The mess that is sainsburys.co.uk (updated July 2026)

I shop weekly with Sainsbury’s. Specifically, I get a grocery delivery sent to home. But, I have to say, the experience is incredibly painful, due to how poor their website is. In this post, I’m going to demonstrate a few things about it, giving details of what the frustration is. It will show bad UI, performance and bugs.

I originally wrote this in early 2024 and, I’m happy to say, some of the issues have been resolved. Some haven’t, though, and some new ones have turned up. So this post has been given a fresh update, as of July 2026.

I’ll be using Safari but can confirm that the same problems occur in Chrome too.

Creating my next order

Sainsbury’s let you create orders many weeks in advance, so every week I go in and add another, as it’s made available (before the pandemic, I just had one for next week but, when Covid hit, found all the future ones fully booked – I now book as many out in advance as I can).

Issue 1 – Please login twice

As booking a slot if something I do each week, I have a simple shortcut to the login screen saved so that I can log in quickly and do this… https://account.sainsburys.co.uk/gol/login

Except, it lets me login, asks me what kind of delivery I want – I choose “home delivery” – and it then makes me log in. Again.

As a developer, it looks like it’s because, when you click on the “log in” button on their main screen, they pass on some additional information. This expires quickly so prompts it to force you to log in again.

So, for those paying attention at the back, the URL to use is… https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/oauth/login

This adds all the additional “gubbins” onto the URL and allows you to book a slot without an additional login. However, it doesn’t take you straight to booking a delivery, so adds additional steps into this. The fact that Sainsbury’s has so many different login URLs shows how patched together the site is – bookmark the wrong thing and it just won’t work as you’d expect it to.

Issue 2: Booking a slot

When you go to now book a lot for your delivery, again the UI fails. You can scroll down the page to see the various times available over the next week. There’s also a button that lets you advance to the next week. Sadly, scroll down and that latter button disappears off the screen. So, if you’re looking for a booking, you may end up scrolling down, scrolling up, moving on a week, etc. The headings don’t scroll and remained locked into place – so why not the week button as well?

Here’s a screenshot of the screen before scrolling and once you have…

I particularly like how their “feedback” button overlays onto a clickable part of the screen (sigh).

And when it comes to Christmas, they open up a separate section in advance for those. Sadly, I wasn’t able to capture screenshots this year of it, but let’s just say it’s a jumbling mess, which I got hopeless lost in.

Selecting a date and time has rarely been made more difficult.

Issue 3: Now what?

You’ve booked your slot and now you’ve got this screen…

Yes, you’re back to the grocery screen (with the handy “Book delivery” option now appearing, once you’ve done one and therefore the ONE TIME you don’t actually need it). All done, right? Log off and call it a day?

But read the text in the sidebar. You have 2 hours to reserve it. What? How? Well, that’s it – you just have to know. They could have sent you to a helpful screen at this point but, no, this is it.

You have to put items in your basket now until you get to a minimum value (not shown) and then checkout. All within the next 2 hours, or you loose the slot you booked.

Issue 4: Favourites

Sainsbury’s lets you maintain a list of favourite items, making it easier (theoretically) to add regular items into your basket. But there are a few issues even with this basic idea.

The favourites screen lists all of the items one-by-one (see the screenshot in Issue 6) in a grid-like pattern.

What constitutes a favourite? Apparently, just buying an item once does. I bought some beef this week – the first time I’d bought this particular product. It’s now shown as a favourite. On the flip-side, you get a warning screen when trying to un-favourite an item and have to click a button to confirm it.

And do you know what a favourite definitely isn’t? Something that Sainsbury’s has been paid to add to your list. Sadly, they do this and you’ll find your otherwise helpful list of favourites peppered with products that you didn’t add. See if you can spot it here…

Issue 5: Your usual, sir?

Sainsbury’s have (relatively) recently added a feature to help you out – a “your usual” option that adds into your basket all of the items that you usually buy. When booking a delivery ahead of time this is useful as you can’t “check out” until it’s hit a certain value (and recently that value has gone up). Rather than go through your favourites one at a time this would be a great way to quickly fill your basket with the items you always buy.

Except, it’s pretty terrible. It adds, I’d say, about 80% of the items I regularly buy, but leaves a number off for no apparent reason.

And… and… this is my favourite “feature” of it… it defaults to 1 of everything, no matter how many you usually buy. Normally buy 2 milk and 7 oranges? It will give you 1 of each. Worst is that when an item can be bought by quantity or weight – so, let’s say, you usually buy 1kg of mushrooms, it will default when using “your usual” to a quantity of 1. But, because at a glance, it says 1, which is what you usually get it, it’s easy to miss you’re now going to get a single mushroom rather than a whole kilogram of them.

Issue 6: No, you can’t buy that

A recent issue is that you simply can’t buy some of the items that they’re selling. You click on the “add” button and nothing happens. The same happens in the mobile app but, at least there it gives you an error message to go with it. Not that it helps…

Trying again doesn’t help. I’ve tried different browsers and different devices and it’s the same.

I raised it with Sainsbury’s an they just told me to clear cache & cookies (which is the stock answer for everything). Of course that doesn’t explain the app doing the same thing.

I’ve come across quite a few items that do this.

Issue 7: Checking out

We’ve created an order and filled our basket. The site has crashed a couple of times but we’re there. Checking out should be easy.

But first, Sainsbury’s wants to throw a few screens at you. 4 to be precise.

1. “Before you go” – a big list of items you haven’t bought but they’d like to recommend to you. I’ve never added anything from this list.
2. “Forgot your favourites?” – they’ll show some of the favourites that you haven’t added. You probably missed them because of how badly presented they are.
3. “Checkout” – you can finally pay. If you’re amending an existing order then you’ve already provided payment details. Why do you have to go through confirming all this again?
4. “We’ve got your order”

I understand they want that first one there to try and push additional products, but to have this as part of many screen is still. Two horizontal sliders with recommendations and missed favourite all on one screen, followed by check-out options would put all the same information in front of the customer but with less clicks.

As it is, with their performance issues, splitting all of this across multiple pages makes the whole thing even more painful.

Issue 8: Which payment method?

Every-so-often (so, not every time), when checking out my delivery it doesn’t up with my saved payment method and says I need to add one before I can continue. Wait a beat and it then appears and all is good.

It seems the payment details can be slow to load but the rest of the site is not realising and responding to it too early.

In conclusion

Sainsbury’s need to do a number of things here, which I’ll present in order of where I see the priority needs to be…

1. Simplify the login process and make sure you have a single login URL which can be easily bookmarked by customers
2. Buying something once does not make it a “favourite”. If you’re going to automate the process (customers can already add a favourite manually), make it customer-definable (e.g. something in settings where you can say how many times you have to buy it before it becomes that)
3. Improve the “your usual” option – it’s a great idea but, currently, poorly executed. Make sure all regular items are added and that quantities and/or weight is properly added
4. Add instructions for what to do once you book a slot
5. Fix the bug that prevents you from adding some items to your basket
6. Simplify the check-out process
7. Make sure you don’t complain about a lack of a payment method simply because your site hasn’t yet fully loaded it