I've finally given up on Asda deliveries (probably swapping to Tesco). Generally they're fine when everything goes as expected, but when something goes wrong - which has happened several times this year alone - they are beyond hopeless. And they're getting worse.
Today they were meant to deliver between 8am and 9am. The tracker up until the pandemic was reasonably accurate with its estimates, but since then it's got progressively worse to the point where the information is worthless. Today the tracker claimed it would arrive between 6.45 and 6.58am, which seemed doubtful, and by 8.30 it said they were running late. Then by 9.10 it changed to "something's gone wrong and it probably won't be delivered now".
I phoned customer service to see what was going on. Eventually I got through to someone who spent the first 20 seconds clattering about, I think trying to put his headphones on after being rudely awoken. After 20 minutes on hold while he spoke to the store, he came back to say they can't find the van, but I'd hear back from someone within 48 hours. I'd love to listen to the recording of my double-take response to this.
I asked him to clarify whether it was still going to be delivered, to which he replied "definitely not" and explained that the payments team would email me within 48 hours for a refund. I tried to get some further details or a better explanation given the inconvenience, but at that point he hung up on me. Resigned to the situation, I placed an order with Tesco, which hopefully will arrive tonight barring any mysterious van disappearances.
Asda then turned up at 12.45.
I explained that I couldn't accept the order because I'd already placed another order with Tesco that was too late to cancel (the cut off point annoyingly was 12.30), and the driver kindly agreed to take it back and get a full refund issued. He was as confused as I was, though, because what actually happened was the van had broken down around 8.30 and so he'd phoned the store to tell them to send a replacement van so he could fulfill the orders later in the day. I phoned Asda about 40 minutes after that, so the store must have known what was going on, so the fact they told me it would definitely not be delivered makes me really angry because most of that order is now likely headed for the fucking bin.
TL;DR - Fuck Asda. The drivers are the salt of the earth, but their customer service department and management are a waste of the air they breathe.