Tesco Malaysia Soft Launch, but Pre-registration Fail

Monday, March 18, 2013

Tesco Malaysia (a 70:30 joint venture between Tesco and Sime Darby Bhd), a hypermarket giant from UK, soft launch their Tesco eStore locally to sell groceries and daily households items to Malaysian

Tesco, according to wikipedia, is the third-largest retailer in the world  So of course, our expectation is HIGH.

Then I tried to sign in with my pre-registered account details, this is what I am greeted with:




Then was the proof I did sign up for an account in prior. Then after going through the details, I suspect this is not working either due to following 2 reasons:

1) My area, Cheras is not covered, that's the reason they didn't sync my details with the live Tesco stores or
2) They pre-registration process is not integrated nor part of the live store sign up process, it is mainly treated as email newsletter to inform new customers if their area is covered. (Suggest Tesco to change the "pre-registration" naming as it suggest pre-register for an account and can be very confusing like what I just experienced) 



Leaving me no choice, I re-register again. Then I found my office area is not covered. This article by Amanz.my cited that places close to tesco stores will be covered, there's a Tesco store just 2KM away from my office! (Postcode: 56100)



Tesco is just 2KM away from my office, maybe they just want me to exercise more...  

Then I tried input using dummy data, I found out the form is very rigid, very structured, they pre-loaded all the values for you, even to your suburb (come on... nobody use this suburb term here...) and street!

I don't know why Tesco being this extremely rigid on the household address, but from what I observed, I suspect maybe this is how they control the expectation of their fulfilment service, given they let you select the timezone (an interval of 2 hours each, see below pictures from Amanz.my). This is some really tough operation.

Let's see how this evolve from here. Tesco is a highly successful retailer who knows how to run eCommerce and I'm sure their investment will move the industry forward here.



But still... can anyone tell me why Kuala Lumpur is a city/town of Selangor? If you already shop at Tesco eStore, let us know in the comment below on how was the experience like?

For those who haven't tried, take note of Guide Price before you start shopping! Cheers!




Note: 
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