Tesco has scored a double victory by delivering a full basket in both The Grocer 33 main shop and its online counterpart.

It is the first time a retailer has achieved this twin triumph since The Grocer launched its shopping basket surveys.

In both cases the basket of 33 items came in at £39.12, dispelling any myths that online shopping is more expensive than on the high street.

In the quarterly online survey our shopper ordered on Thursday July 17 for delivery on Saturday July 19. Our offline shopper visited Tesco’s Sandhurst store on Friday July 18.

Tesco’s success comes as grocery retailers finally seem to have made improvements in their online operations.

Five of the six retailers managed to deliver on time - early in the case of Ocado.

Only Sainsbury failed to arrive within the requested timeslot although, at two hours late, it was still an hour better than at Easter.

Availability was much improved. Sainsbury and Ocado delivered 32 of the 33 products, with each choosing a suitable substitution for the missing item. Waitrose was hit by a 250g pack of lean mince being unavailable.

However, poor substitutions, receipt mistakes and technology are still letting down shoppers. Asda, the worst performer over the past two years, saw the greatest overall improvement but for the second time it failed to find a substitution for apples. It also replaced a vegetarian pizza with a chicken one.

Iceland sells only 25 of The Grocer 33 items. It delivered 21 of these but oddly substituted 12 mini-quiches on the receipt for loose potatoes, but failed to deliver them.

>>pp20-23, full surveys

Topics