so aside from being able to do it while the kids slept and saving me time getting to/from the store (and hauling the kids with me), it may not be that much of a time saver.  

Perhaps I should make a "shopping list" in my account of the truly basic things we buy pretty much every week, so that's an easy and quick standard addition to my shopping cart, but then break down other items into smaller lists (breakfast foods, baby stuff, etc) so that if we need one of those categories of things we normally buy I can find it more quickly?  It's still a work in progress I guess…which is also why I really won't be doing this every week yet, but just when it is most handy for me.

2) I really wish they could use reuseable bags.  The first time I got heaps of plastic bags!  And so the second time I asked for paper as one of my final comments on my order (planning then to at least recycle the paper bags)…however they didn't read that comment I guess because I still got heaps of plastic bags.  I think I'm set for small trash can liners for the next year!

3) The lack of them reading my comments leads me into my final note about my second time with the home shop…in short, it was a mess.  They were really busy that day I guess, and they tried using different people to do the shopping versus those that rang things in versus those that did the delivery.  My first time I had the same person handle it all, and he called me to clarify things.  In this second time, I specifically asked them to call me about a few of the items that I couldn't find, but wanted something similar, and yet they never called at all.  They arrived near the end of my 2-hour delivery window and had several things screwed up.

a.  They brought me the wrong paper towels (I ordered select-a-size, and they got me regular size, and overcharged me by ringing in the wrong higher priced item that also then made it so my order didn't qualify for a "buy at least six participating items discount" (I had selected exactly six of those random items to get that extra discount!).  So that one mistake snowballed into three things that had to be fixed!

b. I had made a minor change to my order that morning at 9am (removed one item, added two others)…since the rules say your order has to be placed by 9:30am I thought that was okay and online it allowed me to edit my cart at that time.  However, I still received the item I had removed, but oddly enough I also received one of the two items I had added, and yet I was charged for both of the two items I'd added!?  I have no idea how they messed that up, but the delivery guy went back and exchanged the wrong items for me (however he brought back another wrong thing actually and since I hadn't noticed my paper towels were also wrong before he left, I didn't bother telling him and I just went into the store the next morning to exchange those things myself).

c.  They didn't waive my delivery fee even though my order was over $100.  Turns out, even though I interpreted the website to say that orders over $100 are free delivery, that's only on beer and wine orders (if you look closely how the website is laid out this could be the case, but it's awfully misleading).  They credited that for me, but clarified to me that will not be the case in the future.

d.  There were another few things that they took liberty of changing for me since they were out of stock of what I wanted (i.e. I wanted 5 jars of each flavor of baby food I selected, but they swapped a few for me and/or only gave me 3 or 4).  My order specifically says no substitutions without them calling me, but that was one of the items I had noted they should call me for (I don't feed Emma every flavor yet!!).  Either way, that worked out because all the ones they chose she eats, but that was just one more annoying thing.

Bottom line: they should have called me and some of those things could have been cleared up on the phone before they drove to my house.

I really don't like being put in situations where I have to tell someone they did something wrong. I don't want to be that annoying customer that points out all the problems.  But when it comes to my groceries and things like that, I am pretty particular and I couldn't help the fact that there were so many mistakes! Granted, they graciously exchanged the items (though I felt horrible for him having to drive back to the store and come back to my house, thus why I didn't have it in me to tell him he got the wrong kind again…) and they also credited my account where needed, but the hassle and the awkwardness were not feelings I want to have happen on a regular basis.  Therefore, right now I have a somewhat bad taste in my mouth for the home shopping experience, and may not try it again for awhile.  Or maybe I'll give Walmart home shop a chance in the meantime?