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Six months on from our last test, how are the multiples' online shopping services performing? Sian Harrington reports
Asda regularly tops The Grocer 33 but its online service is still proving a fiasco.
Six months after our last online shop and Asda, the worst performer last time, still failed to deliver the goods.
Yet it all started so well. Our shopper, a novice to Asda@home but a seasoned online purchaser, was able to breeze through the site. Unlike last time the log on process took only five minutes, navigating the system was easy and our shopper had completed his order within an hour. All products were in stock and the total bill was a reasonable L38.73, plus L3.50 delivery charge - the cheapest of all our retailers.
Then the problems began. While our other shoppers were able to receive goods within 24 hours, the first available slot with Asda was 52 hours later, Saturday between 6pm-8pm.
However, at 4.30pm on Saturday a message was left to say the order had been cancelled. When our shopper called to find out the reason, he was told all orders had been cancelled that day owing to staff and delivery problems. Apparently there were no staff members to pick goods and no one to deliver them. And there was no point asking for the order to be delivered the following day as it was
unlikely Asda would be able to fulfill it owing to the backlog from Saturday."We have agency staff in at the moment," the operator said. When told our shopper was a first-timer with Asda and was used to shopping online with Tesco and Sainsbury, the operator made little attempt to...