tinyrabbit655
April 04, 2023
"Home Delivery: Better than Walmart, but not great."
To be clear, H-E-B Home Delivery Service is better than Wal-Mart's is. Of course, seeing as Wal-Mart's Home Delivery Service is an utter and complete failure for the customer, that's not really saying much. In fact, back when I was STILL an annual Wal-Mart delivery subscriber, I used to have to shop H-E-B's delivery service to SUPPLEMENT the items Wal-Mart invariably left off my order. Sadly, it's as if history is repeating itself, with H-E-B now being the ones failing me.
For the "TL;DR crowd", (I can't blame you), directly below is a simplified, watered-down, Bullet Point version:
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Some store associates seem genuinely happy to help. Others, not so much. It's a gamble as to which you will encounter.
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Store employees seem very disempowered in terms of what 'corporate' allows them to do in order to rectify simple issues on the storefront end.
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Company back-end coders sometimes cannot quite get digital coupons to work correctly.
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Upon release of the Weekly Advertisement Flyer, the new weekly savings/sales prices do not replicate on store servers until several hours later (sometimes until the next afternoon), meaning that prices reflected in cart are incorrect (and again, store employees are not allowed to manually correct them).
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Often, order status comes back with almost half, or MORE than half, of your order being "out of stock", but not ONLY do the items continue to be listed as 'IN STOCK' (meaning you're able to put them in your cart again), but if you cancel the entire order (because who wants to pay full delivery price, plus the driver tip, for half an order?), any one-time-use coupons are henceforth read as already used and cannot be used going forward.
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H-E-B offers NO Annual Subscription Plan, meaning that at even their lowest delivery rate of $6.95, that's ~$170 a year (and over $300 at their $12.95 delivery window), for two orders a month - which is hardly a starting point, considering that most everyone I know orders or shops more frequently than that. Combined with products and goods being out-of-stock as often as they are, this business model will eventually destroy customer loyalty as again, NO one wants to pay a delivery - AND TIP - charge, TWICE, for the delivery of the remainder of goods that STORE could not deliver the first time around
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Product selection is good, but not as good as the Wally Supercenters (of course); and, not to beat a dead point, what does selection matter if it isn't in stock?
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Overall, prices of goods are... debatable. Some are good, others just a bit higher than others, and every so often lower. Definitely, (mostly), less expensive, overall, than Randalls. More expensive than Joe Vs, Foodtown or similar. Which brings me to the final Bullet Point (although I go into more in Full Review):
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CHECK your final receipts! The math on the final receipts never seem to match either the totals when ordering or placing the orders, nor do they add up when manually adding them up. Now, I am not saying that H-E-B is being purposefully deceitful, but that they are manipulating that 'delivery or curbside prices may not be what is reflected on site or in store...' blurb (I am paraphrasing), a little too much.
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LONG, FULL REVIEW (The Good and the bad).
NOTE!: This is a super-long review but one which contains (IMO) a LOT of honest, relevant information and SHOULD be read.
To begin, not as many grocery chains that COULD be 'doing' home delivery have opted to do it, or if they have, they do not do it as well. The fact that H-E-B had those Texas-Sized melons to get in the delivery pool with Wal-Mart (insert Jaws theme), is very brave. I would say Kudos for that, but they know that DELIVERY is the FUTURE. Just as with 'smart' devices (bulbs, plugs, etc.) and knowing they will be the norm, HOME DELIVERY has long-since been set to be the biggest game in town. The ONLY reason that it has not achieved the heights and all-around encompassing acceptance and use it should already have by the general public, is precisely BECAUSE of all the issues I have listed in my bullet points. Still, that H-E-B is pushing forward is noteworthy.
Secondly (and this from someone who normally HATES store-brands), while H-E-B carries all the big brand names, its own H-E-B "branded" items such as Heritage Farms, Mi Tienda, H-E-B, & a couple of others I may be forgetting, are actually pretty great-tasting MOST* of the time! In fact, MANY of their store-branded products, not just food items, are even BETTER than name-brand counterparts. Both their cold and hot deli choices, and their bakery goods are generally DELICIOUS; bread crumbs, tortillas, seasonings, trash bags, storage bags, ice cream, certain cereals, OTC meds, even frozen foods - if you normally buy it, chances are that H-E-B has its own version - and chances are that it is really good. *(Oh, just not their Pound Cake - stay away from their H‑E‑B Original Pound Cake; it's crusty, funny tasting and awful). With prices being what they are, I am sure that such quality (again, xney on the pound cake), store-brand selections would appeal to many.
The downside to the self-branded choices, is that there are several ways in which you can see that H-E-B is JUST a company like any other and it REALLY looks at its bottom dollar. For example, to save money (or at least I think so), they completely ruined a couple of excellent soup choices almost a year ago by completely changing their recipe and making them unbuyable and obsolete. The other thing, and perhaps this is just me, but I feel as if they are PURPOSEFULLY "TRICKY" with the wording on their LABELS! "BPA not intentionally added" of course does NOT mean that it is BPA-"free". "95% Chicken *excluding water*", of course, means it is NOT 95% chicken. Lol! Then, of course, their "Ingredient Disclaimer" which reads: "Actual product packaging and materials may contain more or different information than that shown on our website. You should not rely solely on the information presented here...", leaves just a hint of WHAT the HECK? :) Still, as long as you are a smart consumer and read through the ad-speak, you can find good deals on their brands which are generally somewhat (sadly, not overly so) less expensive than most brand-name items.
