A few home truths: What Asda could learn from Tesco

No wonder Tesco are making so much more money that their rivals. While their home food delivery service has not always been 100% perfect in my experience it has certainly been a lot better than Asda.

Take this weekend's fiasco. Having ordered food from Asda on Thursday (mainly because they sent me a free delivery offer) it duly turns up at the appointed time on Friday. But because the delivery guys are fast in and out I did not get the chance to completely check that all items had been delivered.

As it turns out almost 20 items were missing. This was all the more infuriating given that we had guests staying this weekend.

On Sunday I speak to a nice man at Asda customer services who took a note of all missing items. (This did take a frustrating 30 minutes but he was patient and polite and so I did not get too annoyed.) He told me that someone from my local store would call shortly to arrange a redelivery.

Monday lunchtime and still there is no call from Asda. So I call their customer service line again. Another nice person and another apology (and they took note of another item I noticed was missing). This time I asked for some compensation for my troubles and they offered another free delivery. Yeh, like I'm going to order from Asda again. Anyway...

An hour or so later a person from my local Asda does indeed call.. but only to ask for the full list of missing items. And that's when I begin to get a little angry. I explained that I'd already spent 30 mins on the phone yesterday going over the list of missing items and that I now Simply Expected The Items To Be Delivered ASAP. And what about compensation? Apparently they hadn't thought about this.

Well, perhaps Asda should take note of Tesco's policy. Only once in 2 years of fairly regular Tesco deliveries have I had any missing tems. When this happened Tesco immediately sorted a redelivery and refunded the cost of these items. Fair enough, I'd say, given that customer loyalty is vital for a thriving business.

So now it's four days after my Asda delivery and I still do not have the missing items. They should arrive tomorrow sometime between 9am and 1pm.

A few minutes ago the girl from Asda might called me back. Apparently they do not offer any compensation other than a free delivery on my next shopping. So that's another home delivery customer you've lost ... and one that will be ordering from Tesco next time.