We’ve been having some interesting experiences with grocery pickups/delivery since this pandemic started.
We tend to alternate between Meijer and Mariano’s because of reasons that will become apparent shortly.
Meijer – Pros
– Meijer’s orders are handled by Shipt and their employees have been nothing short of awesome. They communicate very clearly, are friendly and efficient, and deserve every cent of the tip we give them. They let you know when they are shopping and text updates as they go.
– Once your order is complete you can see what you originally ordered vs what you actually were charged for.
– Everything is paid for online and you can rate and tip your shopper after picking up your order.
– The prices you pay are the actual store prices (at least from what I can tell, although we don’t get a Meijer receipt so I could be wrong about that).
Meijer – Cons
– The produce at Meijer isn’t the best quality.
– There’s a $5 pickup fee.
– If you’re not careful when editing your order, you might run into issues where items you thought were deleted from your cart are still there and items you thought were added are not.
– Sometimes the groceries are ready before/after your selected pickup time. The shopper can’t store them in a cooler so you have to be flexible about when you can get to the store.
Mariano’s Pros
– Their produce is very fresh/good.
– They keep waiving the $5 pickup fee.
– Even when they pick your order early (which they have done every time, by a few hours), they store it in coolers/freezers so nothing goes bad.
Mariano’s Cons
– They only tell you about substitutions after shopping your entire order.
– Mariano’s can’t text you so they call (if they call at all – we didn’t hear a thing on our very first order until it was time to pick up our groceries).
– They aren’t as conscientious as the Shipt people. Our last order included a bagged salad where most of the lettuce was already brown. It hadn’t yet reached expiration but I could see the rotten food even before opening the bag so they should have noticed it too. An order prior I asked for two cans of golden mushroom soup but I got one golden and one called beefy. Since it’s for a recipe I don’t want to mess with using something different that could affect the outcome.
– You have to pay to pay at your car and they don’t accept tips because everything is handled by their own employees. Also the person who brings out the groceries isn’t the one who shopped your order.
– Your original order is obliterated once they have fulfilled it so if you want to keep track of what was ordered vs what you got you need to PDF the order page ahead of time.
Last week we decided to try Target grocery delivery which is also handled by Shipt but through the Target website so we could pay with our Red Card (fun fact: Shipt is owned by Target). Our shopper was great, but for whatever reason we were charged $10 for delivery even though it showed as $0 as I was building the cart and even after placing the order. In fact, I checked the order during the time it was being shopped and it still said $0. I assumed it could see me logged into my Shipt account, or that they waive the delivery fee on the first order, so imagine my surprise when I got an email after the delivery showing we were charged $10. Frustrating! Equally frustrating was that when I called the wait time was over an hour. I ended up sending a message via their website. I will call again later this week if I don’t hear anything by then.
Update: I never heard back from Shipt so I called them and the woman was less than helpful. My friend suggested using the chat feature on the Target website so I did that and they agreed to refund me. I got half back to my Redcard and the other half back as a gift card, which I found strange, but whatever. I’m just happy they refunded me and now I know not to believe the site if it says the delivery is free.
I really cannot wait until this pandemic is over and I can shop for my own groceries again. In addition to the little errors the shoppers make, I myself keep making mistakes I wouldn’t make if I was at the store. I accidentally ordered chunky peanut butter instead of creamy and I ordered a really small tube of cinnamon rolls. Nothing earth-shattering, clearly, but just annoying.
Also, I really enjoy shopping for food. I just don’t feel comfortable with the potential exposure right now, although we are planning a trip to Costco later this week. I hope it goes ok. We drove past it today and they don’t seem to be limiting how many guests go inside anymore. I need to check their website to see what the latest protocol is.
Also also, we had to stop by the UPS Store today to process a handful of Amazon returns and while the employee was technically wearing a mask it does little good when it’s just hanging around their neck. The customer in front of us only had his mask over his mouth but not his nose. Now, I get they are super uncomfortable, but they are also useless if you’re not going to wear them the right way. /rant