Lastly, one of the BIGGEST reasons why H-E-B DELIVERY is SO MUCH BETTER than Wal-Mart, is because H-E-B does NOT use AWFUL Doordash to deliver! They use "Favor"; and yes, it's kind of weird that there should be SUCH a HUMONGOUS difference in the actual act of delivery, seeing as drivers are probably picked from the same local pool of drivers, but FAVOR is a MILLION times better! Out of around 100* orders, I have only ever had ONE which was late. There have been ZERO (that I recall) delivered to anyone else's door but mine. There were a few times when a few items were missing, but once, the items had been left at the store. Lastly, maybe five or six times the drivers did not follow directions and left the groceries outside, instead of inside, of our front door gated area. While not ideal, it was better than having to track down our order and items as we had to do EVERY SINGLE FREAKING TIME WITH WAL-MART! In short, FAVOR ROCKS vs Doordash, and as such, H-E-B wins hands-down on their choice of delivery partners.
Now, speaking of delivery "partners", here is where H-E-B loses me. H-E-B offers digital coupons; sometimes, some very good ones... KIND OF - and I would shop them a lot less if not for these coupons even though to me, they seem to raise the price of the item for which the coupon is set (just by a bit) before releasing the coupon. You also cannot normally use them the morning when they change out the weekly specials, and the employees cannot simply incorporate the deduction into your order if they fail to automatically digitally apply. Worse, sometimes, the math just isn't right even after applying them. In fact, the math on the entire order sometimes feels 'off' on the final receipt (See Images). In terms of these coupons, if you use a "Limit 1 per Customer" kind, versus an "Unlimited Use" one, and you happen to cancel the order, you cannot use that coupon again (even though you canceled the order and did NOT use it), because the system sees it as already-used.
This leads us to my recent personal experience which I will end with:
A store associate who I will call "K", and I, have spoken on many occasions beginning when I started ordering from them and was still learning the "H-E-B ordering ropes" (such as the coupon issues; the no weekly sales items until several hours later; the not-yet-mentioned way to best request substitutions instead of choosing "do not substitute"; the few times when items have been missing; my frustration when HALF my order has been out of stock, only to still see the items still listed as "in-stock"; etc., etc., etc.). Well, the day before last, I found a blemish on my face, which I don't normally get. I immediately went to Amazon and ordered a Benzoyl Peroxide gel and something called Adelpesene (or something like that). Delivery for the Adelpesene was to take four days so - LIGHTBULB! - I checked H-E-B and they had it, so I cancelled the Amazon order. In addition to these two items, I also purchased a few other items including $36.00 or so (I almost made it $45.00) worth of cut fruit for which there was a "SAVE $3.00 off every $15.00 you spend on cut fruit" coupon, giving me $6.00 off my order.
In total, it was around an $85 order, to be delivered that evening between 7:00-8:00 p.m. At around 7:00, I received a text that some of the items were out of stock and had to be removed. I pulled it up to check which items, and it was nearly EVERY cut fruit item. Apparently, the store was out of all watermelon, all strawberries, all cantaloupe... Strange, right? But I did not question it. As this had happened before (half my order being out of stock), however, I DID phone the store, and surprise(!) reached "K". I asked that she cancel my order. All of it.
The next day, I tried calling the store SIMPLY to see if they had gotten pre-cut fruit in. I kid you NOT when I tell you that I spent almost forty minutes JUST trying to reach someone! NO one in Produce picked up, I was transferred around three times by the poor operator, and on what was to be my last call, I got lucky and an "R" answered. He was courteous and said he'd go check, after which he said they had plenty of cut fruit. He EVEN went as far as to say he'd work with the Curbside / Delivery Desk if I was going to place the order again. I said I would. I told him I would pick up the canceled order from the evening previous and just hit 'select all' and reorder. UNFORTUNATELY, upon doing so, the coupons were not working – and they should have, as they were Unlimited Use coupons, not the Limited 1 Per Customer ones. I then phoned the Digital Coupon Help Desk, but they took a while to answer the line DURING WHICH TIME I received a call from a frustrated "K". She said: "R says you were about to place an order and I haven't seen anything come in." I explained that indeed, I was attempting to, but that I was having an issue with the coupons I had used the night before. She says: "There were no coupons on your order last night." I insisted there were. She insisted there weren't. LOL! Finally, I said, "Look, I assure you that not only did I spend almost an hour last night getting the sizes and cost of the fruit bowls JUST RIGHT so that the coupons deducted $6.00, I ALSO played with getting it up to $9.00 off – before deciding NOT to spend $45 on fruit which might go bad." I continued … "NOT ONLY THAT, but I can PULL UP the canceled order and can still SEE the $6.00 deduction." I THINK where I really lost her though, was when I added that "In any logical mind, HOWEVER, it is CLEAR that even if this were NOT the case that it did not, and does not have any bearing on the order I was placing at this time and trying to apply the coupons to." I then, for good measure, sent her a copy of the canceled order that clearly had the deducted coupons she insisted were not on there.:)
As I have said before... OUR WALLETS are much too powerful to share with those companies that spend millions on advertisements to lure you in, but do little to keep you. In other words, don't support a company which doesn't support you.