waitrose delivery staff

Source: Waitrose

Waitrose again offered the best online experience this week – following its win in the last Online 33 in June – with an almost perfect score of 93 points.

Our shopper had “a really positive experience”. The search function was excellent, instantly returning the product she was looking for almost every time.

The driver arrived just minutes after the start of the slot, and was “extremely pleasant and good natured”.

Second place went to Sainsbury’s with 90 points. All 33 items were available to order.

The website navigation was generally good but unfortunately the website was very slow and kept crashing.

The driver was very friendly to our shopper (and his dog), and talked through how the shop worked as our shopper was a first-time customer of Sainsbury’s online.

Asda scored 89 points. One item was unavailable, no alternatives were offered. Four substitutions were delivered, but only three were suitable – the dairy-free cream substitute contained dairy.

The driver was prompt, appropriately dressed, cheerful and friendly. However, some of the items were not packed correctly and had been crushed.

In fourth place was Morrisons with 86 points. Our shopper was able to order all but one item. The organic onions were unavailable and no other onions were offered.

Placing the order was very easy and the website was fast. The driver arrived halfway through the time slot and was friendly and smartly presented.

Tesco scored 78 points. Five items were not available. Alternatives were offered for each but our shopper felt only one was an acceptable alternative as the others were too expensive or not similar enough to the original product.

The website was easy to use but the checkout timed out. The driver arrived at the start of the time slot and was friendly.

Ocado scored 78 points, with our shopper struggling to find several items on the website. The delivery also came five minutes after the one-hour delivery slot ended. The driver didn’t apologise.

Bringing up the rear Amazon scored just 55 points, and it was the “worst mystery shopping experience I have had”, said our shopper.

Items could only be ordered three days ahead of time, there was no option to save the basket, and no ability to paste a list in to search, which resulted in ordering taking an hour.

Driver service was generally good, but the driver said he was not able to bring the shopping into our shopper’s kitchen as it was not company policy.