Don’t order home delivery from Petco

Here’s what happened. Sent to Petco. I placed an order this morning for 4 jugs of cat litter. 80 lbs total. I selected home delivery because the shipping date was 5 days later. I provided delivery instructions to come up driveway (which is short) and place the litter near the back door.

AFTER I had paid and completed the order, the page said it would be delivered by Door Dash Had I known this before placing the order I would not have placed it. In dozens of Door Dash orders, at our house we have never had a good experience with Door Dash.

At this point I was offered the option to tip or not tip the driver. I specified a $3 tip.

Later I received notice that the driver as on his way. The text did not include my delivery instructions. There was a space to give the driver delivery instructions for delivery. It was blank meaning my prior instructions had not been given to the DoorDash driver. I re-entered COME UP DRIVEWAY TO BACK DOOR TO DELIVER.

The driver delivered the 80 lbs of cat litter to my next door neighbor as I watched from our driveway. He ignored my shouting and pointing at our house and I had to go stand in front of his car. I am disabled and on crutches. He got out. He was speaking in Spanish. He did not understand me or my pointing to our 2 foot high house number sign under our mailbox. He kept pointing to neighbors and speaking Spanish. I pointed to the neighbors house and said “ no gato”. Finally he understood. He got out his phone with Google translate. Once he understood he carried the litter to my back door. He said drivers never get delivery instructions from Petco, just an address.

I was charged $8.27 tip not the $3.00 I specified.

In attempting to get the Petco complaint email address, which I could not find on the Petco website, I used chat. It took 18 minutes after finally connecting with a live agent for her to give it to me. She was insisting I place my complaint through chat. Chat has no tracking. In my experience chat complaints disappear into a black hole and are never responded to, and while the company might track chats, the customer cannot. I wasn’t even sure “Nica” really was a live person.

  • Not informed of Door Dash delivery before I paid
  • Misdelivery to wrong address
  • Driver who could not understand a single word of English.
  • Argumentative and very slow chat with Nica
  • Overcharged for tip by almost 3 times as much as I specified

I will never order from Petco again. I do not need a response. I will be posting this on Yelp, Google Reviews, and Reddit.

Name redacted North Tustin CA