Stairs? We still want online shopping delivered to the door
Do you order from Sainsbury’s online and live on the first floor? If so, you may find yourself carrying your own shopping up the stairs from now on. The question is, will this force you to take your custom elsewhere?
Sainsbury’s has told delivery staff that if customers live on the first floor and there’s no lift they can leave your shopping at the bottom of the stairs. This is ‘to ensure the health and safety of our customers and drivers are protected’.
Although Sainsbury’s rules don’t dictate this so you may find they’ll accommodate you, which makes the whole thing a bit of a lottery. But as an avid online shopper who lives on the first floor I’ll be ordering elsewhere from now on.
The more we shop online the more the fault lines between the ‘go out of their way’ companies and the ‘barely going far enough’ companies develop. And this definitely isn’t limited to supermarkets.
My John Lewis bed was delivered on time and, as I was staring at it in bewilderment, also assembled for me – a clear case of going the extra mile in the name of good service.
But many companies aren’t like this – we’ve heard stories about parcels left out in the rain, left with neighbours you don’t speak to and even thrown over fences. None of this necessarily thwarts the convenience of online shopping but it’s not improving the experience either.
What’s your worst delivery experience? Do you think Sainsbury’s should deliver to your door or are we expecting too much from the poor delivery staff?
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Han
I use Ocado and Tesco online. Tesco are v mixed – if they are running late you might not hear about it and sometimes they can’t locate the drivers ! (I nearly had beans on toast for christmas day because of this – but in the end they came through for me).
As for bringing it to your door – I live on the SECOND floor with no life. Tesco and Ocado drivers have always obliged ALTHOUGH I was told off by a Tesco driver a couple of weeks ago who said I should write on my delivery instructions that I am on the 2nd floor witout a lift, as they are NOT ALLOWED to carry shopping over a certain weight upstairs…. so will prob be going for Ocado all the time now…
Han
I of course meant no lift – not no life!!
Mrs JA Morris
I use Tesco’s every week. Almost all of the delivery drivers are very good and bring my shopping through to my kitchen for me. I do live in a house and I am mobility impaired. However, I used to always use ASDA. They were great. Price wise and delivery drivers. But Christmas 2009 I had made my order to be delivered 24th Dec and it was accepted by ASDA. But, on the evening of the 23rd approx 8.30pm I received a telephone call to say that they would not be delivering my order as they could not access the computer. I asked if another store could, or maybe I could telephone my order to the store but was told I couldn’t do this. That was it, they just left me with nothing. It was only due to a friend that I was able to get any shopping at all. I wrote to their MD but never received a reply. Needless to say ASDA have never had a single penny from me since.
Nick
I came home to find that John Lewis (yes, you read that right: John Lewis) had dumped the new pocket-sprung mattress in the hall & scarpered. According to my partner, who did the waiting in, they never offered…
terry
I use Waitrose to deliver where I live now (1st floor) and have used Tesco and Sainsbury’s at a previous address on the 3rd floor with no problems at all. That said I live in an old tenement building in Glasgow and this style of building, with no lifts (they are Victorian buildings), are extremely common in Scottish cities.
John Lewis have delivered a washing machine and actually attached the pipes for me too – they offered! When I ordered some white goods for my kitchen (oven, fridge freezer and cooker hood) from a company in England I did warn them about the style of building and that they would need to deliver to the 1st floor with no lift. I mentioned this right at the start of the negotiations on price and they simply accounted for it. I still got a cheaper price than I could find anywhere else and that included the delivery.
I have noticed that one of the Waitrose delivery guys carries all my shopping up in one trip and the others make a couple of trips. I know they aren’t meant to carry it all at once as I asked one time when I had bought wine and bottled water – I knew how heavy that was going to be!
Stuart B
I use Tesco,Asda and also Sainsbury for online groceries and also live on a second floor of a Glasgow tenement and have nver had any problems .The guys either bring it up by carrying the bags or the bags are in crates . Any other couriers also bring parcels up and I would expect them to as do washing machine,fridhe and furniture deliveries .The only businesses that might not do it are Builders Merchants for stuff like Timber and plasterboard …even B+Q brought 8′x 4′ plasterboard sheets up …single handedly as well I should add…
Nikki Whiteman
I think that you should be able to specify if you need the goods delivered to your door. There may be many who, while they can live on the first or second floor of a block, may well have issues carrying heavy shopping all the way up the stairs. It does seem really annoying when companies issue a blanket ‘no, we won’t do it’, when others seem to have no problem.
As far as I’m concerned, if a company does a ‘home delivery’ service, they should provide just that – delivery to your home, whether that’s your doorstep or your living room depending on the item.
