Yesterday afternoon, while contemplating whether I REALLY needed to go out into the cold for groceries, or gasp, miss the conclusion of where, oh where, could the Balloon Boy Falcon be, Frugal Fritz suggested I try using the online grocery and delivery service offered by IGA. I am very picky about my food, and I am even more picky about expiry dates. This would be an interesting experiment.

So I logged on to IGA.net and read the details of how my order would be processed. It all sounded pretty good to me, and I was happy to be able to include a note instructing my "shopper" that I would not accept items with expiry dates before a certain date, or requests about cuts of meat or any of my other picky quirks. So I signed up for an account, choosing a username and password and entering all my address and delivery information.

I quickly scanned the flyer and found several specials I was interested in, particularly the "Pork Loin Roast" which was on sale at 99¢ per pound. Wonderful! I figured I would need about 4-5 pounds for my recipe, but when I went to add it to the shopping cart, I realized you cannot add a weighted amount. There is no place for me to enter 5 pounds, or 2 kilograms. Instead, cuts of meat are meted out into portions. In the case of the pork loin roast, the portion was 0.25 kilograms. As such, if I want to order 5 pounds of pork loin roast, I needed to enter 10 portions. This also means that weighted products are affected by sorting by price, as the price being sorted is per portion, not per pound or kilogram.

In the meat department there are several cuts of meat that are not properly measured or portion. One that had a problem was the "Prime Rib Steak" which is 17.41$ per kilogram, and 4.40$ per portion. However, the portion section says that a portion is equal to 1 kilogram. So, if I order this, would I be getting 4.40$ (250 grams) worth of the prime rib steak or will I be getting the entire 1 kilogram? It is nice to have portions but they should also make an option to order simply by weight.

After my adventures in meat and poultry, the produce department was a little easier, but not always clear. Most of the produce is portioned out to give you the approximate cost per unit. For example, the granny smith apples are 1.49¢ per pound and one unit, 1 apple, will cost about 56¢. So instead of ordering 3 pounds of bananas, you are ordering 6 bananas. In other cases, such as when ordering beans or brussel sprouts, you are ordering a fixed "portion" of the items, but in most of the produce packaged that way, what that portion equals was not specified.

Next I visited the non-perishables, pre-packaged products and this is where the system really works well. You simply select how many of any item you would like, and you are done. You can sort by price, the per 100ml or 100 gram price is listed just below the total price on each item, making it easy to figure out if it is worth buying the larger size of an item, or if the smaller size is actually cheaper.

Once you have completed your order and select checkout you are taken to a screen where you are asked to enter your postal code and you are given a list of local IGA supermarkets that can complete your order. As well, you are asked to choose a delivery date and time (often only next day delivery is available).  Once you have booked your date and time, you select your method of payment, add any comments or requests and you are done. All there is to do now is be home when they come-a-knocking!

I finished placing my order just as we all found out that the Balloon Boy was never in the balloon and was in a box in the garage attic the entire time. Hmmm, I spent 2 hours watching a party balloon race across the sky over Colorado. Bah, I have wasted my time doing worse! Delivery would be just in time for lunch, before 11:00AM on October 16th.

I spent this morning reading the amazing balloon boy story, was it a hoax, vomiting, reality bites, and oodles of time wasting "gotta figure this out" news for me to delve into. This story was a procrastinator's dream! But then my phone rang at 10:15AM and Ginette informed me that I was out of the IGA delivery zone.

"Excuse me? I have had my groceries delivered from your store as recently as last month!", I exclaimed!
Ginette responded, "Well, the driver said he doesn't deliver there, call the head office" and then she gave me the head office number and promptly hung up.

I hate dealing with stuff like this, but I called the head office, only to be told that the final decision belongs to the store. She tried to give me some sort of explanation, but I was all storied out and simply asked her what I should do now, upset that their site never gave me any indication that I might be out of their delivery zone. I tried to explain to her that this store has delivered to my home when I have shopped there in the past and requested delivery. Then she told me that they could not deliver to my address, but I could pick-up the order myself, which is unacceptable to me.

I am generally not willing to fight to give my money to a company that does not seem to care whether I shop there or not, but Frugal Fritz insisted on calling the manager/store owner of this IGA location (Mr. Lefebvre) who seemed genuinely upset that our order was not processed and assured us that Ginette would be getting back to us shortly to arrange a delivery time. A few hours later, the groceries were delivered.

The produce arrived fresh, the expiry dates were all for November dates. The meats had been packaged today and looked fresh. There were a few missing items, but they were all produce and I can only assume that the items were not fresh enough, or they did not have them in stock. I never received a call about the missing items, and there was list of any sort, letting me know which items were not delivered with my order. That would have been a convenient thing to have.

Overall, my experience with the service, outside of the delivery issue, was a decent one. I would use the service again pinch, but I doubt I would use it regularly unless the website's usability was improved.