Sheila Eggleston Pre Christmas online shopping was given the thumbs down by our shoppers who reiterated their original verdict: home shopping is definitely not for the fainthearted. On this, our third attempt to buy online the items listed on The Grocer 33 regular weekly shopping list, the results show that there are still many problems to overcome. The trials and tribulations of ordering just these 33 lines, however, must pale into insignificance when one thinks of shoppers trying to order Christmas dinner online. The weaknesses in the five sites revisited were enough to make three of our shoppers want to get in their cars and do the shop personally. One in fact did. On previous occasions, Iceland, although unable to supply many of the products on our list, has provided a reasonable service and comparable substitutes. On this occasion, however, our shopper made five attempts to break into Iceland's online service. Every avenue was explored to get into the site but our shopper got no further than a blank page. No one at Iceland was even aware of a problem. The helpline and technical support department were stumped for an answer, though struggled to be helpful. Our intrepid shopper decided to go in person to the Iceland store at West Worthing to shop and get it home delivered, and was told "they were incredibly busy". Despite getting there at 10.30am, only the last delivery that day was available. The experience with Sainsbury was no better and was enough to put our shopper off shopping online forever. The system kept crashing, and not everything was available on the list. Andrex toilet rolls were said to be no longer stocked and no alternative was suggested. Basic items such as loose potatoes were not available. However, exactly as before, substitutes were not requested but received anyway, and they were more expensive. Our shopper was even more amazed that the first available delivery time was seven days later. The only redeeming features of the whole online shop was the most helpful driver who put all the shopping in the house, plus the box of Bounty Calapuno which came free of charge for no apparent reason. Asda had a lot to make up for after the shambolic online shop in June which culminated in our shopper's order being duplicated and billed for, despite half of it being returned. This time our shopper was pleasantly surprised to find the site easily accessible and the shop completed in 35 minutes. However not everything was available on our list and the earliest delivery was six days later. When it finally arrived, it was three hours late because of a computer glitch and the 320g Dolmio pasta sauce and the four-pack of Stella Artois was missing. Again the only redeeming factor was the friendly delivery man. Tesco and Waitrose gave the most satisfactory performances. The Tesco shop initially took a while because various sections kept seizing up. But, once in, our shopper whizzed through the list. This was mainly due to the favourites list which, although not totally reliable because some of the links did not work, gives shoppers details of products bought on previous occasions and speeds the process up for regular users (in theory). Substitutes were offered and accepted, and the delivery lived up to expectations by arriving within 24 hours. The Waitrose@work service got off to a shaky start when our shopper forgot the all- essential password to enter, but one call to the helpline was not only reassuring but effective, and within two minutes our shopper was in. Apart from the two products frequently missing from our weekly shop ­ the delisted Jacob's Creek Shiraz Cabernet wine and the 18-pack Persil Tablets ­ McCain's Home Fries and 500g Kellogg's Corn Flakes were out of stock. The latter had been replaced by a huge 750g box despite no substitutions being requested. Delivery was spot on, arriving the next day carefully packed before 4.30 pm. {{GROCER 33 }}