Just after I moved into my flat I experienced two of the worst deliveries ever. One: a freezer, for which I’d paid extra so they’d take the new one to the right place in my flat, and warned them that they’d have to take it down a flight of stairs into the cellar. Cue two delivery drivers tutting and sighing on arrival, telling me I was ‘fussy’ and ‘out of order’ and then bashing chunks of plaster out of my walls with the freezer to show their displeasure.
The other delivery was for two sofas, again I’d paid extra to have someone help me get them inside (I’m strong, but carrying a sofa on my own is beyond me), only to find that the driver didn’t have time in his busy schedule, so he just dumped them on the pavement. In the rain.
So yes, home delivery should mean ‘into my home.’ I don’t live on the pavement. Hmph.
Hobson2000
As a delivery driver each week myself or a collegue is expected to deliver to an address. The delivery contains very few groceries but many bulky items, water and alcohol in cans & bottles. Today it totalled 80Kg in 10 trays and the customer, who offers no assistance whatsoever lives on the 4th floor of a block of flats with no lift. This requires at leat 3 trips up and down the stairs. One trip up is bad enough with 2 trays if shopping but at least 3 each week without offering to lend a hand.
To add insult to injury & breathlessness the cowstomer complained that I trucked the delivery into the building leaving it between trips where it could be stolen. B?%*}H
Paul Clough
I’m afraid John Lewis must be slipping as we had two single beds delivered to our new home. Although they did carry the beds upstairs to the rooms, they weren’t assembled.
When I sked if they would be assembling the beds they said “we aren’t M&S” (M&S do assemble furniture and beds).
Worst experience has been with Royal Mail, one time they delivered a parcel (market ‘glass – fragile’) and my wife answered the door carrying our two week old son. When she asked if they coudl place the parcel on the ground he threww it past her onto the floor.
Again with Royal Mail, when delivering photographs marked very clearly do not bend, they promptly bent the envelop to get it through the letter box!
delivery driver
I find it amazing that in this day and age where health and safety of everyone is looked after that you guys don’t care about drivers. who have perhaps ten to twenty deliveries in two to three hours and some of those deliveries are ten or more crates. No of course not. withhold your business until the driver has to walk up eight flights four times to get your shopping to you. Nor does the supermarket care either. They just want your business and care as much as you do about the driver. But what am i saying silly me. They are all low paid workers who cares about them. They do these jobs rather than be on the dole, not getting much more than if they stayed at home. So go on keep this kind of behavior going. Force the supermarkets to ignore our health.
I wonder what you guys, each and every one of you would do if people were trying to force YOUR health and safety to one side.
Kind Regards
Humble Driver
N
Mr Driver – you should be trained in safe handling techniques and supplied with carts which can be taken up stairs or whatever is needed to do the job safely. A lot of people who are mobility impaired rely on deliveries and lets be honest, there are safe ways of getting goods in and out of houses without breaking your back. The employer should be dealing with this and until they do consumers will vote with their wallets and choose the company who do proper deliveries.
NickP
Your John Lewis bed was assembled in front of you? Golly! MY John Lewis mattress was dumped in the hall, with no documentation on mattress-case nor advice on how to get the best from it.
John Lewis is JUST AS VARIABLE as anyone else, in my experience.
N
cindy brown
I have just read all the comments on this hom shopping well i am adriver who works for tesco home shopping and i get very angry with this grey area of flats. I have been doing this job since it started and over the years most new builds are flats with no lifts,now they were not a problem before because people did not drink masses of bottled water or order masses of multi pack cokes just as an example it is hard and when you get customers waiting up the top of the stairs and your greeted with remarks like bet you dont have to go to a gym or is it heavy and then they laugh well we have a few customers that live up the top and insist on coming down with bags to take their shopping and they tell us that they are grateful they dont have to walk around the store and we bring it to them and there is no need to struggle up stairs.most peolpe dont look at the safety of the driver and just their own needs yes its a job but is it worth knackering your back for then if your off sick or have to leave because of injury then your in the wrong.I have done it for nearly ten years but i will be leaving it within the next 18mths as my back and my hands are now suffering.The door should be the front door where the buzzer is and everyone should bring their bags down and take their shoppin up in their time.There is no extra time for these drops either so please people give us a thought instead of your own all the time.
Abby
The problem here is not the drivers or customers its the supermarket! I am 30 weeks pregnant and live in a third floor flat. I cant carry all my shopping any more so i decided to shop on line with ADSA.
The driver should be told whether he SHOULD or SHOULD NOT deliver to upper floor properties and the customer should be told ( when booking a slot on line ) that drivers either DO or DONT deliver to upper floors.
