Online grocery shopping in the UK

If you read even 10% of my posts you probably know that I despise shopping. It's not just brick and mortar shopping, I don't want to spend hours online shopping either. Not sure if it's the cheapness factor, or moreso the desire to limit the amount of clutter entering this tiny flat.

The past few times I've been schlepping cans of refried beans and bottles of fizzy water up the steps, I've been heavily considering alternatives. I had dropped fizzy water from the Heather rotation, as well as beer (glass bottles too heavy for four flights of stairs and I'm not so fond of cans as they don't go cold enough), plus having to park down the street after 6 PM as I don't have parking yadda, yadda...

Perhaps my brain was being slow (and thinking only in German mode where online grocery shopping is not yet available--correct me on that?) but it took me about six weeks to give this a spin. I think I'm a convert based on this first experience.

I was guessing I needed to go with Asda, Tesco or Sainsbury online. Asda is my mainstay, so I decided to start with that one. Sure there's deliver to my postal code (I'm in the heavily populated area, so I'm not surprised there.) Now it becomes interesting...supply and demand...different delivery times have different prices.

As we all know--Heather in Europe may have well have grown up in a depression because I went for one of the cheapest slots. Most interesting to me--for my postcode, shopping on a Tuesday evening, I could book until 10 PM for a Wednesday delivery which was the cheapest. I love economics. Wednesday and Thursday are the same for me this week--make Wednesday 1 GBP cheaper and you can influence my behavior.

More interesting--certain slots have a little truck icon:
'Reduce carbon emissions. A van might be in your area.'
However, those prices are the same as the ones immediately before and after. I expect You, Asda, to be smarter and manipulate my behavior using your technology and data. If you'd knock it down another 50 p or 1 pound, I'd sign up. If you're already coming to my building for another order it's a sunk cost for you...

So off I go online to shop. I know the Asda prices of the items I buy regularly and they were the same online. I know I need a refill on items like cans of catfood. In addition, I'm in one of my Mexican moods so every dinner for myself alone for the past 10 days has been Mexican. Load up the fajitas and refried beans!

So I go through the online browsing and clicking and paying. I love techonology! Tonight, my delivery slot is 6 to 8 PM. Tick tock. At 7.50 the driver calls--where are you on your street? At the end, where it meets this street. OK, be there shortly. Ten minutes later, another call...I'm in front of (Heather's local pub), but I cannot find you? Hold on, I'll pop out.

So seeing from whence I came, he now found me and is able to schlep up my Entire Order in one go, up four flights of stairs. Keep in mind, I was going all out with the heavy things thinking this would be a once a month or once every three weeks adventure. Therefore, my very heavy order included:
-4 bottles of 2 liter fizzy water
-7 bottles of wine. I was very excited to find some non-alcoholic wine options to try as these are not available in my local store
-12 cans of cat food
10 cans of refried beans
And such a sweetheart, at the door he says, 'well that was a workout, but at least I now know where you are for next time.'

I can only imagine what he thinks--no veg or fresh things (I still want to pick those things out myself from the farmers' market), a plethora of white wine and every el paso Mexican item made in the UK because there was a good sale on.

Final verdict: I'm a big fan. OK--so I had said 'no substitues' on any out of stock items and they were out of my on-sale organic eggs. However, I like fizzy water and I've missed it over the past few weeks. 3.50 GBP (4.05 EUR/5.76 USD) is a very small price for me to pay to avoid 5 miles of driving/exhorbitant petrol cost and the hassle of wandering around the store and waiting in line and packing it up and putting it in the car, parking up, and making multiple trips up and down the four flights of stairs.

I'll definitely do it again, and probably with Asda. Tesco gets on my nerves because their computer system is not up to date so I cannot register my address online for their loyalty card (the address has been here for almost three years so I expect some better technology) and Sainsbury charges more for delivery in general, so those 3,50 slots are few and fair between for my postal code, whereas they're pretty easy to get with Asda.

So here it is Wednesday night and I'm already looking forward to a weekend which won't involve going to a supermarket. Things couldn't get much better on a Wednesday night...