Out of all the retailers I have experience with, the pandemic winner was Walmart (Canada) hands-down. They kept iterating their app and pickup experience (order via app and they put the groceries in your trunk) .. I am an extremely satisfied customer and have increased my spend there!

Losers for me were Home Depot and Canadian Tire. They iterated slowly and when they did, made things worse it seemed.

Opposite experience here. Walmart is always a drab experience. I have never been in a Walmart store that I felt good in. Some Walmart's beat others in how disgusting they are but that's about it.

Home Depot on the other end was great. When there was a shortage of disinfectant (and government mandated clean hands before allowing people into stores) they just added actual washing basins with regular soap and paper towels and I could go get stuff to do projects. I have never been to HD as often as during 2020.

I used online ordering literally once at HD and CT each during that time. HD made me call/text a number with my order# when I arrived and they brought the items out for me but I really only used that because something was low stock in the one of many HD stores I could go to that had any of the item at all and I wanted to "reserve" it. No app needed which is a big big plus for me. I abhor all these apps for everything.

CD wasn't bad either. Same deal, reserving an item with low stock until I could go get it. I just picked it all up at the online order desk where it had already been put in a cart.

I don't like ordering food online. Had to do it once while waiting for a negative covid test result. You don't get to pick the actual items you want (fruits/veggies). Not great. I already don't like how cashiers throw your sensitive veggies around all the time. Never mind how they're being handled in the rest of the chain. Before anyone asks, yes I do choose which line I choose by who is the cashier/packer over length of line.

Varies by locale.

Walmart doesn't "try" where they have to compete with upscale options because even if they do good the rich people will still shop there.because of the Walmart stigma. And the poor people only care about price so they won't be turned off if Walmart doesn't try hard.

Also, there are some really crappy Home Depots out there. In my experience they're the ones without appreciable competition.

I'm not a frequent Walmart delivery customer, but my impression was they didn't take buy-online/ship-to-home or buy-online/ship-to-store seriously until the Jet acquisition. Which Walmart bought in 2016?

So Walmart Canada's pick up seemed to develop in front of my eyes. At the start of the pandemic, there were almost no spots and they screwed up a lot. E.g you'd get half the items you ordered, wrong items, would not get pick up order ready in time, fee on orders, etc. Whoever ran the show, executed brilliantly. It kept getting better. A relative scoffed at my high praise, and I convinced him to try it .. he too was blown away. I bring this up because so many Canadian retailers acted stupidly and frankly, many old school businesses keep doing this all the time (looking at you Costco .. Costco seemed to have pretended the pandemic did not happen .. they did not develop a touchless pick up model at all, and their online prices seemed to always be higher than the store price .. cancelled my membership there).

To be brutally honest: What does "touchless" mean here except clever marketing that plays off fears about Covid?

If anything more people touch your items in this system or its on par. Sure there's no cashier/packer touching your items at checkout. But the equivalent has to happen internally. I have no idea how it actually works but I gather since most stuff goes directly into the store and not the warehouse someone walks through the store and picks the order like you would exposing themselves to the Covid risks and then potentially someone else packs it all up and yet another person delivers it to your car as this happens asynchronously and there might even be a shift change in between.

FWIW my Costco didn't pretend the pandemic didn't happen. I still sometimes have to wait to get into the fruit/veggie or dairy coolers, with someone making sure that not too many people are in there at the same time. They applied the limits intelligently (only allowing one person per membership into the warehouse at all at a time when the government limits were very low) so as to allow more people to shop without having to wait outside for ages (which happened in the first 'panic buying stage' of the pandemic). They have less produce in the cooler too to allow more space for passing (even to the detriment of the produce. I just don't buy some stuff any longer as its no longer cooled and there are quality issues). They also rearranged some other stuff to make it easier to access without bumping into each other. None of the other stores I have been to have done this at all.

Amazon revenue for last 4 quarters is: ~$440bn (96 + 126 + 108 + 113) so only just over $100bn away. At current growth rates, it seems like they may get there next year?

A pandemic year is not a normal year. Everyone ordered online by necessity and Amazon is the de facto online retailer. Brick and motor was hit harder last year.