The best wines money can buy! Cheap at Tesco

DocProc

Here goes with an order for

6 bots x Geoff Merrill Reserve Shiraz 75cl £13.99 £2.63
4 bots x Villa Cafaggio Chianti Classico 75cl £ 9.99 £2.03
4 bots x Chateauneuf Du Pape Gonnet Freres 75cl £16.99 £3.44
6 bots x Pouilly Fume De Ladoucette 75cl £16.99 £3.44
4 bots x Chateau Taillefer 75cl £18.99 £3.85

With the wine costing £369.76, together with my £4.75 cost for the delivery slot, this totals £374.51.

There's a little box on the order summary. It says

"Important message This is a guide price only. Product prices may change in store between now and when your order is delivered."

Let's see what happens.....

codger

To anyone on MSE brave enough to follow up any recommendation of Tesco's online wine sales:

1) Tesco has no central warehouse for wine stocks. As such it is the only major online wine retailer in the UK which can't be bothered to fund a central supply depot and so is the only major online retailer which has absolutely no idea what are the up-to-the-minute stock levels of the "product" it has promised to provide.

2) Though Tesco cannot be bothered to fund a central depot / stock control system, it can be bothered to take your online order very quickly. It can even be bothered to offer you a choice of delivery dates and delivery times, thus giving every appearance of (a) having in stock that which you've ordered and (b) having entered into a legal contract to deliver to you that stock at the agreed time and date.

3) Of course, you may well receive your order in full and on time. If so, it is likely to be by a flying pig. Not a Tesco van.

4) This is because after you have placed your order, and stipulated your delivery time / delivery date, the following activity occurs at Tesco in the processing of your order:

nothing at all

5) The reason why nothing at all occurs is because Tesco -- which is obviously hard up for cash -- has no systems for progressing your order due to no expensive warehousing to stock customer orders.

6) What Tesco does have is a sort of "personal shopper" who will scurry around the shelves of your local store within two hours of the appointed time on the appointed delivery date in hope of finding that what you ordered a week earlier from an online site is still there (assuming, it ever was) on the shelf of a real-world site.

7) The chances of this are slim.

8) Actually, the chances of 100% order fulfilment are well-nigh non-existent. This is because the Tesco system would, if mirrored by, for example, Amazon UK, result in you ordering a book from Amazon, waiting a week for delivery, and then not getting the book at all because your local branch of Waterstone's flogged the last one two days earlier.

9) Unless your local Tesco Real World store has taken the trouble to advise Tesco Wine online that various wines are out of stock -- and no, not all stores have the time or inclination to do so -- then Tesco Wine online won't actually know that your order, in whole or in part, isn't available at the time Tesco Real World is supposed to deliver it. So because Tesco Wine online doesn't know, it can't tell you, either.

9) As a result, your order may then not turn up at all, so regardless of all the hoopla about delivery day, delivery time, you'll just sit around wondering where it's gone to, or, worse. . .

10) You'll receive a partial delivery which could be so partial that, by the time you've factored in the price of the delivery charge, your order wasn't worth placing anyway: you've saved nothing and very likely paid out a lot more.

So. . .

By all means, go ahead and buy wine online at Tesco.

While you're at it, buy a National Lottery ticket online, too.

The outcome of both is equally uncertain -- though at least with the Lottery, you don't have to pay an additional cost for not winning.

blackanchorage

On-line shopping in my area is no longer done in store, it uses a warehouse, probably this one http://www.itpro.co.uk/information-management/news/124280/retail-it-summit-tescocom-keeps-pace-with-growth.html

You can order for next day delivery, reducing the risk of stuff being out of stock.

Agreed, you have to risk £5...

Regards

codger

Well I guess that's some sort of improvement. . . but if it's not applicable nationwide, then I still think Tesco is conning people by offering a service that it knows to be fundamentally flawed.

We had a bad experience of Tesco online wines ourselves and only became aware of just what tesco does, and does not, after Tesco actually told us about it. When we asked why Tesco wasn't making it clear on its website that:

Your Order Is Conditional Upon It Being Available At Time of Delivery: We Cannot Guarantee Delivery Because We Don't Know Any More Than You Do

Tesco took the view that such would not be helpful.

