Shop Tesco Thailand online!

**Bangkok Phil** · 28th April 2012 16:20

Originally Posted by Jimmy Mulga

I would have thought the weather would be a reason to go out and shop? Why burn your own lecky when you can burn Central's?

That's the very Thai working class way. Drag the four kids to Central or Big C in their Spiderman and Ben 10 outfits. Stick an 8 baht McDonalds ice cream cone in their mush. Kill a couple of hours in the KFC children's play area. A slap-up meal in the food court washed down with gallons of free water. And then an hour spent sitting on the stools in the bookshop and generally treating it like a library. Half the day spent poncing off the air-con.

I think Tesco Lotus refers to them as category C customers (and indeed they're Tescos bread and butter) But I don't think they're the market that on-line stores go after.

**Jimmy Mulga** · 28th April 2012 16:26

Surely the middle classes use the posher malls to do the same thing?

---Update---

The expensive shops on the ground floor are always deserted but for the bored looking staff, it's the top floor with the little stalls selling cheap crap that are going gangbusters.

**Bangkok Phil** · 28th April 2012 16:32

Originally Posted by Jimmy Mulga

Surely the middle classes use the posher malls to do the same thing?

I think it's generally agreed that farangs slot in alongside the Thai middle classes right? Have you ever walked around a shopping mall to save on the electricity at home. I haven't. That would be a bit sad wouldn't it? I'm sure the middle-class Thais enjoy a few hours walking around a mall, but there's probably more of a purpose to it. Expose more of them to on-line shopping and perhaps they'll find other things to do with their time that don't involve driving around trying to find a parking space or waiting for microphone girl at Oishi to tell them there's a table for four ready.

Or I could be wrong.

---Update---

Originally Posted by Jimmy Mulga

The expensive shops on the ground floor are always deserted but for the bored looking staff, it's the top floor with the little stalls selling cheap crap that are going gangbusters.

Well, each mall is laid out differently. Central Bang Na is very much as you describe but the 'stalls selling cheap crap" are usually the domain of teenagers escaping from their parental clutches for a few precious hours.

**Jimmy Mulga** · 28th April 2012 16:52

Thais seem to like trips to the mall, when I taught in Nakhon Pathom my students thought trips to Bangkok to go to a mall was a huge treat.

There are a lot of East and South East Asians where I live in Perth but you never see them down the river or at the beach, they are all at the mall.

---Update---

In Bangkok there isn't a great deal of public space where it is nice to hang out. I reckon people go to malls or to Tesco because they are shady and cool.

---Update---

Originally Posted by Bangkok Phil

I think it's generally agreed that farangs slot in alongside the Thai middle classes right?

You reckon? I've never spent more on my car than on housing.

---Update---

Sometimes the universe is good to you. I just found this on my facebook news feed. They were discussing Terminal 21.

"

For me, it's a beautiful, unique mall."

**Bangkok Phil** · 28th April 2012 16:56

Originally Posted by Jimmy Mulga

For me, it's a beautiful, unique mall."

It is to me as well. Easily my favorite.

**Jimmy Mulga** · 28th April 2012 17:00

It really is beautiful and unique? I'll have to have a butchers next time I'm up then

---Update---

I just read CNNgo's bumpf on Terminal 21, I don't think I'll bother after all.

**Bangkok Phil** · 28th April 2012 17:46

I wrote a blog about it a few months ago
Check in at Terminal 21 | Ajarn World | Blogs | Teaching English in Thailand

**Jimmy Mulga** · 28th April 2012 17:49

Yes but do they have a Kinokunya?

**Amanpour** · 29th April 2012 01:29

Originally Posted by Jimmy Mulga

Yes but do they have a Kinokunya?

No, but there is a tiny Asia Books in the basement.

Originally Posted by Bangkok Phil

But it's slowly dawning on me that on-line shopping combined with a bit of social networking is the future in every sense of the word.

Online shopping was the future 10 years ago in the west.

**happynz** · 29th April 2012 04:41

Originally Posted by Bangkok Phil

That's the very Thai working class way. Drag the four kids to Central or Big C in their Spiderman and Ben 10 outfits. Stick an 8 baht McDonalds ice cream cone in their mush. Kill a couple of hours in the KFC children's play area. A slap-up meal in the food court washed down with gallons of free water. And then an hour spent sitting on the stools in the bookshop and generally treating it like a library. Half the day spent poncing off the air-con.

I think Tesco Lotus refers to them as category C customers

Well, that answers my existential question of "who am I?" very neatly. I am a category C customer.

**A. Merlin** · 3rd May 2012 09:31

About 8 years ago, Tesco in Bratislava, Slovakia started doing online grocery ordering and home delivery the next day for cash on delivery.

Positives
- I didn't have to go out when it was freezing or blazing hot, or I was just too lazy to go anywhere.
- The delivery guys would lug all of it up the three flights of stairs in my apartment building for me (I tipped them a bit, of course).
- Sometimes, the store would even call and tell me that it didn't have a particular thing I had ordered, and ask if I wanted a different brand of the same type of thing.

Negatives
- Sometimes, the store wouldn't call me and ask me if I wanted a different brand of the same thing, so several things I had ordered ended up not being delivered. This happened about 25% of the time.
- It wasn't possible to arrange a specific time for delivery. The store just said "Sometime between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.". Even when I eventually got the delivery guy's mobile phone number and would call him and ask him to narrow down the timeframe for me, the best he could do is give me a two- or three-hour window.
- On rare occasions, the delivery guys just wouldn't show up at all on the day they were supposed to. When I called the store or the delivery guy, I was told "Oh, sorry, there were just too many deliveries to make today. We’ll come tomorrow at X time.” They usually did show up at that time the next day, but it was a royal pain in the ass when that happened.

I used the service fairly regularly, and probably would have continued to do so, but Tesco decided to discontinue the service less than a year after starting it.