All shops that offer click & collect
Click & collect newer and better than home delivery
Shopping has evolved from its earliest days, when doing the weekly shop meant going to almost all the shops in the village in turn: the grocer’s for vegetables and any fruit that might be in season, the butcher for meat, the hardware shop for any nails, screws or washing line that might be needed and so on. Bookshops, haberdashers, and dairies were all on the list, and most establishments would deliver the goods to the customer’s door at a convenient time.
We have moved from plenty of small shops to one-stop supermarkets which have everything under one roof, but we seem to be returning to the practise of having our items delivered to us again! Online shopping is tremendously convenient, with people able to shop at any time of day or night, comparing as many as ten or twenty shops to choose the best price or deal on the items they are looking for.
No more missed deliveries
But with all of us leading very busy lives, all too often deliveries are missed, packages are mishandled, left with the wrong neighbour or simply vanish along with way without a trace. If you are working all day, it is impossible to be home to sign for or otherwise receive every single delivery that comes your way – but some organisations will not leave their goods without an authorising signature. What can be done in these cases?
Click and Collect is the answer
This is where click & collect comes to the rescue! With click & collect, you do your online shopping as normal, but it is not delivered to your door, risking your not being in and your goods being left in an unsafe place. Instead one of two options takes place:
- For shops that are close to your home – more usually grocery stores and supermarkets – your online shopping will be picked and packed, just as it would for home delivery, but it is then stored, in appropriately cool storage, until the time when you have indicated that you will be along to collect it. There is usually a half-hour time slot when you can come along to the click and collect area and find your groceries all packed and waiting for you. Then you simply load up your car and head home with all your goodies.
- The second way is even better, allowing multiple packages from multiple vendors to be all waiting for you in the same place. In this case, you do your online shopping as usual – through our site for ease of convenience, of course, as all the shops having a sale will be listed together, as will those shops that have signed up for click & collect – and go through the check-out process. At the point of entering a delivery address, look for the link to click & collect and tap on it.
Once your address is uploaded into the system, it will ascertain which of the click & collect depots is closest to your home, and it will suggest the top three to you. You may find, for example, that the closest one has poor parking, making the second choice, slightly further away from your home but with good safe parking, to be a better option. Once you have chosen your preferred click & collect depot, click or tap it to make your selection and move onto the next step.
Select your preferred pick up time slot
Sometimes you will be able to specify a time by which you would like your package to be delivered to the collection point, but more often the delivery will take place first, and then you will receive a text or an email letting you know that your package has arrived and is in place. It will remain there for some time – ranging from a few days to a few weeks – so you will have plenty of leisure to retrieve your items.
If the parcel is waiting for you in a shop or office block, this will be indicated when you are choosing your slot, along with the opening hours and what proofs of identity you will need to collect your items. Other click & collect collection points are fully automated, with your parcel being left in a locker while the code to access the locker is sent to you by email or text message. The latter way is quite impersonal but does mean that you can collect your items at quite antisocial times, if you work long shifts at odd times of the day.
How safe is the process?
This is a commonly asked question, and it is a good question. In the early days of the service, unscrupulous people tried to scam click and collect parcels, opening them and removing some or all of the items and then playing innocent when irate customers demanded where their goods were. These hiccups – along with the usual teething pangs of any new process – have been sorted out and failsafes have been introduced: as well as each click & collect depot needing to pass a stringent check before they are awarded the contract.
Click, collect.. and return
Some collection points also function as return depots, allowing customers to drop off clearly labelled and securely wrapped packages that are returned to the shop from which they came by the same carriers who bring the customers’ items to the collection point. Do be aware, though, that not every depot accepts returns, and even those that do will require the correct labels and paperwork to be assigned to the package. If in doubt, refer to the individual store’s returns policy
To conclude, click & collect is a very convenient way of shopping
Click and collect is a fabulous and convenient way for a busy person to get their online deliveries without fretting about missing the driver or needing to stay at home to receive it. It is safe, efficient and has oversight throughout the whole process so you can commit to using it without any worries at all.