I tried Target’s curbside pick-up (which they call Drive-Up) today for the first time, in an attempt to broaden my options for acquiring supplies. I hadn’t tried it before, because perishable items and many scarce items such as hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies can’t be acquired this way, and pretty much everything else could be shipped instead, so why would I drive 45 minutes AND force some store employee to shop in-store for me when I could instead stay home AND have an employee shopping more safely in a warehouse?
But, as I say, I am trying to broaden our options. And for me, the first time I do anything can feel insurmountable, so this was a trial run to make the process familiar if I turn out to need it later. (If more things become unavailable for shipping, for example, or if I need something sooner than it can be shipped.) And it went pretty smoothly: you add things to a cart using the Target app on your phone; you check out and pay; you get a little notification (phone and email) when the order is ready (within 4 hours). The app then has you click a button to say you’re on your way, and another button to say you’ve arrived. An employee comes out to your car and loads the things into your trunk. I had to roll my window down to say hello and have them scan a bar code on my phone, but it was otherwise contactless, and the employee was masked and so was I, and we were out in the nice fresh air so it felt safe.
Some huge upsides to curb-side:
1. I could get Diet Coke (for me) and Diet Mountain Dew (for Paul), which can’t be shipped and which take up a fair amount of room in the grocery cart.
2. I could get Monster Trail mix in the BINS (they’re currently only shipping the bags)—especially important because right now we have only ONE bin for making our own, and I want at least TWO bins for that, plus we may occasionally need a fresh new bin, plus it’s nice to have extra bins for trying new combinations (I am thinking of doing one with honey roasted peanuts instead of regular, caramel M&M’s instead of plain, and butterscotch chips instead of peanut butter chips). And FURTHERMORE, they were on sale with pick-up, so they were $6.99, so that’s within pennies of the cost of making it myself, so that was satisfying too.
3. I could get M&M’s, which haven’t been shippable recently, including the mini ones I haven’t been able to find even at my grocery store!
4. I could get the additional TV tray I wanted for the living room: having more people home means needing more surfaces.
5. I was able to get some chips without worrying they’d be crushed. Normally I just let them be crushed, but this was for something I particularly wanted uncrushed chips for.
6. I was able to buy some heavy things, like cat food and cat litter, without wincing at the idea of Target having to ship those to me for free.
7. The whole process of driving up and having someone else put stuff into the trunk worked very smoothly and well; and I didn’t have to phone anyone, I could just use the app to let them know first that I was on my way, and later that I had arrived. And they don’t make you sign anything: they scan a barcode on your phone, and the app walks you through that so it’s not weird or something you have to fumble to find. (I have had to hand my phone to cashiers before when I wasn’t able to figure out coupons or bar codes on my phone, to give you an idea of my ability level.)
And some downsides, which are only to be expected in this imperfect world:
1. The app. Oh my goodness, the app. I had HEARD the app was bad, but I thought it was bad the way the website was bad, and I’ve gotten pretty accustomed to the website. No: it was far, far worse. It was slow, it was laggy; when I selected an item/button, there was a pause that might be just a few seconds or might mean the app was crashing again, which it did literally every few minutes, including twice while I was trying to check out, so that I wondered if after all that fuss I would even be able to complete the order. It happened OFTEN that an item would appear to be available until I tried to add it to the cart, at which point it would inform me that it had just gone out of stock, or that it wasn’t available at the location I had supposedly already filtered for. When I tried to browse a category (like: I know they’re out of a lot of cleaning supplies, so I won’t hope for specific ones, but just want to see what they DO have), the search results were unsatisfying and baffling. Why am I seeing face wipes when I searched all-purpose cleaners? Why are we LEADING with the out-of-stock bleach-sprays and not with the out-of-stock all-purpose sprays I asked for? Anyway. Anyway. I breathed through the pain and thought of it all as part of the learning experience.
