I finally tried this whole ordering groceries online bit. [# ^[1]] Incredibly lazy or just really tapped into convenience?–I haven’t decided. Here’s my take on it:

• I hadn’t really found a real big reason to use either Safeway.com ^[2]’s service or Amazon Fresh ^[3] (except after the first delivery, Safeway.com charges you $9.95 and Amazon Fresh is free as long as you spend more than $25 or $50). I wrote a list of approximately 25 items, then went through and selected all items on both sites to see which was cheaper. Amazon Fresh come out approximately $4 cheaper, however, I was unfamiliar with most of the brands I was ordering, which bugged me (a bit silly, I know). So, I went with Safeway.com

• I know you’ve all gone to the grocery store with the intention of spending $50 and you end up spending $100. I feel like I do this every time. So, it was incredibly nice to monitor the amount of money I was spending on items in my “cart,” and ultimately decide to put stuff back I didn’t really need such as banana chocolate fudge dreamy pudding.
• Searching each category by price makes it real quick to find the milk, bread, etc. that is on sale. You can also search with the Club Card savings items listed at the top. It was quick and easy to be a savvy shopper.
• When the grocery delivery guy arrives, he actually wheels all the groceries into your house and puts them in your kitchen! No carrying bags from your car in multiple trips! I found this to be above and beyond customer service. It also made me feel like I’d gone from lazy to incredibly lazy.
• You don’t need to tip the driver. I asked. Unfortunately, it’s against company policy and they can lose their jobs for accepting tips. But, you’re allowed to give them a “good review” on the Web site. Good to know.
• I was bothered that I wasn’t able to pick out my own produce–the biggest green pepper, the firmest tomatoes (I hate soft tomatoes), one ripe and maybe one not so ripe avocado to save for later. You get what they pick out.
• They substitute things for you, even though I clicked “NO substitutions” when finalizing my order. I don’t know why they substituted, but I got Jenny-O turkey bacon instead of Oscar Mayer turkey bacon. Call me nutso, but this is probably the one thing I didn’t want substituted. The two brands are a huge difference and the Jenny-O turkey bacon is quite awful, in my opinion.
• If they don’t have something, you don’t get it. And you’re not able to make a smart replacement decision. (Such as I ordered precut broccoli in a bag, which they were out of. But they just didn’t give me broccoli heads instead, which is what I would have done if I were at the grocery store.)
• For some odd reason, they bagged everything in separate bags–one bag for the ground turkey, one bag for the onions, one bag for the coffee creamer, one bag for the shredded cheese. After unpacking my groceries, I had effectively doubled by collection of plastic bags, which is obviously not great for the environment.

In conclusion, it was nice and not nice to order my groceries online–definitely not worth ever paying a delivery charge, in my opinion. Perhaps I’ll continue to do it if I can cheat the system a figure out a way to get free delivery each time. Hmmm…