My Experience Buying Groceries Online with Tesco Malaysia Delivery

Please forgive the pear at the back for being there.

It was back in September 2017 that I first bought groceries online. Tesco came up in one of my searches and I was sold on the fact that I could choose the delivery time down to a 2-hour timeframe.

The process was simple enough just like any other online shopping. I’m the type to read all the FAQs first so that I know what to expect.

What I Love

- As stated above, you can choose a 2-hour timeframe of when you want Tesco to make a delivery; specifically when you want the groceries to reach you. Tesco delivers from 8 am to 10 pm; and if you know you’re going to be home, say,  around 2 pm you can book a 12 pm - 2 pm timeslot or a 1 pm - 3 pm timeslot. I cannot stress enough how this is very convenient and how I wish every delivery service provider would be able to do this. What this means is that you can get ready to wait for your delivery. What this means is that, within that 2 hours, you can expect the delivery guy to be there with your stuff. Can you imagine? It’s not within the day; they haven’t given you the delivery date but the exact time up to a couple of hours. So far they have only once delivered outside of the booked timeframe, but even then it was only a few minutes off.

Book your delivery before the slots become unavailable.

- They don’t usually give you a call before they arrive, though the very first time the guy was early so he gave me a call and luckily I was at home to receive the groceries.

- If you change your mind after placing an order, you can change - add/delete items or cancel - your order by 11 pm the same day or before the order is due [you can place an order three weeks in advance].

- After making your initial purchase, all of your items will be available for repurchase in your ‘My Favourites’ tab. Since we almost always use the same things or brands, this feature means you don’t have to re-browse the whole catalogue and add the same thing over and over again.

- Once the items have arrived, you can inspect them and let the delivery guy know if you don’t want any of the items. The delivery guy will also first let you know if they don’t have any of the items from your order and if they have another item as a replacement - you can either accept this or decline the replacement.

What I Love Less

- You have to know your grams and kilograms. I once bought a bottle of salt that is larger than a 600ml water bottle - and we are a family of three. It’s a good thing that salt doesn’t go bad.

- Fresh food. I haven’t bought temperature-sensitive items or items that you feel the need to inspect first like fish or chicken. It’s pretty much guesswork here. But they do let you know, on the product page, which part of the chicken you’re buying [or whole for that matter], for example, or whether you’re buying fish by weight or quantity. You will have to put your faith in Tesco in ensuring that you will get the freshest of the bunch.

- I don’t know if this is more of an inconvenience or convenience; but you can’t pay with cash. You will have to pay with a card either online or upon delivery. So, no cash. But I like this; it makes everything simpler. Since the total of the price at the online checkout is not final, and since you can change your mind whether to decline some items, there will be no hassle in counting either the price or the actual payment. The delivery guy doesn’t have to carry cash, and can simply focus on delivering.

- As with traditional shopping where you put the [physical] items into your shopping cart yourself, with online shopping, obviously, you can’t. The fact is magnified with grocery shopping since you have a lot of little items; as it usually is with groceries, unless you buy one or two items only. You can either simply trust the people at Tesco that they have put the right items in your bags [and they are within the best-before date], or you can check each item yourself, which I find rather anxiety-inducing if you have a large order.

Not just any van, it's the Tesco van.

You can choose whether to have your groceries delivered in bags. And the Tesco van is temperature-controlled, so you can be sure that your groceries are fine in there.

There is a Tesco ‘Official Store’ at Lazada Malaysia online store but this is fulfilled by Lazada not Tesco. And Lazada doesn’t offer fresh food like fish, chicken or meat, and the shipping is quite expensive [except for the standard] - the Economy is at RM55 [~ $14], the Standard Delivery is at RM5 [~ $1], but Lazada does offer free shipping for orders over RM80 [~ $20]. But I think the dealbreaker here is that you can’t book a delivery timeframe or have the groceries sent the next day which you can with Tesco, providing the bookings are not full yet. For me, that alone is a good reason to choose Tesco’s online grocery shopping.

& Buy

- Tesco Online Grocery Shopping  [Tesco Stores Malaysia]
- Tesco Official Store at Lazada [Lazada Malaysia]
- Amazon Groceries & Gourmet Food [Amazon]