2. And you HAVE to use the app! Even though they have a perfectly good multiple-cart system on their website, AND the items you add to your cart on the app SHOW UP IN YOUR WEBSITE CART, you can’t add them on the website and have them show up in the app. I don’t LIKE doing stuff like that on my phone. I am a slow phone typist and a fast keyboard typist, and I hate seeing search results a couple at a time on the little screen.
3. One item was missing from the order. Luckily just a $2 item, which falls into my “Just let it go, for heaven’s sake it’s a pandemic” category.
4. Also, they accidentally gave us one container of Monster trail mix and one of Caramel Cashew, instead of the two bins of Monster we ordered. But (a) we LOVE Caramel Cashew, and (b) it’s FOUR DOLLARS more expensive than the Monster, which is why we usually don’t buy it. This more than compensates for the missing item (we were only charged for the Monster, because you pay when you order), which is pleasing. One thing I like about Target is that when they DO make errors, as everyone must from time to time, they seem to go either way: sometimes in their own favor, sometimes in mine. In general that lets me feel that I can just let everything balance itself: when a jar of pesto arrives in the mail with the seal broken, I can toss it out without bothering Target about it, knowing that in the future I am likely to get a container of $11.99 trail mix when I ordered the $7.99 trail mix.
5. I did feel uneasy about having someone else taking on the shopping danger for me. But it’s on the minor end of such uneasiness: this seems to be Target employees who are there ANYWAY (as opposed to someone doing it independently), which means they are in the building no matter what, and so it is safer for them to have customers outside in the parking lot rather than sharing the air inside the store. My top choice would still be the warehouse/shipping situation, which seems to maximize safety for the maximum number of participants, but this seems like a very close second.
In the balance, a good experience even considering the app, and a good addition to our supply-acquiring methods. I will probably now have a running cart in the app to which I will add the things that are not available for shipping.
All so interesting! Having lived in Minnesota for many years (the home of Target), we LOVED shopping at Target and only miss it a little bit now that we live in a place where, until very recently, the nearest Target was two hours away.
I’m glad you brought up cat litter. We discovered that we liked Target cat litter more than any other, and were unable to find out if maybe someone else makes the Target cat litter, so we had to order it and have it delivered once we moved out of Target land. I always felt guilty about it because we’d buy at least four 20-pound jugs, and they packed them 2-3 to a box, which means that the poor UPS person had to lug a 40- or 60-lb. box up the driveway. (Sorry! so very sorry!) One time, we got a 2 lbs of a very specific, very local coffee in our (broken) cat litter carton; another time, we got several copies of the same child’s board book! Very strange. I don’t know how those things happen.
And then! the next-to-last time we ordered 80 lbs. of cat litter (really sorry, but I’m not going to the new close-to-me Target — still an HOUR away! — just to buy cat litter), they just slapped the shipping label onto each container. How smart! The jugs have handy handles, and so the UPS driver can just grab a couple of jugs by the handle, and no boxes to break or schlep, and no extraneous unordered things. I was delighted! Problem solved and I felt a bit less guilty.
But no, our last cat litter order came in boxes again. *sigh* Some day we will feel comfortable entering a Target, and will drive the hour to get there, and buy ALL THE TARGET THINGS and life will be back to what passes for normal.
Also? Butterscotch chips instead of peanut butter? That gets my vote!
We are having this same thing happen with cat litter! Sometimes they put a shipping label right onto the container, which is super smart and they arrive beautifully! Other times, they put them into bigger boxes, which arrive absolutely trashed and way too heavy, so that I have to open them in the driveway (or, more often, just reach into the already-open-because-of-severe-crushing box) and carry them into the house one or two at a time.
We had one box arrive completely smashed open, and in it were, among things we HAD ordered, two cans of coconut milk we had NOT ordered (and several things we’d ordered were missing). Very odd times. I imagine sometimes multiple boxes on a truck are open, and things roll out, and the driver puts a few loose things into the nearest box—but I don’t know if I’m right.
