Supermarket online delivery? Order now, but maybe for next Christmas

 

By SEAN POULTER, Consumer Affairs Correspondent Last updated at 22:00pm on 8th December 2006

Tesco has put up its Christmas week delivery charge by as much as 50 per cent but many customers ordering now are simply too late to receive deliveries

 

 

 

Thousands of shoppers hoping to order their Christmas groceries online will be turned away because supermarkets cannot cope with demand.

 

 

Buying festive food and drink with the big four web grocers - Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and Ocado -has turned into a lottery and in many areas it is already too late.

All of the slots for the last delivery day before Christmas have already been snapped up in many regions, according to the companies' websites.

Other days are also going fast, triggering a warning from the stores that customers need to book now or risk losing out, particularly those who want fresh food.

Householders who want groceries with long sell-by dates such as alcoholic drinks and canned goods will be unaffected.

But families who want perishable goods like fresh fruit and vegetables may be forced to have them delievered so early they may go off by Christmas Day.

The shortage of delivery slots is being exacerbated by the fact that both Sainsbury's and Asda are stopping their service a day earlier this year - Friday, December 22.

A Daily Mail investigation found that all the slots for Tesco's deliveries that day - also their last - are already fully booked in many areas. Many of those for earlier days have also been snapped up.

The same pattern is true of Sainsbury's, which charges £5 for a delivery, and Asda, which charges £3.99.

All these companies have significantly increased the number of vans and drivers operating this year. However, they are still unable to keep up with demand.

Ocado, which is a partner of Waitrose, offers deliveries through to Christmas Eve. However, again, virtually all those for the Friday, Saturday and Sunday before Christmas have gone.

The Mail investigation found that even during this past week, customers had to wait three or four days for a delivery from Sainsbury's in areas such as London and Bristol. And in addition there are also concerns about significant gaps between what customers order and what arrives on the doorstep.

There is also evidence that web grocers routinely deliver food that is close to its sell-by date, which means it may go off before it is due to be eaten.

Evidence has emerged that some of the web grocers are cashing in on the festive boom by increasing charges.

Tesco has put up its Christmas week delivery charge by as much as 50 per cent - £5.99 compared to a normal midweek fee of £3.99.

Ocado normally offers free delivery for orders worth over £75. However, it has introduced a charge of £7.50 for Christmas Eve and £5 on some other days.

Apart from difficulties with deliveries, a number of studies have shown that stores struggle to provide all the items ordered by shoppers.

Recently, The Grocer magazine found that internet descriptions of products are not always accurate, while the stores routinely include substitute items.

Editor of The Grocer, Adam Leyland, said: "The sheer speed with which people are moving to internet shopping for groceries and other things is suprising people, including the supermarkets.

"They have all invested massively in this, but they seem to be victims of own success."

Web shopping expert at the magazine, Gaelle Walker, said: "We found it difficult to get next day delivery with these stores in a normal shopping week. "There can be delays of three of four days. Given the pressure of Christmas, it is clearly necessary to book a long time in advance.

"Unless you can get a delivery close to December 25, the food is not going to be as fresh as you might like."

Miss Walker added: 'The problem of substitutions of products in customers' orders has been plaguing online retailers for as long as they have been offering a service.

"We have found that there are still significant numbers, even when the order is for a fairly basis shopping list of essentials.

"Clearly, there is more of a risk that people won't get what they order with a more specialist Christmas list."

A Daily Mail survey, which asked the four firms to each deliver a list of 25 items with a Christmas flavour, produced mixed results.

Many of the items, including produce and cheeses, were close to their use-by date, which is one drawback of shopping in this way.

Tesco had no frozen turkeys at all early this week, although it later added a product from Bernard Matthews. It is only delivering fresh turkeys on December 20 to December 22, however many of these slots are gone.

The web store was also unable to offer Maris Piper potatoes, which are considered the best option for crunchy roast potatoes.

However, Tesco did well to deliver 24 of the 25 shopping basket items. There was one substituted product, a wedge of mature Stilton.

Asda offered four substitute products out of the 25 that were ordered - a rate of 16 per cent.

An order for a beef topside roasting joint, described as having a typical weight of 0.9 kilos and price of £3.80, was replaced by a smaller mini-joint of 500g at £3.37.

An Asda Extra Special Scottish smoked salmon product was substituted for variety with lemon and pepper.

Ocado boasts an impressive list of champagnes on its website, however a very large number were out of stock. Despite this drawback, the company beat its rivals by delivering all the ordered 25 items on time.

On the downside, it is the most expensive of the web grocers. Sainsbury's offered just one substitute. However, it was noticeable that a number of items were close to their sell-by date.

These included potatoes, some of which were starting to sprout, and an iceberg lettuce. The brie arrived yesterday(fri), but had a 'use by' date of Monday, while the bread was supposed to be eaten by Tuesday.

If this pattern is repeated with Christmas deliveries, customers may find their food is going off before they get a chance to eat it. Asda confirmed the web shopping rush and shortage of slots.

"Spaces are filling up very fast, there has been a big rush, despite the fact we are still two weeks out from Christmas," said a spokesman. "If you want to get a pre-Christmas delivery you really need to think about booking them right now."

Tesco said its higher delivery charges for the Christmas peak reflect the costs involved in providing extra vans and coping with large deliveries.

A spokesman said internet customers had been given plenty of warning to shop early.

"Our online service is always very popular during the Christmas period so we make sure we remind our regular shoppers to book their slot early," he said.

Sainsbury's said that while it is stopping home deliveries a day earlier this year, it has increased the number of slots on other days. It has 50 per cent more vans and drivers than last year. Its online store chief, Kevin Plant, said it is important that shoppers book as early as possible.

"We're determined to give our customers the best online Christmas ever and have worked hard to offer more delivery slots to ensure we can meet demand," he said.

The web shopping trade body, the IMRG, calculates that as many as two million people will be trying to buy Christmas groceries online and Tesco has around half the market.

The IMRG chief executive, James Roper, said: "The Christmas slots have already gone. A lot of loyal online shoppers are going to be seriously fed up that they are not going to be able to find a delivery slot. That is not great.

"The reality is that the supermarkets simply cannot hope to match demand at Christmas. They simply cannot conjure up extra drivers and vans to cope with the sort of sudden jump in customers that they see at this tim

they should take a leaf out of santa's book :dozey:

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 1 in the

world. However, since Santa does not usually visit children of Muslim,

Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for

Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the

population reference bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5

children per household, that comes to 108 million homes presuming there

is at least one good child in each.

 

Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the

different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming east to

west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second.

This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child,

Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump

down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents

under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up

the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house.

 

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed

around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept

for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78

miles per household -a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting

bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650

miles per second--3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of

comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, and

moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can

run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

 

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming

that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (two

pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting

Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than

300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times

the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of

them---Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not

counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven

times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air

resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a

spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere.

 

The lead pair of reindeer would adsorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy

per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost

instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating

deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be

vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time

Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however,

since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s.

in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000

g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to

the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing

his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

 

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

lol @buzybee

It's like what they say, book your food early.

 

Iceland home delivery's min spend has increased from £25 to £50 in some stores in december, people are moaning but it's been happening for the past few years.