A couple of weeks ago, I saw a Point-of-Sale display by Walmart promoting their new online grocery ordering service. The tagline said “Shop Online. Pick Up At Your Store.”

I thought to myself “Hey, so, kinda like Grocery Gateways, except it’ll probably be cheaper, and you just got to go and pick it up at the assigned spot and then off you go, sounds like a good idea!”

I went home, and made a point in going on Walmart’s website and read over what this service entails. I quickly find my way to the questions/answers page, and the first question is “Why use Walmart.ca PickUp for groceries?”

The answer “Put some time back in your day” along with 4 other bullet points had me pretty excited within 45 seconds.

As a mom, it’s safe to say that one of the biggest challenges we face is “time”. Somehow, we manage to never have enough time, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not a lack of time management skills, it’s just the way it is.

So I read on. Some of the basics are pretty reasonable, i.e. minimum order of $50 to qualify for pickup, no problem, I’m sure we would not have a problem making that minimum.

Then we get to some of the more intricate part:

• -          There’s a $3 added fee for the service
• -          No coupons accepted
• -          Cut-off time is 1:30am for pickup the following day
• -          Yes, Walmart online will do Ad Match

Ad Match? That’s amazing! Ok, let’s do this!

Sunday night, I put the girls to bed, and I open up my internet browser. I log in to my account with Walmart and I click on the “Now Available In The Toronto Area” and start “shopping” for groceries.

I add the basics that I need: Milk, bread, eggs.

Then I move on to the flyer items.

I see grapes on sale on the flyer, that would be great as we haven’t had grapes in a while. I search for grapes to add to cart…grape juice, grape Gatorade, grape jam, grape tomatoes, no actual grapes…

I don’t have “time” to search forever for this, we won’t have grapes then, move on…

I see Kraft cheese blocks on sale, perfect, I need cheese. I search for cheese to add to cart, I even type in exactly how the flyer advertise it…I see all sorts of cheese products, except no Kraft cheese block…

Maybe third time is a charm…I see mushrooms on the flyer for sale, I need those too. I search for mushrooms, and yes, finally, it’s there for me to pick! I add to cart.

Well, since I have mushrooms, let’s make some spaghetti this week, I need ground beef. I see medium ground beef, it’s $6.00, but it doesn’t say what the weight is, which I don’t like, because I like to know what I’m paying for per pound…but it doesn’t matter this time, as I’m testing this out, so it is what it is.

At this point, I’m at $21.66, and I need a minimum of $50 in order to qualify…surprisingly, I’m kind of running out of things to add, mainly because I get most of my meats, veggies, and fruits at an Asian supermarket, and I feel that Walmart’s selection is rather limited…I’m thinking “I haven’t had steak for a while, sure, why not, let’s grab a couple of steaks.”

I see my available steak options…to be blunt, I’m not overly excited by my choices, but for the sake of the experiment, I pick one. It’s a “Your Fresh Market Angus Beef Striploin Steak” for $29.45 and it promises 2-3 pieces per tray.

I’m at $51.11, perfect, that qualifies me.

I click on check out and it asks me to pick my closest location based on my postal code. Then it takes me to the page asking me to select a date and time to pick up. I select the following day between 2:00-4:00pm

After selecting my date and time, it takes me to the confirmation page, shows me the cart contents and asks me for each item if I would accept a substitution for the item. I leave the check mark in to accept substitutions.

I press submit, but I have an ad match item. According to the site, I need to make a separate ad match request at http://www.walmart.ca/admatch

It takes me to a form page to fill out the requested information. It says it takes up to 2 days to process, so I submit.

The following day, I arrive at 3:00pm of my 2:00-4:00pm window. I park at the designated area and call the number listed on the sign. I let it ring 6 rings, no answer…I hang up, call back again, 6 rings, again no answer…I call back the third time and this time I let it ring continuously. It rings for 9 times before someone picks up the phone. I tell the associate my name and my parking spot number, and I’m told someone will be out in a minute.

From my rear view mirror I see an associate pulling a trolley with 4 massive plastic containers, I’m thinking “What did I order again?” I open the trunk for her, she opens the first plastic container, pulls out one bag, moves on to the next container, then pulls out another bag, so on…oh, and note to self, if I’m running low on plastic bags for our garbage bins, order online, because it seems they put no more than 2 items per plastic bag. She finishes loading for me, and I sign my name on the order form confirming I’ve received my items. She asked how my experience was, I said “Interesting!” she asked “Interesting good or interesting bad?” I said it wasn’t good, and it wasn’t bad, it was something I had never done before, and I thought I’d give it a go. She promises “You’ll find that if you order online, the groceries are gonna be exceptional quality!” I don’t doubt the quality of Walmart groceries, in fact, they are quite decent, considering their grocery distribution comes from Sobeys.

I go home, I unpack everything. I would say everything looked decent, there were no substitutions on any of the items.  I look at my package of ground beef and I remembered it was $6, but it didn’t say for what weight at the time online, on the package it’s 450g. $6 for a pound of medium ground beef, not what I’m used to in terms of when I go to my usual grocery stores, I’m more used to paying $3.99 a pound, without the fancy Styrofoam packaging.

The steaks were also in my opinion, overpriced based on what I’m used to paying. The weight of the steaks came a little low, so the bill was a little bit lower.

I submitted my Ad Match right after I’d placed my order, two days after as of the time of this post, and I hadn’t heard back. I’m not sure if I’ll get the match accepted or rejected.

Overall, I give this experience a very solid “Meh”. I think Walmart made a decent attempt in trying to save shoppers time, but at the end of the day, time is money, and the time I actually spent searching online and putting together this list took 3 scattered evenings when I can really just schlep my 2 kids along, despite how painful that may be on some days, it still would take less time to do it. Also, doing Ad Match the way they want me to do it, is a bit more work than I want. I like my Flipp app where I just show the cashier everything on the spot, so I don't need to do "copy and paste" on every item I'm looking to price match. I also like to see and touch what I’m buying, so the unknown of what I’ll be getting in my bags is slightly uncomfortable, but nevertheless acceptable. The biggest factor is, I can’t get all my groceries from Walmart, and also I shop for price, not always everything, but definitely so when it comes to groceries, and Walmart isn’t the best value in my opinion.

Would I do this again? Probably not to replace my weekly mega shop, but I’d consider doing it if it was for a giant box of diapers, bag of milk and a loaf of bread and I’m in no mood to go inside and lug the big box of diaper around, may be worth the $3. But really though, if I’m ordering a box of diapers, why not just order 2 boxes and it’s free delivery right to your door...just saying…