I have a friend who works at UPS in a sorting facility and I can say with certainty that that is *exactly* what they do, at least at her location. Sometimes multiple packages break open and they’ll do their best to get it right, but there is definitely an element of “loose item, open box? Stick it in there and seal it up again” going on.
I cannot even begin to tell you how much I love your posts about experiences I’ve been curious about but haven’t tried.
As someone who has googled “why is Target’s website so bad” more than a few times, this was a very satisfying read.
I don’t know I’d this will improve your truly terrible experience with what sounds like a very poorly designed app, but my husband HATES typing on his phone, and eventually decided to buy a small Bluetooth keyboard that he now uses to type anything of length on his phone, and it’s really helped him! It’s also really helped me because now I don’t have to listen to his angry complaining about typing on a phone. Win-win!
Ha, yes, I think Paul would be Quite Invested in this as a Christmas/birthday gift idea for me!
I’ve been quite pleased with the Logitech k380. I bought one for my kid who is distance learning and then bought another one for me to use. The gray/black color was 29.99 on Amazon. You can even connect it to 3 different devices and connect by pushing one button. It’s quite nice and I love it with the tablet because that always seems so unresponsive when typing on that screen.
I really hope you try the “honey roasted peanuts instead of regular, caramel M&M’s instead of plain, and butterscotch chips instead of peanut butter chips” because that sounds delicious and I want to know if it lives up to that! I do enjoy your rundowns of these services; I hadn’t ordered from Target before you started writing about it.
They will make it right on the $2 item. If there is something they are out of that made it thru the order you can also have that shipped for free, so I bet they would ship you the $2 item or credit you back. I have done drive up a couple time a month maybe the last three months. I’ve never had them actually scan my barcode. They ask my last name, load er up and off I go.
We do Amazon Subscription for cat litter, and have since before the Pandemic. Yeah, it weighs 40 lbs, but we don’t ever run out. You know what rarely gets stolen from your porch? 40lbs of cat litter. We’ve had would-be package thieves open the box and realize there is no value to stealing an Amazon box that only has a box of Arm & Hammer cat litter in it. Now that we have a dog, I may switch to Chewy, but still, no street value to cat litter and dog food.
Yes, here too. Cat litter, cat food, paper towels and toilet paper are on Amazon Subscription for us, and have been since way before the Pandemic Times. It is so nice to have all that heavy/bulky stuff delivered every month. I also have several other things on subscription that are delivered every other month (shampoo, dish soap, trash bags, etc) that I never need to put on my bi-weekly grocery list.
Target is only 10 minutes from me and I’ve used their Drive Up quite a few times. I also hate ordering using their app. My work around is to use to their website to fill my cart, then go to the app and change the delivery method for each item to Drive Up, which is clunky and less than ideal, but still better than trying to shop using their app. I will say that they are amazingly fast at getting out to give me my order.
Ohhhhhhhhh this is an idea I will try!
I was just coming to suggest this!! I go back and forth between the website and the app, and then go through my cart at the end changing my pick up option. Still annoying, but at least it’s a DIFFERENT annoyance, to break things up?
I am finding ALL technology somewhat frustrating and laggy these days — maybe just because so much of my life now revolves around this, but it gets incredibly stressful.
This is exactly what I did and was going to suggest it. For things that can’t be shipped, I look them up on the app but then it’s a minimal amount of app searching.
I was coming here to say exactly this. It’s a clunky work around, but it works, and I prefer searching from an actual computer too.
Not to make you feel better/worse, I work at a Target and most of the online orders are not shipped from a warehouse but from a store. The stuff comes from the distribution centers to the store and then it’s picked in store by store employees. It’s probably one of your local stores, but it might be from across the country.
Oh, INTERESTING! I did not know this!
Target drive up is excellent. I was using it even pre pandemic (mom of small kids here!), and it has been invaluable lately. If you enable the location tracking and hit “I’m on my way,” they are usually walking out to the parking lot as I’m parking. Today I did a pickup that took less than a minute. Amazing!!!
