We did needed food for the weekend, however, and I goofed up.  With Streamline out of the picture, I returned to my first love, Homeruns.  Unfortunately, I did not place an order on Friday night as I missed the deadline.  The double whammy was that Homeruns does not deliver on Sunday.  I could have placed an order on Saturday; it would have arrived, however, on Monday morning at the earliest.

I knew that Amy would not be pleased about this as we were low on a few items.  What's an I-shopper to do?  Peapod baby, Peapod.  On Saturday, I went to their website and saw that, yes, they deliver on Sunday.  Phew.  Alas, the earliest delivery time slot available on Sunday was 6:00pm - 8:00pm.  I was desperate and I took it.  At least I would be able to tell Amy that I placed an order :-).  It also didn't hurt that friends of ours sent us a $20 off coupon for Peapod.

I didn't evaluate their website too much as I was in a rush to place the order.  It's ok.  Streamline still gets top honors.  Peapod is affiliated with the supermarket chain Stop & Shop in my area.  I liked the fact that I could get the "discount card" specials that were on sale at Stop & Shop by entering in my Stop & Shop card number.  The product prices struck me as a being a little bit higher than those at Streamline.  In the end, however, the price differences are likely to be minimal.

After I placed my order, Peapod sent me an extensive receipt; it listed all of the items that I ordered.  Excellent.  In addition, they specified in their email

"Forget anything?  You can make any changes to your order, including changing the delivery day or time, until 12:00 AM on Sunday, Jan 9 by going to http://www.peapod.com. "

It turned out that Amy wanted to order a few more items on Sunday morning.  At 10:10am, I signed on at Peapod with the intent of adding a few items to the grocery list.  Alas, I saw the following message:

"Peapod has begun preparing your order scheduled for delivery on Sunday, Jan 9 between 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM. You can no longer make any changes to this order. Your cart is currently empty. Start shopping your next order."

Not a big deal at the moment that this happened as none of the items that I wanted to add to the list were critical; I'll probably order them through Homeruns later in the week.  Still, when one makes a statement, one should honor it.

Anyway, the delivery arrived at 8:00pm, the tail end of the delivery time period that I selected.  The delivery person was pleasant and he obviously was not aware of my special request to deliver at the side door; he arrived at the front door with several bags in hand.  When I directed him to the kitchen, he placed the bags on the floor; I had cleared the counters.  When he returned with the rest of the order, I asked him to place the remaining bags on the counter; he did.

I put everything away and I was out of a pickle for the time being.

This might sound crazy; I have, however, discovered something very good about Streamline due to this experience.  The weekly deadline is a good feature.  It forces you to "get around" to placing a food order.  In this sense, their service does offer streamlining in that a schedule is set (i.e., the regular order day)  and all we need to do is execute; we need not use any cognitive energy in planning when to shop.  Amy was less than pleased about this series of grocery ordering events and if neither Homeruns nor Peapod works out well for us then we will return to Streamline.  E-commerce firms are trying to figure out ways to get consumers to buy, and Streamline's standing order approach is one solution that works.  I'll tip my hat to them for that one.

I'll swallow my pride if necessary.  The reality is that I am going to be incredibly busy this semester and Amy is likely to be the one who will place most of the grocery orders.  If she prefers Streamline, then that's who we will use.