ASDA do not say deliveries to upper floors are not possible. My delivery came this morning, I wondered why the guy was waiting down stairs when I had let him into the flat entrance. He eventually came up, I said id help but I cant as im heavily pregnant, he just replied, ” yeah, well, im not supposed to be lifting all this up here its health and safety”. He was very rude, slammed the crates down infront of me and because nothing was put in bags I had to unpack everything individually while he just stood there waiting. I didnt even get a goodbye!
I have complained aboiut the attitude of this man, but ive also complained to ASDA about the fact that I should have been told.
Abby
Derby
tracey legg
Hi there every one I live in a flat and it is third floor i get my shopping from tesco every week and i m happy with it, when the driver buzzes i tell them to wait there or come inside if its raining and i meet them downstairs with my own bags . so i get extra points for no bags and get my shopping to my door. it is not right and totally unfair to have these people struggling up to an interior door when we have an entry system also they cant hold on to the railings to come up or down because of the crates they would be carring and i dont want to have someone,anyone falling down and breaking their backs, necks or anything else just to bring me my shopping. Its about time people started to help each other it is heavy and its not fair to them people are just getting more selfish and have no thoughts for others.
magda
I think the standard delivery should be to YOUR door, be it a house door or a flat door. I would not expect a groceries’ driver to dump the bags at the end of the drive because their van doesn’t fit in nor I would expect them to be dumped downstairs if I lived in a flat (though I or my husband always help the driver to carry the grocery stuff from the van anyway, standing at the top of the stairs and laughing seems very crass to me). With heavy items there is often an extra charge, and on flat there are trolleys etc. So the main issue seems to be groceries in flats without a lift. As somebody already said it should be up to the company to deal with that. It’s appalling that for example there is no extra time allowed for these drops, there should be extra time so things could be carried bit by bit without a rush. But at the end of the day nothing that a supermarket sells should be impossible to carry by a fit person and people with back problems shouldn’t take jobs as delivery drivers. I also think that there should be a specific question on the order form whether it’s a flat or a house and how much carrying will be involved. I also think that people in flats without a lift should not be allowed to order bagless deliveries unless they carry it themselves as it’s completely unreasonable to expect a driver to carry a crate-full upstairs!
ObiWanJabronE
I live on the first floor in a flat. I used to use Sainsbury’s because their website was the easiest to browse. However, when they stopped bringing my shopping upstairs I stopped using them. I am registered blind, so it’s difficult for me to do it myself. I now use ASDA, which you can specify special instructions to them on your account page. Despite me contacting Sainsbury’s, and telling them about my situation, the response I kept getting was “Its up to the drivers discretion”. Never had a problem with ASDA since I switched over to using them. I always make sure I’m polite to the driver because I know, at the end of the day some of them don’t want to carry it upstairs, which is understandable if they’ve got other deliveries to do. I even let them know if there are any items which are too heavy, to just leave it at the bottom of the stairs, and I’ll let a family member know they need to help me. They never do leave anything at the bottom of the stairs.
If ASDA, or any other online grocery had an extra cost to bring your shopping upstairs, I’d gladly pay them extra. For me personally, them doing it is a really, really big help, and I always let them know I appreciate it.
homeshop dvr
I delliver homeshopping for a living, I dont mind delivering to flats upstairs as I do everyday, however I tend to find when we deliver to cusomers thatlive in flats and live 2nd 3rd and 4th floors that their shopping comes in about 6 to 8 totes and there are always at least 20 litres of water/coke etc which is heavy in itself.I understand the customer wants it but ifyou live in a flat there should be a limit on what you order as we are the ones who have to carry it up.IT does my head in when the cusomer just stands at the doorwatching me strugle and then replies thats why I do homeshopping so I dont have to carry itup.
Silvia Gomez
I have been shopping from Tesco and Asdas for home delivery for 3-4 years and eveything was fine. Lastly I have been having problems with the drivers to bring my weekly delivery up to the 2nd floor no lift, I always give the drivers a tip after completing the delivery as I understand the effort but they complain first and ask me to come down to help them out.
I have a bad back and that is why a shop online but what is the point of paying for a delivery order if I have to carry the bags myself from the grounfloor?
I have tried with Sainsbury’s to find out if the service was better but on my 3rd delivery the driver complained as accorking to his policy he is not obliged to carry the groceries above a 1st floor.
I would not mind to pay extra for a delivery to my floor but it looks like these giant supermarkets do not have the needs of some customers into account.
Not sure what my next step will be, I am working full time, 2 kids and my husband has an injury in his back as well. Thinking about giving a try to Ocado and buy a fllter jug to avoid upsetting drivers carrying my water.