I actually don’t have a problem with their website but haven’t tried their app. I just have everything delivered from Target. I just wish that all curbside deliveries were consistent. Most have you order on the website. But from there the experience varies. At the wine store, you park in designated parking and text them your first initial, last name and space number. At Michael’s, JoAnn’s, and Tractor Supply, you pull up and call them. At Office Depot, you have to click the link in the email they sent you telling your order was ready – it would have been helpful to have that one the outdoor signage as I sat there for 10 minutes trying to figure out how to let them know I was there. All that aside, I hope curbside delivery continues to be a thing when this is all over.
What’s really disappointing though is that every time I go to pick up a curbside delivery, it seems that I am the ONLY person utilizing the option – everyone else just walk into the store; mostly masked but still…
I am very shocked that this is the first time you’ve used the Target Drive up. I like it for those bulk items, but I do miss the “oh, my goodness, I didn’t even know I needed such a thing” items. 😂
I can’t comment specifically on Target, since we don’t have it in Canada, but I TOO HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO GET THE MINI M&MS FOR BAKING. What is up with that?
You live 45 minutes from Target?? That’s a long distance love right there!
My heavy thing is bbq charcoal. So much easier to get it via pickup. I feel a little bad asking someone else to haul it out and load it in the trunk, but it is so much easier than trying to balance the dusty 16 lb bag on top of my already full cart.
No, no: just over 20 minutes! But I have to drive back home, too!
I’m of the mind that the Target employee is already working there, and by using curbside, I am reducing the number of people breathing the air in that store (and possibly infecting the employee). Of course, there are MANY things that you just can’t get via curbside, so I understand that other people may want/need to be IN the store. I love our Target curbside. I feel like the people who fulfill the orders are so much nicer and friendlier than they ever seemed when they were IN the store, checking me out. And I am so grateful to be able to shop at Target during the week, when I have my daughter, when I would normally wait until I could leave her with my husband before I went into a store.
Once I got an entire order that was meant for another person! It was luckily in addition to my order, and I always check, so I was able to drive up to the doors and call to the staff member and hand over the other order. Phew!
The pandemic has changed the way I will grocery shop for good. I had for a couple of years been meaning to try click-and-collect and even downloaded the app but the old routine never broke until the pandemic.
But now, after about 4 months of it, I love it and I am never going back!!! There is a small charge for higher-demand timeslots ($3-5) But Mon-Wed are free. TBH, I would be happy to pay much, much more than that for this service, especially since it is a flat rate and I am shopping for a family of five who no longer eats out and weekly shopping can easily take me an hour or more if I’m disorganised.
For once things are back-to-normal, my plan is a bit of a hybrid: click-and-collect the staples, dry goods, and heavy things and then also go into the store for some luxuries/impulse buys and to select my own produce and/or meat for the sort of things I’d like to select myself. I’ll let them pick my bag of carrots but I want to choose the avocados.
My grocery store does a few things better than your Target. Any cart I create is equally accessible at any time from both the web interface or the app. Plus, the app is not terrible, though my experience may be somewhat better because I have it installed on a tablet with a decently-sized screen. The store also keeps my credit card on file so that you skip the step of scanning your phone. Don’t even need ID. Just tell them your name and packing space number over the phone when you arrive and drive away with your groceries. I guess they haven’t had a whole lot of people driving off with other people’s groceries.
No system is perfect, but my store does a pretty good job of making/communicating about substitutions and any errors have been of the “meh, it’s a pandemic, I’m over it” variety.
