Tesco online groceries - any complaints, suggestions etc for improvement (to be forwarded to Tesco)

Doc_N

As a family, we've been shopping online with Tesco for a long time now, and what I've learned is that although they always claim to listen to customers to make the shopping experience better, they actually don't.  They just carry on as before with existing systems, even though they admit they don't work.

The idea of this thread is to allow customers the chance to express their views in one place, in the hope that Tesco, when presented with it, will pick out common issues that are aggravating customers - and do something about it.  All of these points have been raised with Tesco and they always say they’ll improve – but they never do.  If there are common themes in this thread maybe they’ll listen.

Here are my complaints/suggestions:

1 Eggs – it’s now the only supermarket that makes ordering 24 eggs almost impossible. Limit is three boxes of 6 or 12, but it’s very rarely that there are any 12s in stock to order. No other online supermarket makes it so difficult to buy eggs now – so presumably Tesco are in dispute with their suppliers, and the customers just have to do without.

2 The ordering system is plain crazy.  If an item goes temporarily out of stock at any point between starting the order and the cut-off point for changes it’s removed from the order if you make any changes.  Even if it’s a common item like eggs delivered to stores every day (particularly eggs actually, because they’re always going out of stock) and the order is a week away.  So if you really need some eggs in the order, you can’t add to or subtract anything from that order for several days, right up to the day of delivery.  This must actually cost Tesco money, because you can’t add any items without losing the one that’s currently out of stock – even though you know perfectly well, as do Tesco, that it will be in stock on the day of delivery because it’s delivered daily to the store.

3 Aldi Price Match items are usually of poorer quality than the Aldi items they claim to match. The Tesco Price Match fruit is inferior in quality, and very obviously so, and the non-fresh items contain inferior ingredients.

4 Tesco claim that their pickers choose the best quality produce, with the longest dates. The actuality is very different – what arrives is frequently damaged and short-dated, often actually on its Best Before date.  The staff doing the picking just aren’t given the time to do a quality job, so customers end up with the stuff that store customers have rejected.

PLRFD

I’m torn between the pickers don’t have time to do a  quality job and the pickers just don’t give a damn.

millie

Asda have the same ordering system with out of stock items and adding to the order. Unless I was desperate for the added item I would not bother after seeing how many things they wanted to throw off. Most of the items that were being throw off would be back in stock by delivery day.

I do agree also that the pickers do not have time to sort through the dates they just grab what is on top. I have given up online shopping now because I got fed up of the fruit being delivered that was clearly old and damaged. You can not complain about the dates now because they have been removed, but if you know how the codes work you can see that it is very short date or even out of date. In the past they would refund short dated items but as there is technically no date on there they get away with it

Doc_N

millie said:

Asda have the same ordering system with out of stock items and adding to the order. Unless I was desperate for the added item I would not bother after seeing how many things they wanted to throw off. Most of the items that were being throw off would be back in stock by delivery day.

I do agree also that the pickers do not have time to sort through the dates they just grab what is on top. I have given up online shopping now because I got fed up of the fruit being delivered that was clearly old and damaged. You can not complain about the dates now because they have been removed, but if you know how the codes work you can see that it is very short date or even out of date. In the past they would refund short dated items but as there is technically no date on there they get away with it

That’s interesting re Asda. It seems such a crazy system, because it actually prevents a lot of customers from increasing the size of their orders.

It’s hacked us off to such an extent now that we’re doing Aldi click and collect for lower prices and better quality than Tesco, with occasional Ocados for better reliability on orders.

sarah1972

Doc_N said:

1 Eggs – it’s now the only supermarket that makes ordering 24 eggs almost impossible. Limit is three boxes of 6 or 12, but it’s very rarely that there are any 12s in stock to order. No other online supermarket makes it so difficult to buy eggs now – so presumably Tesco are in dispute with their suppliers, and the customers just have to do without.

2 The ordering system is plain crazy.  If an item goes temporarily out of stock at any point between starting the order and the cut-off point for changes it’s removed from the order if you make any changes.  Even if it’s a common item like eggs delivered to stores every day (particularly eggs actually, because they’re always going out of stock) and the order is a week away.  So if you really need some eggs in the order, you can’t add to or subtract anything from that order for several days, right up to the day of delivery.  This must actually cost Tesco money, because you can’t add any items without losing the one that’s currently out of stock – even though you know perfectly well, as do Tesco, that it will be in stock on the day of delivery because it’s delivered daily to the store.

3 Aldi Price Match items are usually of poorer quality than the Aldi items they claim to match. The Tesco Price Match fruit is inferior in quality, and very obviously so, and the non-fresh items contain inferior ingredients.

4 Tesco claim that their pickers choose the best quality produce, with the longest dates. The actuality is very different – what arrives is frequently damaged and short-dated, often actually on its Best Before date.  The staff doing the picking just aren’t given the time to do a quality job, so customers end up with the stuff that store customers have rejected.

Points 1, 2 and 4 all apply to Asda too. It’s also definitely not the only supermarket that makes ordering eggs impossible, been out of stock or not delivered for the last 2 months. 

Doc_N

Interesting comments so far, suggesting that Asda is as bad as Tesco on most of these issues. Ocado and Waitrose seem problem-free and Aldi hasn’t let us down either. Any views on the others?

millie

My daughter in law uses Morrisons. The good bit is that the minimum order is £25. THe thing she does not like is, she has her order delivered on Thursday and the cut off time for changes is Tuesday 5.00pm. They live in London not sure its the same for other locations.

