Buying groceries is an essential part of our everyday routine.
Each of us might live in different places, work in different jobs and have different interests. However, we all gotta eat! (even those that are on a diet 😉 )
A small minority of us might be willing and able to grow most of their food themselves. For the rest of us, regular visits to the supermarket are an essential part of life.
However, life also gets pretty busy. People work more and more hours and as a result, have less and less spare time to spend with their friends and family. We are also less keen to waste time sitting in traffic or queuing up at the supermarket checkout.
As a result, more and more people now prefer to do their grocery shopping online at a time which suits them. No traffic, no crowded stores and no queuing up at the checkouts.
When this phenomena first started a few years ago, Coles and Woolies were not overly keen to jump on-board this trend as they thought it will only be a small minority of ‘early adopters’ who will regularly do their grocery shopping online.
As a result, their online grocery shopping offering was quite mediocre as they did not see a need to invest much in those platforms.
Well, things have definitely changed!
Nowadays, the competition between Woolies & Coles, Australia’s two retail behemoths, is as fierce online as it is in their stores and each of them have invested huge resources into revamping their online grocery shopping platforms, catering for the growing number of busy Australians who prefer to have their groceries delivered to their door instead of walking into a supermarket and going through the aisles.
In order to entice more people to try online grocery shopping for the first time, as well as to encourage existing customers to do it again, Woolworths have teamed up with Groupon, the biggest group buying company in the world, to offer a unique offer for November only: 20% off your next shop with the Woolworth online grocery shopping service.
With the rising cost of living and as we approach Christmas, this is timely and very welcome. We intend to take full advantage of this and strongly suggest you consider doing the same.
Before we get into the details of this offer, there is something we would like you to be aware of: prices in both the Coles and Woolworths online stores are usually higher than in their physical stores.
This has been observed by many online shoppers (including ourselves) and was also recently verified in independent research.
Basically, the supermarkets ‘load up’ the price of their products online in order to cover their additional staffing costs as their workers need to collect the various items purchased on behalf of the customer instead of the customer going through the aisles and doing it themselves.
However, there is one group of products where the supermarkets almost always don’t load up their prices and they are kept the same as in-store: their weekly specials.
Therefore, we suggest that you restrict your online grocery shopping mainly to items that are on special that week.
Now that we got this disclaimer out of the way, let’s dive right into the details of the deal. Here is what you need to know.
First, you need to buy a $100 voucher for the Woolworths online store from Groupon. The cost of the voucher is $80 and this is where your 20% discount comes from.
Second, you MUST use the voucher by 30/11/2014 and in one purchase.
If you don’t use it by the deadline, it will expire worthless and you will not be entitled to any refund. This is a key condition of the deal.
You must also use the entire $100 credit in one purchase and if your shop is less than $100 any remaining credit amount is forfeited and can not be used in any future purchases. This is another key condition of the deal.
Finally, keep in mind that this $100 credit you buy can only be used in the Woolworth online store. It cannot be used in the physical stores as the whole purpose of this promotion is to get you to do your grocery shopping online.
If you think any (or all) of the above conditions can’t work for you, do not buy!
There are also two more conditions in this deal but these can be easily worked around:
- Each Groupon member (membership is free) can only buy ONE such voucher
- Every online order can only use ONE such credit voucher.
If you want to buy and use more than one, what you should do is get another family member to join Groupon and buy an additional voucher and then make a separate order in the Woolworths online store (with their own separate registration). Just make sure that the second order amount is also at least $100 otherwise you will lose some of the credit.
Once you’ve made your order, you have two ways to receive it: by collecting it at any Woolworths store of your choice, or through home delivery.
Collecting in store is FREE but home delivery has an additional charge of $11. You can avoid this delivery charge (and potentially score an extra 10% discount but that one is not guaranteed to work) if this is the first time you’ve ever ordered from the Woolworths online grocery shopping service.
A few more offers to consider, even if you don’t want to shop online
Whether or not the offer described above works for you, the Woolworths Group have partnered with Groupon to also offer you discounted gift vouchers which can be quite handy for Christmas.
