What You've Missed with Coles/Woolworths Click and Collect

Whether you are on Centrelink or you are corporate high flyer, everyone has to do their groceries. The question nowadays is, how do you do your groceries? Of course there is the traditional way of shopping in person at your local supermarket. However, the supermarket giants have been offering two new ways to shop which are an answer to the internet shopping revolution upon us.

There is the delivery which is pretty self explanatory. You have your groceries delivered to your door around the time that you request them to be delivered from their website. Then there is the usual $100 minimum order if you want your shopping delivered which is a bit more than the usual weekly grocery bill for most households. 

However, many people have not taken up "click and collect". This is the service where you order your groceries online and the store will collate your order so that you can pick it up in store. Click and collect is free but there is a minimum order required. For Coles, the minimum order is $50 and for Woolworths it is $30. 

We have been using this service for quite a while with mixed results. Each time, it would take about 5-10 minutes of waiting around for the staff to get your order from the back of the supermarket. The advantage of this approach is that it even factoring in the wait, you do save some time and you don't buy a lot of the impulse purchases you normally end up with when you're cruising the aisles. Also, if they get the order wrong (which they do!) you can rectify it straight away. The other advantage is that we often receive more than what we ordered because when you order vegetables, fruit, meat or poultry, you pay for a minimum weight so the store has to supply at least that weight of the product. Often they would have to go significantly over when stocking the goods. For example, we ordered a 400gm steak and got a 600g steak for the price of 400gm. There is also no need to wait around for the delivery driver. 

The disadvantages? You can't order online some of those markdown specials that happen when items are closer to expiry. Also, the terms and conditions for click and collect suggest that if you forgot to pick up your order, you could end up being fined! From the Woolworths website, we see this 

If you do not collect your grocery order within the booked collection window then we may charge you a fee of up to $25 and and the cost of any perishable items (e.g. fresh fruits and vegetables) will apply. In this instance, we will endeavour to contact you or you may contact us to arrange for collection at a different time, and we may charge you an additional fee for that replacement order.

So having said all that, how will you do your next grocery run? Are you going to click and collect? Or are you sticking with the traditional pick and pay?