CAN'T COPE AT CHRISTMAS
With just over a week to go before Christmas,
people who hoped to order their food and drink on
the Internet were being turned away as online
grocers struggled to cope with the surge in
demand. Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda said nearly
all their delivery slots for December 22, 23 and
24 have been taken and they cannot guarantee to
honour further bookings.
A spokesman for Tesco said orders had leapt to
200,000 a week, up 30,000 on normal. "This
is obviously a popular service around
Christmas," she added. "Some 98% of the
slots on our last delivery day, December 22, have
gone and 90% have gone for December 21.
A Sainsbury's spokesman said it would deliver
until December 23 but he added that 92% of the
slots for that date had gone, with a similar
picture for the previous day. "Demand has
been quite astounding," he said. "We
are making around 41,000 deliveries a week, which
is up by around 30% on the same time last
year."
Asda doubled the number of delivery slots to
30,000 but most of these were already booked and
it is fully booked for December 22, its last
delivery date. The rise in grocery orders is part
of a general shift to shopping on the Internet.
Total Christmas sales are expected to exceed
£5billion, up 45% on the previous year. (Source:
Mail on Sunday) |
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ON-LINE SHOPPING
Online supermarket shopping could be the perfect solution
to uncontrollable trolleys, long checkout queues and
heavy shopping bags, but, at the moment, it brings its
own frustrations and is time consuming. A panel of 25
volunteers made a total of 40 online shopping trips, ten
to each site run by Asda, Iceland, Sainsbury's and Tesco.
They looked at how easy it was to set up an account and
to make and receive their order. They also rated the
quality of the food they received. Although the plus
points were that it was easy to set up an account,
deliveries were generally on time and most shoppers were
impressed with the delivery service, there were also
several bad points.
20 orders took over an hour and a half to complete and
almost a third took over two hours to order just 35
items. Shoppers had problems finding certain items, for
instance, the words "washing",
"powder" and "detergent" weren't
recognised when one shopper tried to find washing powder
on the Asda site. Also the sites were slow and crashed
fairly regularly.
Items were often missing or substituted for something
similar. None of the shoppers at Sainsbury's or Tesco
received their full order, and only two Asda shoppers and
one at Iceland received everything they'd asked for. The
panel found that around a fifth of the substitute items
they were sent were unacceptable.
Because shoppers couldn't choose, most were sent items
with imminent 'use by' or 'best before' dates. Shoppers
received stale bread, a pack of tomatoes with mould
growth and a few squashed and already ripe bananas and
strawberries. None of the four services was good all
round. Iceland's service was rated highly but its range
of products is more limited than the others.
Tesco's service was well liked, but was let down by its
ordering process which was, in a word, crap! Sainsbury's
and Asda had different strengths, but, on the whole, were
no better than average. Online supermarkets have a way to
go before they become the first choice for convenience
shopping.
What
legal protection can you expect when purchasing goods
online?
One of the
main rights you have when shopping online is a
cooling-off period, at least seven days after receiving
the goods. This means you have the unconditional right to
cancel your order if you change your mind unless the
goods you have ordered are made to a personal
specification, or you have removed the packaging from
CDs, DVDs, videos and software. If you do change you mind
for whatever reason within the cooling-off period you are
entitled to a full refund, including any delivery charges
(although you may have to pay the cost of returning the
goods). The seller must refund all money within 30 days.
If your credit or debit card is used fraudulently to shop
online, you can cancel the payment and the card issuer
must refund any money to your account. In addition, if
you use your credit card to buy an item that costs more
than £100 both the supplier and the credit card provider
have the same liability to you. This means that if the
supplier goes bust before you receive the goods, you can
make the same claim against the credit card provider that
you would have made against the supplier. Unless
otherwise stated, delivery should be within 30 days, if
the order is not delivered within this time, you can
cancel the order.
Before
buying online you are entitled to certain information
including:
* A description of the goods or services
*
The price
including any taxes
*
Arrangements
for payment
*
Delivery
costs
*
Delivery
arrangements
*
Name of
the company (and address if payment is in advance)
After you
have placed an order you should receive written
confirmation of the order. You should also be given
written confirmation of how you can cancel the order, a
complaints address and details of any after-sales
services/guarantees. When you shop online you still have
the same protection under the Sale of Goods Act that you
have when you shop on the High Street. All goods sold
should be of satisfactory quality, fit for their purpose
and as described.
If goods are faulty or wrongly described you are entitled
to a refund provided you return the goods within a
reasonable time. Some High Street shops offer a goodwill
policy which allows you to return goods if you change
your mind or have bought the wrong size, however this is
not a statutory right. You have the same rights even if
the goods you buy are in a sale, however be careful of
items in the sale that have slight defects. The seller is
not obliged to give you your money back if you complain
about defects that were pointed out prior to purchase.
(Source: BBC News)
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