Boomerang

Like a moth to flame, I find myself drawn to an experience that is more like a form of personal punishment: safeway.com.

Back in the day, we had Webvan, and, in my hazy, romanticized memory, the entire experience was flawless. The Webvan web site was intuitive and stocked with everything I wanted. The delivery people were friendly, on time, and had these cool wireless machines strapped to their belts that spit out a receipt while standing right there in my kitchen. I loved Webvan, but, alas, we all know what happened.

Enter Safeway – solid brand, good variety, acceptable produce on the right day and ready to pick up where Webvan left off. Except here’s the rub: They don’t deliver what you order. It’s become torturous fascination for me to receive my order, see what my “personal shopper” left off the list, and then go to the same Safeway from which the order originated, and find all the “missing items” right there on the shelves. It’s like I’m a contestant on Supermarket Sweep and I win every time!

Now if you call the corporate Safeway line to complain, they will most likely give you free delivery on your next order. (Hence you can see where my addiction stems! It’s unstoppable!) The very nice and usually on-time delivery driver tells me that the personal shoppers are just lazy and don’t look for things that are in less frequented aisles. (Since when do granola bars fall into the Endangered Food category?) The manager of the online service at the actual store, upon hearing my complaint week after week, tells me that perhaps I am mistaken – that probably, in the 30 minutes between when my order was delivered and when I hightailed it to the store, most likely a delivery truck arrived and stocked all of items I was missing. Remarkable!

I like the Internet. I want to use online services to make my busy life easier. But if these online/offline brands don’t get it figured out, well, there goes Webvan again.