One of the longest established online supermarkets serving the expat community is British Corner Shop. BCS has been around since 1999 and stocks over 8000 branded products. It is the place to find all your favourite foods, drinks as well as toiletries and household products.
Yes, they sell all the usual suspects - Branston Pickle, Warburton’s Crumpets, Cadbury’s Chocolate, Bisto Gravy and Fray Bentos Pies - but where BCS is unique, is their generous reward points scheme where you earn 1 point for every pound spent. Just like the UK supermarkets, you can also earn extra points by buying selected products and even by writing product reviews.
They’ve also launched the BCS price drop where hundred’s of their best selling products have been permanently reduced in price. As we are a household of Marmite eaters and our addiction costs me a small fortune, I checked out the price drop page and was delighted to see that a large 500g - (that is a whopping half a kilo!) jar of Marmite had been reduced by £1.30 to just £5.99. Result!
BCS say that they will be adding to the price drop scheme over the coming months and that with these changes in place, they are confident that their prices can’t be beaten. They also have a policy of constantly working hard to ensure that their prices remain competitive and consistently reducing shipping costs. In 2012 they reduced the cost of shipping to France to just £11.99 (this is for up to 30 kilos - which is quite a lot of shopping!) and if you spend over £100, the cost is reduced to just £5.99 for 30 kilos. The chilled *LINK* orders are shipped separately but the same delivery charges apply.
And here’s the clever bit...there is a delivery ‘optimiser’ for both chilled and ambient orders in the online shopping basket. The optimiser is a clever little gizmo which does the maths for you, so this means that if you are ordering both chilled and ambient (non-chilled) products at the same time, you can optimise the delivery costs for both elements of your order separately. This is an amazing feature and makes doing your weekly shop at BCS far more affordable.
BCS launched their chilled range (which is available to customers in France and other selected European countries) in March. The range includes British bacon, sausages, cheese, yoghurt, Quorn, pies, pasties, cream, fruit and vegetables. They also have American, Scottish and Irish sections and will be expanding the products in these ranges later in the year. I know from previous discussions on SFN that there are certain things our American readers really, really miss so I imagine this might well be a welcome discovery for some SFN members!
BCS also take customer satisfaction very seriously. Providing excellent customer service is a top priority, as they understand people can be nervous about ordering foodstuffs online from abroad. They ship worldwide and delivery is made to the customer’s doorstep. They also provide comprehensive tracking details throughout both the picking and packing stages and then via their couriers. Customers in France also have the option of choosing between Parcel Force and UPS for the delivery of their order. BCS has a dedicated customer service team who are available to answer questions and help resolve any issues that might arise.
If there is a particular product that you want and can’t see on the site, you can complete a ‘suggest a product’ form and a member of the BCS team will try to source it and then let you know if it can be added to the site. BCS are constantly adding new products and services and the latest news page is well worth checking out. Even better, why not sign up to their newsletter here and make sure you don’t miss out on any of the regular competitions, special offers and promotions?
But perhaps the last word should go to some of their satisfied customers. The feedback page is quite something - almost every comment on delivery time contains a ‘superb’, ‘excellent’ or ‘speedy’ and the majority of customers say they are planning to order again. So why not give BCS a try and let us know how you get on?
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