MalMonroe

We used Tesco for a few years until their delivery drivers started to become very stroppy and rude. For no apparent reason. Complaints we made fell on deaf ears. We switched to Sainsbury's where we're fairly happy with the service. There are some delivery drivers who look as if they could be stroppy but they don't say anything, not like the obnoxious Tesco delivery drivers. I know it's not a very nice job and I'd hate to have to do it but most supermarkets offer you the earth and that's not always what you receive.

So that would be my complaint - rude delivery personnel. I know other people who've also had rude drivers and left Tesco because of them - Tesco need to train their deliverers better and pay them well, too. We do understand that it's a very physically demanding and thankless job sometimes. Even though we do always thank them profusely. One or two grumpy drivers wouldn't have fazed us but more than that, we'd had enough. 

Mnoee

I swapped from Tesco to Sainsbury's at the start of the year. I much prefer Sainsbury's - they give me offers/vouchers for things I actually buy, money off online shops (one so far of £7 off £70, fairly significant discount!), plus I can spend giftcards online so get cashback from topgiftcards every week. This means they're cheaper too. I mostly buy budget stuff, but the odd time I do want something exotic or fancy as a treat, there's a much better selection at Sainsburys. 

One thing Tesco gets right is that you can write a note for the pickers - whether they actually pay attention to it is another matter. I've found Sainsbury's subs on a whole are less silly - Tesco kept subbing orange juice when I'd bought apple juice despite the note, Sainsbury’s just give me a different apple juice without any prompting. 

Tesco make it pretty difficult to buy loose products. It's impossible to buy 500g of mushrooms, as an example. When I stopped using them there was a limit of 20 of each item. That's 20 individual mushrooms. Writing 'About 500g please' lead to... 20 mushrooms, weighing around 200g. Then combine that with their item limit (was as low as 80, up to 135 last I checked?) and it's possible to run through your limit just stocking up on some veg. I did contact them about this, they got me to try on the website (which meant using private browsing as if I go to tesco.com on my tablet with the app installed it just opens the app), which does allow you to select a weight... Which coincide with the weights of 1-20 mushrooms and they're still counted as 20 items. 

Sainsbury's handle that a bit better - the choice of per item, or increments of 500g. They have absolutely no problems delivering a whole kilo of mushrooms to me when I need them, and don't have any sort of item limit that I've come across. I'm well aware there's many packaged mushroom options, but my cats much prefer playing with paper bags to plastic trays, so well done Sainsburys! 

Edited to add one more thing - with Tesco you have to manually check the dates offers are valid to for every item. With Sainsburys it only shows offers valid in your delivery slot. As well as being more user friendly, this is particularly handy if I'm stocking up the dry store - I can see if something is going on offer next week and know to hold off. Hopefully the new nectar prices doesn't change this. 

Stompa

I swapped from Asda to Tesco a short while ago (only 4 deliveries so far), but Tesco seems to be a much slicker operation to me.

The Tesco website seems a bit slower than Asda's but less buggy.

When amending an order with Asda I'd frequently find that some of my items had become unavailable, that's not happened so far with Tesco.

On average 8% of my items from Asda were substituted, and 2% were unavailable. For Tesco the figure so far is 1% substitutions and 1% unavailable. I wonder if that may partly be due to the fact that our Tesco deliveries come from one of their urban fulfilment centres, with robot pickers.

I probably used to get out of date or short date items from Asda every other delivery, none so far with Tesco. Though given that Asda would always give a refund (so you got the item for free) perhaps that should be considered a plus point for Asda!

Asda charge you the day before your delivery, meaning that you have to wait a few days for a refund for unavailable items etc. Tesco appear to bill you the correct amount on delivery day.

Tesco delivery tracking seems to work really well, with Asda it was absolutely hopeless.

RoadToRiches

Tesco have constantly delivered goods that are short dated. A call to them and they refund it. Good I hear you say but…

Because of number of items claimed as a refund they said they will audit the shopping. Great I thought now I will get some decent dates. No still dates are short they highlighted it short so I accepted them then on Wednesday this week they delivered a number of items that were short dated that they did not mention on the receipt.

Due to not feeling well on the day, stressed about taking care of mom and dad, they are not well too, and dad had a fall on Saturday to top it all off, I found two pies dated next day so pointed this out to driver who said I could keep them after he took photo. I mentioned I did not check everything, but he drove off anyway.

I then find most of the fruit and tomatoes outside of guaranteed dates so I phone up and they agree a refund. I take photos of the short dated items.

Next someone from the store calls leaves a garbled voice mail. I call them back they say they are no longer going to accept my orders !!!! None of this is my fault. They delivered short dated stuff so I’m going to call them and tell them about it.

I chatted on what’s app today after that call and sent photos of short dated items they said were in date. I had a feeling something like this was going to happen.

Now we have a delivery saver agreement for another 12 months and cannot get deliveries cause they only deliver from that store, which is not even the nearest superstore to me. Also I have number of vouchers for Christmas saver.

I have 83 year old parents reliant on deliveries dad has lost his sight in one eye after he fell and banged his head, mom forgets everything we say to her every 5 minutes and I suspect Alzheimer's.  They won’t go doctors though, and I have had to give up work and live off my savings and dads pension cause we cannot claim any benefits or carers allowance. I’m not in best of health myself either. We are effectively housebound are reliant on these home deliveries.

Right now I am really annoyed at Tesco, I spent most of the day today trying to get this sorted out with no luck whatsoever.