All these deals can be used both online and in-store and the gift vouchers are valid for 12 months from purchase. They also do not have to be used up in a single purchase like the previous offer which means they offer a bit more flexibility.
Here they are:
- 5% off Woolworths Supermarkets gift cards – available in denominations of $10,$20,$50,$100,$200 and $500.
- 5% off Big W gift cards – available in denominations of $10,$20,$50,$100,$200 and $500.
- 5% off Masters Hardware gift cards – available in denominations of $10,$20,$50,$100,$200 and $500. If you need Christmas supplies, Masters have Christmas lights,
Christmas decorations,
and even Christmas Trees
- 5% off BWS Liquor gift cards – available in denominations of $10,$20,$50,$100,$200 and $500.
- 5% off Caltex Woolworths Petrol gift cards – available in denominations of $10,$20,$50,$100,$200 and $500. These gift cards cannot be used online for obvious reasons 😉
Hopefully, these two offers should help you save some dough in what is the biggest shopping season of the year.
If you have any questions or comments, the comment box awaits below.
Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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Woolworths have some products which are the same price online and instore in addition to the catalogue specials. There are everyday low price items including all the “cheap cheap” items from their recent campaign, including certain Woolworths bread and milk products which are the same price online. There are also products which are on special just for Everyday Rewards members. These items change from week to week. Woolworths also have what are known as “in-store” specials. These sometimes vary from store to store but you can get them at the same price as the store where your order is picked.
I rarely use online shopping but when I do I attempt to make nearly all my order up from products which are the same price instore as they are online. The online store has colour coding for some of their items and you can usually tell from this whether you are paying the same price instore as you are online. Occasionally the same price applies for some fresh food items but these will vary from store to store as well. It’s always a good idea to know your instore prices of your regular items.
There are other terms and conditions of this Groupon deal apart from the ones mentioned above so read them carefully before purchasing.
Woolworths want you to believe that online shopping takes a shorter amount of time than shopping instore. In reality, it is a bit of a trade off. Navigating around the online website and setting up an account can take longer than it would if you went and selected the items yourself. The benefit is that you can decide when you spend the time doing the shopping. Very few Woolworths stores are open 24 hours so if you can only find time to shop between 1am and 2am then online shopping will be useful for you.
You get to set the delivery or pick up times so in theory the goods will arrive when you want them. If you are going to use the click and collect facility, ring the store about 10 minutes before you arrive so your order is ready at the pick up point when you arrive. The shortest amount of time I have done a click and collect order is 10 minutes. This was counted from the time I arrived at the pick up desk to the time it took me to check the order. The longest time was about 40 minutes as it took ages for the staff to find my order and there were problems with it when I checked it. I could have picked my own order and gone through the checkout in less time than this.
Your results will vary depending on many factors so think really carefully before choosing online shopping.
I only shop online when I have high value coupons and other targeted offers and there are plenty of specials which I want for the relevant catalogue period. I didn’t take up the current Groupon offer as I very rarely spend more than $50 online and there weren’t enough specials in the current catalogue to make things worthwhile for me. I’m also using offers in my Everyday Rewards coupon book and I don’t believe you can stack these coupons with the Groupon offer. I could be wrong of course. The Groupon offer is good for families who regularly purchase over $100 in one transaction at Woolworths.
Great insights Pat. I’m sure the readers will appreciate that. Thanks heaps! 🙂
The credit is valid until the end of the month so there will be two catalogues before it expires. There might be something next week but obviously there is no way to know.
With regards to the Everyday Rewards (a.k.a EDR) offers, Woolies load most of their personalised offers electronically instead of sending you paper coupons in the mail (like Coles does for FlyBuys). As Woolworths Online allows you to link your EDR number to your online store membership, I assume that any such personalised offers should be available through the online store as well.
Saying that however, I must admit that I never tested this assumption personally myself so would be great to hear from someone who did.
Some of the Everyday Rewards online offers are triggered just by entering the correct EDR member number in the online orders but other EDR online offers are triggered by online coupon codes. Occasionally there are limits as to which codes will work together. I think there is something in the Groupon offer terms and conditions regarding whether other coupon codes can be used with the Groupon code.
If any really good specials come up I might reconsider using the Groupon offer. It’s a very tempting deal.