I’ll admit, the Coles online shopping outage has had a significant impact on my life. I was already struggling with work and family commitments, so the days where I can take time out of my day to do something for me are dwindling.
When I found out that it would be difficult to get groceries in the store because of the outage, I knew it was going to be a struggle. Did anyone else feel like their whole world fell apart when they realized they couldn’t shop at Coles?
I LOVE online grocery shopping
I know many of us still prefer to cruise the aisles old-school, but I am an online supermarket shopping convert.
I’ve perfected it so it only takes me 15 minutes to do. Seriously, just 15 minutes. I reorder some of the same stuff from a previous order. I chose a fruit and veg box, instead of spending ages picking and choosing produce.
I am speedy as I click, checking the fridge and pantry as I go for what we need. Heck, I even meal plan too, adding ingredients to my order so I have everything I need while keeping a notepad doc open with what we are eating each night.
And I am frugal – I order by ‘lowest unit price’ to save $. And I do! As such, I was a bit devo when the Coles site told me it was down due to maintenance last Sunday when I went to do my shopping.
Now, the obvious thing to do when I couldn’t do my shopping the usual way was to simply dash down to our local supermarket, but I didn’t.
I was holding out hope. “It will be fixed soon, no point wasting an hour or so and fighting with my kids over why they can’t have Neapolitan ice cream and a KitKat at the checkout,” I told myself.
So I texted my hubby to bring home milk and bread after work, and I waited. And waited.
I didn’t cheat on my supermarket
While I could have signed up to Woolworths online if I didn’t want to physically do the shopping I didn’t.
I didn’t because I know damn well how painful that first online shop is. It takes ages as you register and have to start your order from scratch because there are no previous ones to copy from.
That, and you have to get your head around a new ‘system’. Everyone hates a ‘new system’.
But then life went to shit
As we got down to our last carrot and we ate from the pantry for dinner (tinned soup and baked beans), on the third day of the outage, I realized I was going to have to give in and go old-school shopping.
I would have to go TO the shops. Sigh. I didn’t have lunch box supplies to get through the rest of the school week.
We’d run out of laundry powder so I couldn’t wash the clothes (I sent my kid to school in a dirty uniform one day).
We needed a new light globe as the one in the bathroom had blown and we were brushing our teeth in the dark.
We’d run out of the mixed nuts my husband snacks on when he gets home from work famished (why he doesn’t eat an apple walking to the bus stop beats me).
He was sulking that there was “nothing to eat”. But I was just pissed off that the well-oiled online grocery shopping machine I’d set up to help our household run smoothly, had let me down.
So I went to ALDI
The next day, with my three-year-old’s chubby legs happily kicking from the trolley seat, I manually tossed all the fruits, veg, and groceries we’d ran out of into my trolley. I smiled remembering the simple joy of doing a shop with just one kid (the other was at school).
That was until we hit the middle aisle, which is always my weakness.
Although I do the weekly shop online, I find myself in ALDI about once a month for their random special buys. And cheap nappies, which I stock up on.
So before I could say, “Aldi is saving us money,” I’d added a fake plant and bath toy to my trolley and was also contemplating a new set of towels when I snapped to.
As I chucked the flying groceries that had just been scanned into the trolley, I longed for the days when I simply pulled up to the Coles click and collect car spot and some nice person brought my shopping down to me.
Conclusion:
Did anyone else’s life fall apart with the Coles online shopping outage? Did you have to go back to doing your groceries in person at a supermarket afterward instead of having them delivered straight to your door?
I know that for me, my whole day was ruined when it took three days for this issue with the site and app being down.
