I had the worst experience using the Coles online delivery service at a time when I needed it the most. I'm not new to ordering groceries through Coles online so when I was ordered into quarantine for 14 days I thought I would be able to trust the service of Coles online that I had become accustomed to. On Sunday evening I put together an order of over 60 items that I had hoped to have delivered the next day as I was short on staples. At checkout I encountered an error message asking me to call customer support. After waiting one and a half hours on hold I was told that the issue couldn’t be resolved then and there and that I had to call back on Monday. Monday morning I logged back into my account and tried to process the order and got a message that now 6 items in the trolly were not available. I spent the next 15 minutes finding alternatives and updating my trolly before trying to proceed with the order. Again the same error message asking to call customer support. Another hour and a half on the phone on hold before I speak to someone. Finally the problem was fixed and I was able to process the order but I could no longer get a delivery slot for Monday. I had to Uber Eats food all Monday. Monday evening I received an email, “Information about your order”. Seven more items are no longer available, but substitutes have been supplied for three of the items. Items where no substitute was available – Bread, Eggs and Pasta! How could a supermarket the size of Coles not have such essentials as bread, eggs or pasta in stock? By this stage I was livid, 3 hours on hold to customer service just to place the order, I had to order uber eats all Monday, and then I couldn't even get essential groceries delivered. To add insult to injury, when the groceries were delivered, instead of a nice fresh bunch of basil that I had ordered, I received a rotting 15g tray of basil leaves that had to be thrown straight out. I reached out to their customer service team on multiple occasions and got the same generic message over and over and $3 back for the basil.

Approximate cost: $250

I've had two orders with this website and both have been terrible experiences. I followed up on my first order after the items hadn’t dispatched by the dispatch date. I was told that the coffee table I ordered was never actually in stock and so was refunded for that item. The other two items, cushions on backorder, have since had their estimated delivery dates pushed out again – currently 6 weeks from purchase date. A second order, for a mirror, also didn’t dispatch on the due date and I also had to follow this up with Temple & Webster. I was told that the item I purchased was also not actually in stock but there would be another deliver of stock soon. After three weeks I was told that there was still no ETA on the stock from the supplier, so I decided to cancel the order. On cancelling the order I received an email to say that the cancellation was pending, a second email quickly followed to say that the order could not be cancelled. Immediately after that I received an email to say that the order had been dispatched and there was no way of stopping it. When I received the mirror, it was different to the one pictured on the website. The company doesn’t know what stock they have and does very little to assist customers.

Approximate cost: $700