Absolutely true. They time the people picking the order so they rush around like crazy trying to keep the wage budget to a minimum.
This is why you get missing stock, out of date stock, orders literally shoved in crates squashed biscuits etc…
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I believe Coles decided not to deliver alcohol this week, however it did not advise loyal customers so they could make other arrangements for the purchase of alcohol. Instead the supermarket covertly placed ‘Unattended Only’ on all delivery time slots to stop customers from purchasing alcohol without their knowledge.
This happened to me on the Tuesday prior to New Year and I rang customer service to ask the reason. I was told ‘unfortunately you won’t be able to order because of the current pandemic all deliveries are unattended’. When I discussed the issue, the lady kept repeating ‘alcohol cannot be delivered for the unattended delivery option’ - even though I told her this was the only option available to me.
I have been purchasing alcohol from Coles since lockdown in March, and at no time has delivery been suspended due to covid-19. I believe this ‘false’ statement by customer service for non delivery of alcohol added further insult to the intellect of customers, especially as Woolworths continued to deliver alcohol.
The fact is Coles did not inform customers they could not purchase alcohol until checkout when they were advised ‘the following items are unavailable at your selected time’. This statement would have been confusing for the average Coles’ customer, however most would have proceeded to purchase their groceries, and Coles no doubt relied on this happening.
I believe Coles feared that customers would place their full grocery and alcohol order with another supermarket if they knew it was not delivering alcohol. If this is correct, I believe Coles made a very unethical trading decision that disadvantaged thousands of customers, most of whom depended on Coles to deliver alcohol for New Year’s Eve.
Initially I thought it was only my account that had been barred from purchasing alcohol because I debated an alcohol promotion with Coles last week. It was not until I rang around that I discovered friends had been disadvantaged by the same ‘pandemic regulation’ which by the way was nowhere to be found anywhere on their website.
I suspect the ‘pandemic’ will not affect Coles’ home deliveries in January when the signed delivery option is restored for purchase of alcohol, however I believe hundreds of customers will now shop at other supermarkets in future.
Shame on you Coles. You should value your customers more than you have demonstrated this week, and you certainly do not deserve our loyalty in future.
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Hi @maforbutt, welcome to the community.
I wonder if this change is due to either theft or to meet legislated over 18 years requirements when buying alcohol. Maybe they will be checking age on attended delivery signing. Leaving alcohol with an unattended delivery option allows for minors to purchase alcohol without any checks, or for minors/others to steal the alcohol when left at the home delivery point when no one is home.
The Coles website makes it clear that restricted items such as alcohol and tobacco products can’t be delivered with the unattended delivery option…
If it is, then the change is understandable and possibly won’t change in the future… but using covid as the excuse is a bit strange.
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Welcome to the community @maforbutt,
I moved your topic into this existing one that highlights some of the issues with online grocery shopping.
Some states have fairly strict laws about ‘leaving alcohol’ and some businesses obviously decided it was easier to avoid the problem by refusing orders to avoid not being able to leave an order as @phb referenced.
That is unfortunately reasonable in the minds of most e-commerce developers where the order often precedes delivery information. Common sense suggests an early step is obtaining a delivery address and mode (delivery, click and collect) if only for local availability of products.
I agree your description appears to be a knee jerk reaction to deliveries and was not handled well, especially since ‘signed’ deliveries should have been reasonable as well as doable with little if any additional impost on their drivers.
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Re: whether supermarkets charge the same for products bought in store or online (excluding delivery charges):
The above response from Coles seems to differ from what they said publicly in June 2018 when the Managing Director was quoted here
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/coles-removes-charges-hitting-customers-for-ordering-online/news-story/fb875a24fa2ed2a666a66383f92c974d
as saying:
“We have brought all of our online prices into line with our supermarkets, so bricks and mortar pricing,’’ “So now we have effectively national pricing if you are an online customer or a store customer.”
Seems that in practice the pricing policy only applies to some products and some specials.
Has anyone any info about the online vs instore pricing polices of COSTCO and of the IGA stores that provide online shopping?
Because it is so easy for many consumers to make wrong assumptions about supermarket pricing polices, it could be very beneficial if they put them on their websites.
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Costco (Australia) still has a very limited range for online shopping. All the online prices are higher than in-warehouse because they include delivery.
edit: not groceries, but just bought a TV for the bedroom at Costco - online price $1,140. in-warehouse was $1,050 and small enough to fit in the SUV. The differential cost for delivery of $90 seems high and is in many cases, but it is a flat rate to wherever they can deliver. edit 2: the going price at all other resellers was $1,295 on the day - nothing to see about retail collusion or price maintenance?
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Well I posted the comments (you can see the OPEN deception) in the images that I posted. And it is clear that 'e -tailers ’ as well as the largest corporate retailers, who not only try to retain a tight strangle hold on the market share are just doing as they please and are not being reigned in as “often as they should be by watchdogs like the retailers Associations as well as ACCC”… It seems the government is happy to allow this behaviour.( their corporate taxes must be filling their coffers - NOT). Unfortunately people need to eat to survive, and so the “deception of these corporate thieves” goes unchallenged ! If Australians en-masse stopped shopping with these corporate scum, the remaining providers would not be able to cope. This was bourn out in Victoria in the recent Pandemic and to a lesser extent in NSW.
