NOPE!

Lengthy review but… OOF…

My grocery store stopped doing in-house delivery and partnered with Voila for deliveries, so I regrettably placed my first order with Voila recently and the experience was awful. 10/10 would not use their services again.

If you have other options other than voila, I would recommend using that other option. But if you still choose to use their services, hopefully it’s better than my experience lol.

What Happened:

For starters, the delivery driver couldn’t figure out where I lived and couldn’t understand my explanation of being a big APARTMENT building at the very corner of the street and was hard to miss. They kept requesting to turn the light on outside of my “house” it ended up taking them 20 minutes to figure it out…

Then they didn’t want to actually deliver to my door and was shouting in the hallways late at night.

Then I had a big chunk of my order missing & ended up with a few items that belonged to someone else…

After speaking to customer service they said the items are scanned before delivery and as long as the items I purchased weren’t scanned then I could get a refund for those items. Which if they go by that logic, then the person that ordered their items that I received instead would still be charged for the items they never even received and vice versa… They ended up agreeing to refund me for my missing items and offered to give me a code to use for my next order with them. (Yeah right lol) I went ahead and asked what the refund would be (as I like to make sure we’re on the same page) and was told they didn’t know since they had to manually do it.

But to top it all off… They sent me an invoice of my post delivery then another email with the refund details and I noticed refund email to be off, so I went ahead and compared and EVERY item I was refunded, they refunded less than what I actually paid per item… E.g. chicken breast $13.00 refunded $10.00 lol.

I emailed customer service with screenshots of both emails explaining if I paid $X.XX for an item that I never received then I should get the exact same amount I paid for back… They apologized and refunded me the difference.

Overall:

Customer service representatives were nice.

If the drivers don’t know where they’re going, might be best to use a GPS for some guidance.

The shouting in my building late at night was very unprofessional. They had my number, they should have at least called me.

I shouldn’t have to email customer support explaining the refund amount issue. Though I feel like this was intentional.. Makes me wonder if they do this often in hopes of not getting caught and making a profit. If it was one item, okay sure. Mistakes happen. But not with every single item?

The person doing the fulfilling makes way too many mistakes with the orders. As well, half my order isn’t fulfilled. Why bother? it’s such crap service?!?

I was excited to try Voila to avoid shopping during our most recent Covid wave and boy was I disappointed. I got home to discover that half of my order was missing and that I was charged for the missing items. I promptly called the store and they apologized profusely and referred me to Viola for a refund. The person who answered at Viola said that she spoke with a supervisor who said that they would run an investigation by speaking with the store in the next 2-3 business days before they would consider a refund. I asked to speak to a supervisor and was told they would request a call back. So now the had both my money and my food. I again called the store and fortunately the store manager agreed I should have my money back and issued a gift card for the outstandingly amount. I had to drive across town again to get the card and now the store was closing so I had to go for my third trip the next day to get my groceries. 10 days later I still had not heard back from Voila so I called them. I asked why I had not received my supervisory call back and they indicated that they didn’t bother cause I had my money back. I again asked to speak to a supervisor and she agreed that they needed to do better and that this lack of service was not acceptable. I also confirmed with her that it was not my responsibility to check to make sure that all items were in my trunk before I left. She advised me that the store was responsible for reviewing the order for accuracy. Well I know one thing thing that’s for certain, I will never use Viola again despite their offer of a $20 off code.

Got home and half my grocery order was missing, I called Voila and they said they would have to do an “investigation” before they would give me my money back. So now they had both my money and the food! Thankfully the store manager listened to me and gave me a gift card. However, I never did hear back from Viola despite having requested a manager call back. I called again after 10 days and told they how disappointed I was with the service. They admitted that they needed to do much better.
As a side note I asked if it was my responsibility to get out of the car and check the grocery order for accuracy in the parking lot, and I was informed that was the responsibility of the store to double check it before bringing it to my car. Many balls were dropped … I will not use this service again !

Annoying

This promotion was nothing like I expected it to be. Even $25 off, Safeway is expensive. I would prefer Walmart or Superstore. PC points are the best.

Terrible time options

I received a free $25 when you spend $100 code, but I couldn’t even use it. The options for pickup time are horrible. There was never anything when I looked until the next day (which wasn’t helpful). I also found the search incorrect and would say things weren’t there, when really they were listed as something different. I was really hopeful for this service, but there was no convenience at all.

4 out of 5 vegetables ordered are expired/rotten

I received a $25 voucher from ChickAdvisor to use towards an order of $100 or more in exchange for providing an honest review of Voilà Curbside Pickup. I used it at the Safeway at Willingdon and Hastings in Burnaby.
The service was courteous and prompt. The ordering on the web site worked well. However, when I brought the groceries home I found that the bag of spinach I ordered was past the best before date, mushy and smelled like fish. 4 of the 5 other vegetables in my order were also mushy or rotten. I still needed to have more than 1 vegetable for the week, so I took these products back and went in the store to do my own shopping, which defeats the purpose of curbside pickup and uses twice as much gas, as well as forcing me to shop at a more expensive grocery store than I would normally use, at a time when I would not normally go in the store because there are too many people present.
In the store, I found that for all of the vegetables I had chosen except one, every single one in the store was also expired or rotten. I was under the impression that Safeway had better produce than other, cheaper grocery stores in the area but after this experience I can say this is no longer the case, at least for this store. I found other vegetables that were passable and took them and their rotten counterparts to the customer service counter to discuss this. There was no one behind the customer service counter and several other annoyed customers waiting. One of them made her own exchange and then left the store unchecked. Over the next 10 minutes I left this counter periodically to find help and flagged down no less than 3 employees to ask if anyone can provide customer service, and they announced this over the PA system at least 4 times, but I still waited for 10 minutes before an employee came to the counter. She didn't know what to do about the voila service so after agreeing that my vegetables were rotten, she tried calling someone and then just said, whatever, you can replace them with something else if you like but we can't provide bags. I was frustrated by this time so I took the items I had found and left the store, even though they were not the same price as the items they were replacing.
If it's not already clear, I would not recommend this service or this store in any way. My family is high risk due to medical issues and I have been using pickup services or only going to stores at the time they open to avoid exposure. In addition to being completely a waste of time and money, this "curbside pickup" trip is the most exposure I've had to COVID in 2 years.

Voila SUCKS

Thanks for nothing.
You guys need to get your heads out of your asses...and take care of your customers A LOT better.

I don't know who is running things over there....but you guys suck when it comes to Voila.
What exactly is '....cancelled for unforeseen issues'. And why are your supervisors so ill-equipped to handle a simple question?
Why should customers have to call in to see what the issue is?

First time voila user, and LAST time. You guys need help prioritizing customers support, and stop giving bs excuses for the incompetence of your business model.
I don't know who created that business model....but they suck too.

If these cancelations were all because I have a US phone number.....then perhaps you need to tap the brain trust over in the IT dept and have them make it IMPOSSIBLE to include a US phone number on the website.

Simple fix - but you guys won't do it because it's too simple and easy.

Pathetic first and second experience.
Not really into dealing with nonsense. I can't wait until InstaCart is avaliable in my area - they've ALWAYS taken care of their customers.

Eat shit Voila. You guys are the WORST!

Could not use it

I could not use the service provided because when I wrote my address, several items were not available for delivery. For that reason, I did not use the service.