I work in sales for a very large company that makes pet food and cat litter and sell to a very large grocery chain with online ordering, so will offer the following comments:
1) Depending on the size of the cat litter you buy, it is shipped from the manufacturer either in several units to a case or a single unit being equal to a case. So for example, if you buy the 20 or 30 lb pail, each pail is a “case” and is shipped to Target on a pallet of 48. But if you buy the smaller 8.5lb jug, it is shipped in a box with 3 jugs in it with many boxes on a pallet. All to say, if you order 3 jugs or 1 pail, you’re more likely to get it in the original packaging (or in the case of the larger pails/boxes, no packaging at all) than if you ordered 2 of either.
2) No retailer will ever charge you for giving you something that you didn’t order and they will make it right if they charge you for something you didn’t get. But in a store pick up situation, the risk of not telling them after they made an error is that will have a knock down impact on store inventory. So in this case, the store will think they have one less container of Monster Mix and one more container of Caramel Cashew and that could mean that the next online shopper orders it, a store employee goes looking for it, can’t find it etc. It’s not your responsibility, obviously, but a nice courtesy to the store if you can tell them. Not at stores may care, obviously, particularly given PANDEMIC.
I love Target pick up so much! We use it almost weekly. Also, at least here, they scan your code through the window, if you prefer.
Sometimes items are missing from our order, but on the app you can let them know what happened and they’ll offer a refund or to ship the item to you if possible.
Once we got someone else’s order entirely, and next time I went, I held up a note at the window telling them that they gave us someone else’s order and they took it away before loading our current order.
Oh! Add things to your cart from the computer as store pick up. Then use the app the change them all to drive up! I do that all the time because I hate having to shop from my phone when I have a perfectly good computer so I can open 800000 tabs while shopping that I will inevitably forget to close.
Sometimes I have to verify that the computer or app haven’t forgotten to log me in so that the cart is in both places, but that’s easier than shopping from the app itself.
The very first time I used Target Drive Up I was alone babysitting my three-year-old nephew and he spiked a bad fever and I had no children’s medicine. I had to shlepp a sick kiddo into the car in his pajamas, but didn’t have to carry a sack-o’-potatoes toddler to the medicine aisle. It was a LIFESAVER.
Last week I drove up and an employee loaded six pillows and some shampoo into my trunk. How quickly miracles become mundane.
I love Target driveup, especially once I had 2 small children in car seats. I don’t mind the app, but normally I’m not trying to get hard to find items. I will agree it needs to stop showing things that are not actually in stock.
I will say the last time I did it, I had my dog with me and the delivery person reached INTO MY CAR to pet her. This was a bit much.
Target’s shipping is so hit or miss. I think I said on Twitter, a recent shipping order let me choose to get $1 off by shipping things together! Which I eagerly accepted! But then they still shipped me 3 packages for no reason. So.
Thanks for the info on Target drive up. I have been wanting to try it but I’ve been kind of nervous to start during these pandemic times. I get the lightweight Fresh Step cat litter delivered so at least it’s half the weight and half the guilt! It is more expensive though and if my cats weren’t indoor/ outdoor I probably would opt for a cheaper and heavier version.
My SIL works at target and we get to hear all the horror stories. They have a time they are required to meet between you marking that you arrived and getting you your order, apparently. Apparently it also does not factor in how many people arrive, so they get in trouble if multiple people pull up at the same time and they can’t get ALL the orders out fast enough. Also (this is probably very store-layout-dependent) if you order refrigerated groceries for pickup they are stored in the back instead of up front at customer service but the time allotted does not increase so the person has to dash through the store to try and make it in time.
I guess the moral of this comment is “be gracious to your target person” (which I know doesn’t need to be said to this crowd) and “maybe if there are other cars there already wait a second to hit the button saying you’ve arrived” :)
This is EXACTLY the kind of insider information I love to have, especially the parts where there are things customers can do to make employees’ lives easier—things we wouldn’t have guessed. One thing I’d love to know, but maybe it varies too much to be useful, is if there are certain days/times that are less busy than others, and so it would be merciful to choose those times. My days are kind of the same all day/week long now, so I can place my order on Tuesday afternoon just as easily as Saturday morning, if that’s a less-busy time.