It is time the federal government agencies were given better powers to police the standards of ALL RETAILERS. The “duopoly” (although they are losing their stranglehold to smaller corporates like ALDI) is strangling the economy. If they were made to account their actions, and action was taken against them, they could just “choose” to only stock essential items and move everything else on line and then make the consumer wait for supply of item’s.
Steps down off soapbox
Heard just the other day America and Australia during the pandemic increased sales seven times more than average with on-line supermarket shopping.I have been one of those people.Shopped at Coles and Woolworths a few times now and have overall found the experience very good.One or the other always has a discount where basically you get all your food delivered for free.Only had one issue and that was from Coles when i had one less bag dropped off that had frozen goods.Rang them straight away,they were sorry that it didn’t arrive and instantly credited me when i do the next shop.So many of you take the plunge and try it yourself.I probably stick to on-line shopping for bit longer yet.Only downfall for me is i am purchasing more stuff to get to a certain limit which is fine,but buying the bad stuff to get me there lol
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A general question concerning payment and shopping options for Woolworths on line, although Coles may also be the same.
Woolies options include credit card, debit card or PayPal. Is there any reason one should be preferred over another? One of the family has been told to use PayPal as it’s safer!
A second question is how one shops, whether using a browser on a PC or tablet, or the Android/Apple App from Woolies. Which is the most secure re your payment method and personal details? I’d assume that on a regularly updated mobile device, (phone or tablet) the App provided by Woolies is as good as it gets?
Windows and your choice of browser should be a good alternative, but for the very average user, are there greater risks of the device and software not being as secure as it should be? Think the very average user relies totally on the settings and software as supplied to keep things safe by simply clicking on messages such as restart now!
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I am always concerned about sharing financial details with a third party as a payment option, such as PayPal. It is potentially another additional source where such information could be accessed by unauthorised persons.
PayPal may claim they are safer, but Woolworths/Coles/other retailers would be using payment modules on their websites which are possibly just as safe or secure as PayPal.
Something which also niggles in the back of my mind is what information does PayPal get from transactions using its service. I suspect information/data on sale is provided to PayPal for its use. I would rather my shopping data to stay with a retailer rather than knowing sharing to others if this is the case. Woolworths is Australian, PayPal is US which is also a concern to what legal requirements need to be adhered to.
I have only shopped online with Woollies once, and it was using a PC browser. I find on smart devices the way content is displayed and seeing what one does is limited.
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I was very slow to start using PayPal, but I have found over the past couple of years that its my preferred option. I was initially nervy about having a third party with access to my CC/DC details, but really is that any worse than spreading it around many retailers… I think not. I believe it operates under Australian Banking law so its pretty safe and your card details are not exposed to all and sundry. So these days I use PayPal or Apple Pay where possible. Have not yet been disappointed.
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Australian banking law is whats adhered to, here, even though the company is US based.
The PayPal service is provided by PayPal Australia Pty Limited (ABN [93 111 195 389](tel:93 111 195 389)) which holds Australian Financial Services Licence number 304962.
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When I made the comment I was referring to data management rather than financial laws. The US has legislation such as the Cloud Act which can allow US government access to data from US companies trading in non-US countries.
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oh. OK.
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Same as MasterCard and VISA which are not Australian Companies. I would think most Australian financial transactions are tracked in the USA as they use their anti terror legislation to allow the breach of most if not all Countries financial systems.
With PayPal you have a single entity that holds the payment options including a PayPal wallet that allows a user to pay any business that accepts PayPal as an option. The business beyond knowing what you bought and that you used PayPal does not know what Card payment product you used and so nor does it store those “Card details”. With PayPal you do not need to have an account, you can use them as a casual option in that you can use them each time as a non member.
There is also a PayPal transaction protection policy which offers a second option to using that of a Chargeback.
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I believe that has to be a feature the merchant enables? (Note this is a US page.)
and one of the ways it is offered
as well as paypal now processing credit card transactions for business, as a business, where one just enters their card details and essentially ‘sees’ cleared by paypal. It looks like just another checkout option for using a card in a shopping cart.
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It’s a feature that by default is enabled unless the businesses disable it, rather than it is disabled unless enabled by the business. I can’t speak for how it works in Premier accounts. I do know that not every PayPal account has the feature but Premier and Business ones do.
Thank for pointing out that email PayPal option, it isn’t one I have come across before.
I’ve never had a PayPal account, but have used the option of processing through PayPal and a CC for individual purchases. It was something I was unaware of until I made a purchases from sites that only offered PayPal or other methods I could not use.
It’s probably exposed in similar ways to data collection by PayPal, simply through the details provided with each transaction.
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Here is an absolute shocker.
Essential worker warns against supermarket pre-order glitch
The ‘absolute shocker’ is that the charge/hold/refund system works as it is ‘designed’ to, but not as it should.
