Sheila Eggleston Another chance for online shopping to redeem itself was lost as the latest attempt for Easter did not live up to expectations. This was the fourth attempt to buy The Grocer 33 shopping list online and still the services run by the multiples are fraught with difficulties. In Asda's case, its online shopping was a nightmare from the start. Our rookie online shopper made several attempts to log on, but each time got so far and then crashed. Once logged on, no subscriber name or a pin number could be prised out of the system and our shopper had to be satisfied with a helpline. Here the operator wasn't surprised by the problems and amazed our shopper by giving the earliest delivery date as April 6, the cause being the service was being revamped and was causing a backlog. Sainsbury online seemed too good to be true. It took no more than a minute to log on, 18 minutes to complete the order, everything was available, a delivery slot offered for the following day and the delivery was on time. However, when the shopping was delivered it was clearly the wrong order ­ one worth in fact around £250. The driver had no idea where our shopper's order was and rang from his van to try to track it down. When he returned he said another delivery would have to be arranged and there would be no charge for delivery. The second correct delivery arrived the following day brought by the same driver but a delivery charge had been made. A number of substitutions had also been made which were all more expensive. The sausages ordered were unavailable and the substitution given was available on a bogof deal but the second pack was not given. A call to the customer care line to get a refund on the delivery charge was met with an offer of crediting the Reward card, or a voucher. But our shopper stood firm for a credit card refund. Iceland proved to be more successful this time following the disastrous non shopping experience at Christmas. Moving around the system was fine and provided you were not too specific in the search, you got what you wanted. For example, Anchor Spreadable' in the product search section revealed no products, but by just inputting Anchor' you got results. The delivery however was unsatisfactory. The shopper's teenage daughter was babysitting when the deliveryman called and he refused to leave the Stella Artois and the wine. But, instead of leaving the rest of the shopping and taking the alcohol away, he took the whole lot away. A call to rearrange delivery elicited only that "Iceland could not be seen supplying alcohol to minors". Tesco and Waitrose again gave the most satisfactory shops and everything went to plan ­ until delivery. Substitutions were offered but not accepted by our Waitrose shopper but, in spite of this, there were adjustments made to the shop such as a much bigger chicken than asked for. Mushrooms were part of the order but nowhere to be seen on the till receipt. However there was a charge for two lots of bananas. At Tesco, single cans of own label baked beans were not available to order, nor was a medium chicken. Hovis wholemeal, tomatoes, Cheddar and particular Müller yogurts were ordered but substituted by other lines. In the case of the latter our shopper noted the wanted flavours in store the next day. {{GROCER 33 }}