We're in Leeds and are going to take a PP's advice and vote with our feet. Tesco deliveries were fine for us till about six months ago, when apparently they started using a new, ironically named 'fulfilment centre'.
In the past month we have had three cancelled orders and three orders that were late by several hours and ultimately delivered at a time which was really hard for whomever was in to take them (looking after sick kids whilst trying to unpack the shopping), and in every single order we have received, there have been so many unavailable items. We dread not receiving the receipt email because it means we won't get our shopping, but in another way, we dread receiving it too, because it presents us with a list of the many unavailable or poorly substituted items. We now know that we will have to follow our online order up with a trip to the supermarket, which defeats the object someone. We have had enough and are going to give Morrisons a try.
I have been emailing and calling a nice man in the CEO's office about this for weeks. He has tried his best, but claims it is all down to problems with the 'fulfilment centre'. He says the manager is working very hard to rectify things, and yet this same manager was asked twice to call me and never did. The text updates, if they come, usually cite 'store issues' as the reason for the delay or cancellation, but when I have asked drivers, they claim staff shortages or traffic problems. A low point was last week, when our order was late by hours, and then, when it did arrive, the driver grunted at me that there had been a problem. I said I knew there had, the order was hours late, and he said 'No, another problem. Whilst I was parked at a previous address, some people nicked three crates from my van and one had your shopping in it'. Perhaps an unavoidable bit of bad luck, but the response to it - that we had to go through my shopping whilst I held a sick 2 year old - to check what had and hadn't arrived, seemed ridiculous. In the end the delivery man wouldn't believe that we hadn't received our apples so came into our house to check whilst I tried to prove their absence!
When all of this started, I rang Customer Service and asked for details of the complaints policy. I was told that none existed. I said I didn't believe this, and was advised that the complaints email address had been taken down because it received too much traffic! I was advised to Tweet Tesco, which I did, and it took around 40 minutes for them to respond to my message. After two hours, we had got as far as them verifying my address details. I managed to find an email address for the CEO's office and have had a back and forth with them for weeks. We've been given the usual vouchers - handy but don't make up for the huge inconvenience - but there has been no sense in which any of this has been taken seriously. Apparently 'problems at the fulfilment centre won't be solved overnight'. This has been going on months, no-one seems to want to be accountable, and I feel fobbed off.
On another point, attempts to turn this thread into a debate about (non-existent) morality of the choice to shop online are laughable. Online shopping has nothing to do with being lazy. Yes, of course everyone managed to go out to the shops before online shopping was introduced. That's not an argument against online shopping! The need was there, and that's why it's so popular. Would previous posters who linked online shopping with laziness like to forego their central heating and electricity because we can technically survive without these? Clubbed any bears lately for their coats? Lit any fires to boil your water? 🙄