Supermarkets in Shetland - prices, ethics and experiences

[Sukibind]

What is up we da staff in da Brae Co-op!  A peerie cheery smile would not go amis - Tesco here I come. Honestly I have had enough of being treated like dirt.

[Windwalker]

Might be worth having a quiet word with the manager and give him/her a chance to see if he/she can improve the customers experience. Nothing worse for business than grumpy shop staff.

[suuusssiiieee]

Having been along Tesco's earlier today i have to say for the first time the shop seems to be struggling to cope with demand for goods since i guess the dot.com facility was launched.

 

Standards appear to be starting to slide, namely poor availability across large parts of the store with some aisles pretty bare and very long queues at the tills with not enough staff , plus the express till being closed didn't help matters too. 

 

Perhaps Tesco have just got a little to greedy in trying to expand to much as things are a shambles there just now. Other shops get a bashing on here frequently when they deserve it so this time the spotlight shines on Tesco's. 

Edited July 20, 2014 by suuusssiiieee

[shetlandcars]

Standards appear to be starting to slide, namely poor availability across large parts of the store with some aisles pretty bare 

Noticed this for a while, also branded stuff being replaced with own brand, prices jumping about all over the place, buy 3 for the price of 2 offers, encouraging me to buy more than i need to get a deal.

 

I've started alternating now to the co-op

[daveh]

Surely just a settling down period for the store.

As for the store being greedy, they are clearly meeting a demand that is out there. That is a good business strategy.

[Kavi Ugl]

Surely just a settling down period for the store.

As for the store being greedy, they are clearly meeting a demand that is out there. That is a good business strategy.

Tesco's "business strategy" is to detroy all competition and maximise profits.

 

suuusssiiieee is right, it's been a shambles there for a few months and tbh it's just a horrible rat race of a place at any time.

 

I detest shopping there and only go if I really have to.

[Ghostrider]

Haven't had any experience of Tesco in six months, as during the nine months or so before that I'd noticed a increasing number of either the pack size of a product I wanted to buy, or a specific brand of product had become items the store either no longer stocked, or were continiously running out of stock of, as they were never there when I was there, despite being omnipresent for well over a year prior.

 

In most cases the alternative pack size available was smaller, or the alternative brand(s) were more expensive or of poorer quality than what I'd have preferred to buy, so I dedided my local shops were more deserving of my trade than Tesco. When it comes down to the only regular purchase items worth going to Tesco for are bog roll and Cream Crackers, there's no contest.

 

My best guess is that any further deterioration in service is just the attitude which started surfacing over a year ago dragged everything down to a level its difficult for many to ignore - after all, they've managed to suck in enough punters for whom shopping at Tesco is now a "habit" that they probably guess they don't need to work at it so much any more.

[paulb]

no there is greed there as well. hence there cutting out there value ranges. tescos was meant to be a cheap supermarket when coop can compete on price then they have gone wrong. give me morrisons any day and for posh food booths.

[JustMe]

In most cases the alternative pack size available was smaller, or the alternative brand(s) were more expensive or of poorer quality than what I'd have preferred to buy, so I decided my local shops were more deserving of my trade than Tesco. When it comes down to the only regular purchase items worth going to Tesco for are bog roll and Cream Crackers, there's no contest.

 

 

Funny enough "bog roll" is one of the products I always buy from my local shop as they always have it at a competitive price.  Must admit I am going to try the Co-op again sometime soon just for a change.  To be fair to Tesco they do have a good range of products at reasonable products but lately I have found some items on my shopping list have vanished from the shelves.

[Frances144]

My partner (who does the shopping) was saying shelves were empty. He wondered if it was all the extra folk about.

[Hector's House]

My biggest bugbear - no, ONE of my biggest bugbears... oh heck, one of my many, many bugbears with Tesco is the special offers such as the "Meal Deal" or "Big Night In" range where a key element of the deal is missing, such as the qualifying bottles of drink - why bother promoting this stuff if only the first few dozen customers can take advantage of it? It infuriates me when I ask a passing staff member if there is any more available and am met with a vacant stare and a shrug of the shoulders. No doubt there are staff who have off days, but the general response to similar questions rarely meets with the "standards" that Tesco sets. That said, there are many staff members who are quite lovely and haven't been assimilated (yet!) - mainly the more mature ones.

As for the dearth of stuff on the shelves, I'd put money on the number of folk with Petrofac fleeces on in the shop as having a big effect on it. It may be that the introduction of the delivery and click 'n' collect services has impacted on the storage space, just when they needed to up the physical throughput.

 

Having re-read wot I rote, I have had to edit a lot of it. I really am turning into a Grumpy Old Hector

[Ghostrider]

I really am turning into a Grumpy Old Hector

 

Don't knock it, curmudgeonly types are the ones that make life a little less cozy for those insulated within their personal ivory towers.

[Suffererof1crankymofo]

Shelves are usually starting to be bare after Saturdays with a sparse re-stock for Sunday mornings, and have been all the time I've visited resulting in the decision that it ain't worth visiting on a Sunday.

[MuckleJoannie]

Tesco's time seems to have passed for the moment. Their boss has just got the dunt.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28397775

 

 

Keith Bowman, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown Stockbrokers, said: "In all, the task ahead for the new chief executive remains sizeable. The march of the discounters Aldi and Lidl continues, whilst Tesco's prior advantage in the form of its overseas operations is not what it once was."

[Ghostrider]

^ No surprise, given that nearly two months ago it became public knowledge Tesco and Morrisons individual market shares were the fastest declining in the supermarket sector over the previous quarter.

 

You'd have thought they'd have been trying a bit harder to regain market share, perhaps by better stock control, even in such far flung parts as the auld marts, or sent a few heads rolling long before now, it rather smacks of indecision and/or complacency.