Woolworths Online
I have been converted.
Online supermarket shopping. I tried it, I love it! I am so much more disciplined when I shop online. There are not the chocolates screaming out to me that I must have them, I do not buy yet another bottle of tomato sauce because I am not sure whether we have any at home, and I think about the meals that I might want during the week and make sure that I get all the necessary ingredients!
Great news for Woolworths - I never shopped with them before, but now, because they provide online shopping, I spend over three quarters of my grocery budget with them.
I do suggest that there could be improvements made to the user experience though. The “aisle” shopping no longer makes much sense. I have no control over the way I see foods (have a look and you will see what I mean, if I want avocado is it under “green vegies” or just “vegies”). And when I do a search for something, it comes up with multiple lists that it could be under and I have to guess the appropriate one.
Other than that though, the benefits I am getting out of it are great! And, I no longer buy less heavy items because I don’t want to carry them, because nice big delivery men carry them to the bench for me 
Overall I rate the process 7/10 - worthwhile but improvements could be made
10 August, 2008 at 8:26 am said:
woolworths online shopping is expensive, the available products have dwindled to boutique products only (try buying a bulk shampoo - doesn’t exist) and nearly every order has something missing.
fresh produce is NOT fresh. i’ve had cucmbers so old you could almost bend them in half, portabella mushrooms so degraded they were sticky and blue with mould, caulis going brown, broccoli going yellow etc. i only stuck with them so long because i needed the service.
so now i have found that my local butcher delivers meat of vastly better quality and cheaper, as are the fruit and vege from my local shop who also deliver, as does bin inn.
goodbye woolworths - after 10 years (and a 2 year boycott during that time for their lousy service) this paying customer is spending her money elsewhere.
14 August, 2008 at 12:21 am said:
Thanks for the comment Karen
I have noticed the available products is low but I have always had fresh produce - can I ask what city you live in? Maybe it differs between citys - I have found the Wellington shoppers to be fine.
7 September, 2008 at 3:24 pm said:
hi louie
i’m in auckland.
after 10 years and such a high level of cause for complaint it would seem that woolies/foodtown need to lift their act or die.
they won’t get the benefit of the doubt or another chance from me. it made me furious to be told - at such expense - that going without was to be my problem as they were not willing to sort it out.
their excuse for not following shopper’s instructions in advising if the order cannot be properly fullfilled is because they pack the orders at 3am, and therefore cannot ring me, is THEIR problem. they consistently made it mine.
eggs 2 weeks past their use-by date etc, less and less available products and then the infuriating call-centre-speak (somewhere in bombay i think where even though they know your name from your customer number gets you the one-size-fits-all ‘ma’am’) is enough to drive you nuts. it’s just a hiding to nothing to complain.
i still have a piece of fish in the freezer - apparently packed on the same day as delivered according to the label - but so rotten i couldn’t get the stench off my hands for hours and transferred it to everything i touched. it cannot have got that rotten in the space of a morning.
giving up is the best bet.
buy local, support small business and let the cynical grasping big boys go where they belong: down the drain, along with their rotten produce they obviously couldn’t sell in their supermarkets but took advantage of their trusting on-line customers to move.
7 September, 2008 at 3:28 pm said:
btw, i kept a scan of the label on that rotten fish. let them deny it.