Online supermarket shopping - ordering the right stuff

[citygirl1961]

Hi all, I usually do a supermarket shop online once a month for heavy stuff like cat food, litter and cleaning products but have now decided to order more online to save shopping inbetween, though for fruit and milk etc I will still need to buy fresh.

Anyway I feel I have made a boo boo of this time. Just had a delivery from Asda, I ordered it via the My Supermarket website and went on their recommendations as to saving money. Some things have come OK which are the things I normally order but other things well - the binliners are the Asda value ones and they are very thin, so thin I can't use them for the bin as they will just snap when I put anything in it, the kitchen roll is also paper thin and useless so this seems like false economy.

I've ended up with two huge bottles of disinfectant, a giant bottle of fairy liquid which I will use but I usually have the smaller bottles for storage purposes.

How can I make it right next time?

A lot of the so called comparisons don't give you like for like, so you're not really saving money IMO, which is what you've said.

I use Ocado for online shopping and it marks things you buy as in your favourites, if you get something wrong or go off it you can delete them from that list. It also saves your order as a 'List' so you can reorder exactly the same again.

I usually do my shopping by looking at the offers pages starting with 'offers you've bought before' and these days, after making mistakes, I do check sizes and prices per kg or litre etc.

To be honest I don't bother comparing beyond that really because I live a long drive from any supermarkets let alone an Aldi or Lidl so I think in terms of getting cash back on my credit card and saving petrol I probably do ok.
Ocado do price match Tesco I think? not sure what other online supermarkets do.

Sometimes with cheaper products they can be good/better even but sometimes worse, I will buy cheaper alternative first in the view that if I like it I will buy again and it will save me money. If I don't like it I just don't buy it again. With online it will bring up your favourites so you can choose again or delete if you don't want it again.

I'm in a holiday place in Crieff in Scotland. I've been told that I can order on line from either the Co op or Tesco. Which is better?I'm assuming it will come from Perth but I don't know. I've never ordered online for groceries before. Any advice would be most welcome.

Sorry Stanislas our local Co op doesn't do online, you have to go to the store, do your shopping and then they'll deliver it for you, which I suppose helps people who can't manage the transport bit.

It's years since I used Tesco as they made too many substitutions. I think they've probably improved a lot since then, although I seem to remember you could add notes for the picker.

Hopefully someone will come along who can advise. Have a good holiday.

(Can't you freeze the milk? It's one of the main attractions of online shopping for me.)

But yes - this is one reason why people tend to stick to just one or maybe two online grocers. It takes such ages to sort out a list and every time you make a change you are essentially shopping blind, unless you've previously bought the exact same item in a physical shop.

As to how to get it right next time... I second using Ocado (or another place that stores your "favourites") and simply deleting anything that doesn't come up to scratch. Eventually you should end up with a mistake free (but rather predictable) trolley.