When we asked Tesco's then Director of IT Commerce what he thought he was being paid for, he didn't reply and turned up a few months later in California, heading up Tesco's assault on the US mom 'n pop neighbourhood stores market.

Hopefully it won't involve setting up an ecommerce division for wine sales.

betheebee

melandtony wrote: »

Marques De Leon White Wine 75cl £2.08

is this reduced ??

This paint stripper (Marques De Lion) is over priced, in fact they would be charging way to much at £1.00 a bottle, it is awfull stuff, mind you it does clean the oven but take care not to leave it on to long as it will take the enamel off.

bargainlover2006

None in Ilford.

DocProc

See my post #42 above:

With the wine costing £369.76, together with my £4.75 cost for the delivery slot, this totals £374.51.

Well! What a fiasco!

Actually, you've just got to laugh about how bad this experience really was, because it just beggars belief!

"Ding dong! "

My wife opens the door.

"Hi. I've got your order from Tesco. Sorry, but there's 6 bottles short because they are out of stock and 1 bottle is missing because it got broken in the van."

"Oh dear."

By now, I think you'll begin to get the idea. However.....

The bottles had apparently been placed in 'laid down fashion' loose on the bottoms of 4 ventilated green plastic delivery stacker crates. These crates are about 750L x 500W x 300H and are in racks, stacked one on top of the other, in the van.

Obviously, the bottles had rolled around in the bottoms of their crates. One crate only had 3 bottles in it. I'm not sure whether or not this was the crate that had the broken bottle in it but the red wine contents had spilled through the ventilation holes onto other crates below. Probably, the broken bottle crate was an intermediate one for our order, but anyway, the wine had spilled onto several of our labels, thereby spoiling them and had also spoiled other customers' shopping in crates below.

One bottle actually had mud on it! Well it looked like mud. ????? Lots of things look like mud so I hope it was mud.

Another two bottles had sticky labels, about 100W x 60H in size, carrying the information pertinent to our Order Number, and these partially covered the wine bottle labels, thereby aesthetically ruining them for the table. My wife tried to partially peel one of them off to see if would have totally come off cleanly later. Negative! The bottles' labels were definitely spoiled for good!

About four other bottles had damaged labels from either broken glass or their dousing with red wine from the broken bottle in the van crate above.

Well! But moving on....

No discounts! Everything was Full Price.

With the missing bottles due to the incomplete order, the total was £271.52. Of course, this excluded the broke bottle, which would have required some additional credit.

Cost of products and pre-promotions: £280.82
Service charge: £4.75
Promotion saving: - £14.05 (Wine discount)

After a brief conflab with each other, we decided to cut out all and any of our hassle and just refuse to accept the delivery in its entirety.

Naturally, we kept the '5p per litre off fuel' voucher, which accompanied the paperwork.

No doubt the credit card will be refunded by Tesco sometime in the future. It had better be!

Anyhow, we had a go. I suppose with these kind of things, it's a case of, "No guts - No glory!" as Christopher Dean told Greg Rusedski on 'Dancing On Ice' on Sunday night.

Great fun though. All the anticipation and stuff. Pity really.

MoaningMyrtle

Out tesco delivery service is done from a store, but not the one nearest here, it's from one 15 miles up the road.

The store nearest here (3 miles away) does do deliveries but not to here.

Weird eh?

I have ordered cases of wine before and they were all fine, it was 1/2 price last year some time.

blackanchorage

DocProc wrote: »

See my post #42 above:

No discounts! Everything was Full Price.

I'm really sorry about that... They're still showing as discounted on the website - up to 30/03/2008, so I don't understand how that could have happened. I was sure, as one of the few people willling to give it a go, that you would be well rewarded.

I guess Codger might have a few more comments now...

Regards

DocProc

I see this morning from my online credit card statement, that Tesco has debited my account with the £271.52

However, they have also credited it with £280.82 so I am in profit from the experience by some £9.30

I don't have any details as to how this has been calculated.

Ah well.

A 'Thanks' to blackanchorage for telling us his story and trying to help us share in his beneficial experience.