Usually I pick up bits of shopping during the week, from Woolworths. I buy stuff at lunchtime, then take it home on the bus, along with my heavy laptop and other bags. So I thought I’d experiment with home delivery from Woolworths.

Friday two weeks ago was my first time. I went to the Customer Service desk and asked how to do home delivery. They said to just tell the guy at the checkout.
So I shopped, bought all the bulky, heavy stuff that I usually can’t carry on the bus, and went to the checkout.
It took about 20 minutes, with annoyed customers behind me in the queue, while the checkout guy fumbled with the computer, stickers, and bags. Entering the data on the screen took the longest. Plus the pathetic plastic card that is almost impossible to write on. I shopped at 1pm, and had hoped for the shopping to be delivered by the time the kids got home from school. It didn’t happen until after 5pm, so they didn’t have the snack treats I had planned, but I thought that was just unlucky.

Last Friday I tried again. Again, shopped at 1pm, buying heavy drinks, bulky cereal, and chocolate for dinner. A little slow at the checkout. The checkout guy asked for my name and address again, which was surprising given that they had my customer number and details online, but I gave it to him. Still pretty slow at checkout, but I did warn the people behind me in the queue.
Really hoped it would arrived before 5pm, so the kids could enjoy a snack.

I got home at 530pm. No shopping. Gave them a bit more time.
Rang Woolworths at 6pm. They said it was on the way. I gave them my name and address again.

8:45pm. No shopping. Where’s our chocolate and drinks for the pizza? Pretty pathetic.
Rang Woolworths – they said they were waiting for me to ring, as the only details they had were “Christine”.
Had no idea that I’d rung at 6pm – the customer service girl had proved inept.
They tracked down the delivery guy, who had ended up taking my groceries home. They said he would deliver by 9am Saturday.
At least we will have cereal for breakfast.

Saturday, 9:45am. No shoppping.
Rang Woolworths. Hm, can’t contact delivery guy. Even his wife can’t reach him. Has he run off with my shopping? It must be desperation.

Saturday 10:15. The shopping finally arrives. Shall we trust shopping that has been at someone else’s place overnight?

Woolworths failure points:
1. Customer service should setup the account, rather than take 20 minutes at checkout.
2. Cheap plastic cards with customer number written in pen on plastic surface.
3. Hopelessly slow computer system to setup account.
4. A week later, even with a customer number, it still takes 10 minutes to checkout. Do the staff need training guys?
5. Despite giving my name and address at checkout, they still can’t enter it into the system. Even after having delivered it the week before.
6. They load it onto a delivery truck without having a delivery address.
7. Customer service doesn’t write down my address and phone, even when a problem is known to exist.
8. Allowing a delivery person to take personal shopping home.

Do I give them another chance, or just go straight to Coles from now on.

If only my brother-in-law wasn’t senior management, and his three kids all working at Woolies……

The logical first step was to search for my own sites. Especially those that rank well at the traditional major search engines.

sydney web design – www.sydney-web-design.com managed page 6 at cuil. Pity they couldn’t find the right web site image to display. Not sure why they displayed ireckon’s instead. Fail.

online shopping australia – gee, it displayed my old domain, best-australian.com, on page 1. Shucks, it even had my own content. Strange though. That content hasn’t existed since November 2007. Is that when they spidered it? The new owner only has crap ads. Fail.

mydogspace – well the .com.au doesn’t get a mention for a few pages. Strange. It’s number 1 at Google. And you’d have to say pretty relevant. Fail.

halloween australia – Cuil displays my sydney-web-design site. Cos I list my halloween site in my portfolio. Pity they didn’t have enough nous to display the actual relevant site. Fail.

Even more annoying is the way the data appears on my screen. I have a modest 17 inch screen. The bottom few rows of Cuil don’t fit on my screen, and I have to page down all the time. And the links to the next search results are so small you miss them at first.

Getting close to epic fail cuil guys.