Blardy TESCO!!! No wonder sales are down, people have lost trust. This was my last order with them EVER.

[QuintessentialShadows]

I bought three boxes of Thorntons Chocolate. I should have realized it was old stuff they needed dumping when it was half price.

The boxes look terrible. Scrunched and marked, and bulging in areas, so it is obvious they have been shaken so the chocolates are out of their "holes" and in one place. One of them are missing sellotape on one side. The other looks like black marker has been drawn across, and one have obvious marks of price tags that has been ripped off so the paper has come off the box where the price tags were. £18 worth of chocolate, they were supposed to be gifts.

I cant give chocolate that looks like this as a present. And especially not when the USE BY DATE IS 31/12/2013 - 7 days after Christmas eve!

So I rang customer services. Did they refund me? Did the fuck.

I have to bring the boxes to my nearest Tesco store (which is 20 minutes drive away) so that the store manager can see if I have cause for complaint. I told the lad on the phone, I had trusted them, I would never in a million years chosen boxes of chocolate as presents that

1. Had such short use by date
2. Looked like they had been played football with

Shite. Tesco.

but the website is still saying in stock* posted far to soon

I've only used Tesco twice, first time they turned up 4 hours late at midnight, we'd obviously had to call for a take away as the food for dinner was in the order, we also had a newborn and didn't want to take delivery at 12! I complained and they initially offered me half the delivery cost back and then when I took it further a £20 voucher.

Second time (with our £20 voucher) they turned up 2 hours late and we'd gone out. I'd rung customer services and told them not to bother delivering as it was too late.

Not used them (or our voucher since). I've tried Waitrose a couple of times, but their website is too slow.

Ocado are great though - usually on time, few substitutions and short time slots, good food too.

I honestly think it depends on the store it comes from too. I complained a couple of times about my tesco order - sent lots of stuff back, as I inspect it when they deliver, they seem to have got the message and my shopping is great now. Everything's very fresh with good expirary dates. My local asda however is awful, they never have half the stuff I order in stock - I specifically ordered online to get three huge boxes nappies and guess what, no nappies - happened several times with no alternatives offered.

I don't think Ocado deliver to me (or they didn't the last time I looked) so I can't comment on them but after 2-3 years of using other on line shopping for most stuff, I'm fairly happy. I expect them to try reasonably hard but I don't necessarily expect perfection. I weigh things up against the performance and standards of (and my troubles in using) the equivalent B&M shops and the online services don't usually come up wanting at all.

I'll reserve the right to revisit that view after more experience with Tesco, though.