Safeway Rolls Out Online Shopping (in DC)
 

Safeway Rolls Out Online Shopping
New Service Competes With Giant's Peapod
By Dina ElBoghdady
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 19, 2005; Page D01

Safeway Inc., the Washington area's second-largest supermarket chain, has begun offering its online shopping and delivery service in the region, bringing new competition to a service that has made only limited inroads with consumers.

The new Safeway.com service was rolled out quietly two weeks ago, and an announcement is scheduled for today as the company begins to promote it.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...091800841.html

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I've been using Safeway delivery here in SF for a couple years. It's pretty satisfactory, if you can stand their crappy produce.

My wife and I have used peadpod.com (associated with Giant Grocery stores) for a while now. I don't think we'll be trying safeway out anytime soon, but I was glad to hear there is competition from another major chain. We go to the brick and mortar safeway occasionally, since it's closest to our apartment right now.

We're using Safeway.com for delivery, and getting our produce from New Seasons Market on the way home a couple times per week. Probably more expensive overall, but well worth it.

This is similar to the system that worked for us in San Fran. We ordered the heavy stuff from Safeway.com and stopped at the store for produce. All in all it worked very well.

On weird thing, though, about safeway.com when we were using it was the odd "out of stocks." I'd order on the web, see nothing about something being out of stock, and then when the delivery would show up items would be missing. Sometimes a significant number of things.

I'd also have to say that the customer service by e-mail was horrendous.

We have had that here too. It's annoying to order maple-and-brown-sugar oatmeal and receive a carton of assorted instead (including oatmeal with raisins! *shudder*).


Haven't yet had that experience, but we might if I get any more oatmeal with raisins!

I do find that if you check the "no substitutions" box for an item they will honor that.

I made a mistake ordering online one time that I certainly wouldn't have made in person. Ever seen what 10lbs of dried cranberries looks like? That's more dried cranberries than I'll eat in 10 years. I meant to order 1lb....

Plus, they're nasty. Very very very sweet, don't taste like cranberries at all. Even my macaw won't eat them.

We have http://www.freshdirect.com here in NYC. It is simply DA BOMB now that both I and the wife work crazy hours.