Dialogue: At home in the e-supermarket

By GARTH GEORGE

One of the most onerous tasks of modern life has to be the weekly visit to the supermarket. It is certainly one my wife and I have long abhorred, with one of us having to spend far too much time every Friday in one of those wearisome temples of today's avid consumerism.

Then one day a few months ago a colleague mentioned in passing that his groceries had been late arriving at his home the evening before because of an accident on the Harbour Bridge and some of the produce had spoiled.

"How come you get your groceries delivered?" I inquired. "We shop at Woolworths on the Internet," said he.

So I quizzed him at some length on the pros and cons of this recent development. And when I related the conversation that evening to my wife, her eyes lit up and she headed off post haste to the study to fire up the computer.

Because our Internet provider is Telecom's grossly inefficient, snail-like and temperamental Xtra (it came with the computer), it took some time to locate www.woolworths.co.nz. None of the local search engines seemed to recognise that address, but my favourite international server, Yahoo!, pulled it in in the blink of an eye.

Woolworths' home page invited us in as guests and thus began our first adventure into Internet shopping. "Select a department," it told us; then "select an isle; then "select a shelf." So I clicked on "breakfast," then on "bacon," then on "middle bacon," and there before our eyes were illustrated 19 different brands and/or packets of my favourite breakfast food.

And all I had to do was click on "buy" and that product was instantly inserted into my "trolley" along with the quantity and price.

So we progressed through milk and butter and cheese and bread, soap powder and tissues, fruit and vegetables and meat and poultry, cigarettes and lighter fluid and everything else you could want. Each time we clicked "buy" that item was added to our trolley, all the time giving us a running total of our purchases. It looked like the best thing since sliced bread.

Nevertheless, we had reservations. What about, particularly in the meat, vegetables and fruit selections, not being able to see, feel and choose the best? We decided, however, to give it a try - until we came across the fact that payment must be made by direct debit. That gave us pause, because we have refused for years to let any business have access to our bank accounts.

Eventually we decided that since we initiated the debit each time we shopped, it wasn't the same as letting a firm like Telecom or Mercury Energy or Sky TV take a whack of our money with monotonous regularity. Thus we became Internet shoppers and have been now for some months. We are absolutely delighted with the service.

Gone are the days of traipsing round the aisles, searching for one product stacked among hundreds of different others, having to backtrack for items missed, tripping over crotchety children and bumping into their harried mothers, all the time bombarded by every impulse-buying trick in the book; then standing interminably in a queue at the checkout before having the operator ask you what a parsnip is so he or she can ring it up.

Instead, one of us spends about an hour comfortably browsing through the Woolworths Website, choosing what we need and filling our electronic trolley. And it takes less and less time as we become more familiar with the site, which even stores a list of the necessities we buy each week that can be put in the trolley (and modified to suit) at one click of the mouse.

So far we have no complaints at all with the quality of the produce we have received, since we are able to make specific requests ("large, partly green bananas please; meat must be leanest") that are transmitted with the order.

Everything arrives by courier van on a day and at a time specified and is carefully packed in large, plastic-wrapped cardboard trays, except the chilled and frozen goods which come in plastic bags transported in a chiller compartment in the courier van.

And for this we pay a loading of just $15 which must cover the receipt, assembly, packing and delivery of the order. It's cheap at twice the price.

Remember the days when we used to ring up the local grocer and butcher, read off our order - and wait for the boy to arrive with it on a bike with the carrier on the front?

garthgeorge@herald.co.nz

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