Last week I had the “joy” of trying the online shopping service at Tesco.com. Rather than go into it again, it’s probably easier for me to copy the email that I sent to their Customer Services. After all, every little helps 😉

Dear Sir/Madam,

I have just spent a frustrating amount of time attempting to order from your website. In the end I placed an order with Ocado, as I had no such issues with their ordering system. However, I thought I should inform you of the issues I found.

First of all, and by default, I attempted a food order using Firefox (version 3.0). I found the following problems (in sequence of coming across them)…

• Screen refreshes randomly appear to freeze – the entire page appears but not the search bar or the advert with it. I could fix this by clicking on the “Grocery Home” tab.
• All attempts to search for food items cause the page to freeze, endlessly loading the page. I’m sure an error would have appeared but I simply got bored waiting.
• Earlier when pressing Enter after typing a word in, it kept wanting me to download a file (this has now stopped, so I can’t get the details).
• When I click on “Help” at the top of the screen, a blank pop-up window appears.

This is obviously a problem with your site on Firefox, as none of the above occurred with Internet Explorer. Has your site been properly tested, because I find it frustrating.

I then switched to using Internet Explorer (version 7). This worked a lot better than Firefox EXCEPT when attempting to add notes the popup window was missing the “OK” button (or whatever it would take to exit the window and save my note). I’ve attached a screenshot of this. Without being able to add notes, I didn’t want to place an order.

I would appreciate feedback on anything that is being done to rectify these issues. I’ll be happy to re-try the site once these have been fixed.

The screenshot I make reference to is included in this blog. See if you can see the problem!

Anyway, I got an automated response from Tesco…

We’re receiving a large number of enquiries at the moment, so there will be a delay in getting back to you. But I want to let you know that you are very important to us and we will be back in touch quickly as we can.

Can I ask you to be patient with us too? I promise we will be back in touch, but if we receive duplicate emails it may prevent us from getting back to you as quickly as we’d hope.

Now, for a minute let’s forget that this was sent on the 14th July and I’ve not yet had a response. How rubbish is this response? “We’re really crappy at responding but, hey, let’s put in on you by asking YOU to be patient.” That way how you can you complain and feel guilty?

And what’s this “Can I ask you to be patient with us too?” Too? When exactly did I ask them to be patient with me? I didn’t. So there’s no “too” involved.

Bloody-too-big-for-their-boots companies.

To top it all off I wasted a frustrating amount of time at the weekend trying to get a home quote out of Tesco Compare.  Apart from them asking for my exact house measurements, it also asked for some fantastic information such as the percentage of my roof that is flat. Some of it is, but I wouldn’t have a clue as to what percentage. But what REALLY finished it off for me was when it asked me if I had any individual items that I wanted to ensure over £1500. I said no. It asked if wanted to ensure any bikes away from the house. I said yes. It then took me to a new screen asking me to entire individuals items worth over £1500 or bikes over £150. I had none. Except it wouldn’t allow me not to enter something. What? Make up something I don’t own?

In the end I closed their site down and went elsewhere.