Sunday, June 15, 2008

Fresh Direct


We use Fresh Direct regularly. I know some of you out there might have a preconceived notion of us based on that little piece of info (oh, they must be rich to afford it, how nice to be able to lie around in luxury while waiting for some actual workers to deliver your food). However, if you had ever seen the two of us at the supermarket trying to get through the experience, you'd understand why it's much better for us to order online.

He just has no patience for my looking at ingredients, comparing prices, and god forbid I should look through the bananas to try and pick the ones that are just right. "All the bananas are the same, just pick some!" he said to me, crossly, once.

So you see, Fresh Direct has saved our marriage!

But that's not to say they're perfect. Today we ended up with 2 sets of 3 bananas instead of 1 set of 4 bananas, for example. I suppose that's my fault for not seeing how oddly their "update order" system works. What I intended to do was add 1 banana to the existing order of 3 bananas, for a total of 4, but clearly instead it added 1 set of bananas to my order (they have a 3 banana minimum).

Plus we get the occasional random unordered item--today it was a half gallon of 1% milk--which I'm sure is something some other poor jerk ordered and didn't receive. And I'm sure the occasional missing thing(s) from our order arrive with someone else's order. We're still trying to figure out what someone else was planning on making when 6 (count 'em...six!) 5-lb bags of sugar arrived unexpectedly in one of our orders. FD customer service--one thing I'll say for FD, they do have excellent customer service--generally tells us to just keep the items when we call to report it, so it's like 2 years later and we're still working through the sweet stuff. Well, at least it doesn't go bad quickly, unlike today's milk which is likely to remain undrunk before it sours. Though it is a good season for chocolate eggcreams...

3 comments:

Kevin said...

Your husband must love you very much to help you expedite the banana selection in the supermarket; perhaps the same for meat, dairy, deli, dry goods, paper products, sale items, et cetera. So many aisles, so little time! And I am sure he does not remember speaking in such a fresh and direct manner to you. May you never run out of sugar; and don't let that milk go sour!

Anonymous said...

One thing about Fresh Direct that I noticed, is that they use way too many cardboard boxes. I mean, I got a delivery yesterday of about 8 items and they came in 4 separate boxes, each way too big for the items they contained. I know they all come from different departments, but isn't there a more environmentally friendly way to transport all these items? :) Shell

The Purple Ferns said...

Yeah, the boxes get out of control sometimes.

One time we both nearly peed our pants laughing because we opened a box to find a single, long, green cucumber by itself. I mean, can you picture the worker who packed and sealed that box? "Heh heh heh, that'll tell 'em to go f**k themselves!"