Coles Online Shopping Giveaway: Win Free Groceries For a Year
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If you needed an excuse to shop online for your groceries, this could be the motivation you’ve been looking for — one lucky shopper will receive $7,800 worth of free groceries from Coles Online.
The description of the main prize for this competition is one year’s worth of groceries, or $150 per week over 52 weeks, but you actually receive the total prize value as a credit to your Coles Online account, so you’re free to spend as you please.
The competition is being run in conjunction with Yahoo!7, and to enter all you have to do is purchase groceries at Coles Online, and have them delivered between 24 October and 15 November 2011. Take note of the ‘delivered’ bit, because when you shop online at Coles you have to reserve your delivery time, and available time slots regularly get fully booked up. If you want to enter the competition, make sure you reserve your delivery time before you start shopping, otherwise you might miss the competition end date. You can select a date and time for home delivery up to 2 weeks in advance, but it’s only reserved for up to 2 hours while you shop. There’s also a handy live countdown displayed on the site, so you can see how much time you have left until the next delivery time closes.
You certainly can’t knock a great prize like this, and as the recipient of a major free grocery prize myself (local produce from the Sunshine Coast in Qld), I know what a massive difference it can make to your weekly budget. It’s interesting to note though, that you do pay a premium for buying your groceries online, and if you’re new to Coles Online, you should be aware of that before place an order to enter the competition.
I have shopped online at Coles many times before, and when I started to compare my receipts from physical stores with invoices from Coles Online, I got a bit of a shock. The majority of items I was buying online, were priced higher than the same items from my local store. They do have specials online of course, but no where near as many as they have in-store. Once you’ve added delivery ($5-$7 at my local Coles Online) to your online order, the total cost at checkout can quite a bit more than you’d pay in your local store.
Of course I do understand that it is very convenient and a great time saver to do your grocery shopping online, but I do think Coles should make it very clear to customers that they are paying a premium for convenience. The comparison to in-store pricing is mentioned in the help section of the website, and Coles do confirm that “The prices on our website may not necessarily correspond to the prices in your local Coles supermarket or Liquorland store.”, but most people aren’t going to see that before they start shopping.
I contacted Coles Online customer service about the higher prices earlier this year actually, and they explained that the extra cost was to cover the personal picking and packing of each order. Fair enough, but then Coles is also saving money, because I’m not in their store taking up an employees time at the checkout.
I suppose there are two ways of looking at this, Coles is subsidising its online store with sneaky inflated prices, or Coles is charging a fair price for the convenience of buying your groceries online.
Personally I think Coles should be encouraging and rewarding customers who shop online, not charging them more money for the privilege, but if they really must charge more money, then they need to make it more transparent for shoppers, so they can make an informed decision to buy their groceries online.
Do you think the higher online prices are justified? Let us know your thoughts.
