Not having a car, I have used both Vons and Albertsons home delivery service for years (never at DLR, though), and it helped to have the choice between the two of them because sometimes the same item would be on sale at one store for a great price and not at the other. In any case, I, too, got the Albertson's e-mail yesterday, and was very disappointed. I can tell you that my 'regular' Albertson's delivery guy (I never had anyone BUT him deliver my stuff so that clued me into the fact that they may not have too much home delivery business) was always asking me questions about Vons' service to report back to his superiors! They were very interested in how they could provide better service than what their competition was offering. I have had some outrageously bad experiences with Vons, and they have made mistakes on about 80% of my orders in 6 years - sometimes huge mistakes where the delivery guy never showed up - and they usually will only offer a refund on incorrectly delivered items if pushed, but make no offer to make up for the inconvenience they cause in delivering my important items to other residences! So Albertsons was a refreshing alternative to Vons' sloppy service. I think Vons began to catch on to the fact that the customers were getting angry and defecting to other home delivery services such as Albertsons and Yummy (Yummy operates in my area of L.A.), so Vons began to improve their service and get better drivers, better shoppers, better Customer Service people, etc. Now that Albertsons - their main competition - is discontinuing the home delivery service, I fear Vons will go back to its old sloppy ways because it won't have to try as hard!
I always preferred Ralphs (Kroger) when shopping IN-store. They were always my favorite. I WISH they would step into the home delivery business and give Vons a run for their money. I have a feeling they would kick some Vons booty!
