After years of decreasing quality of experience at a local Kroger, I was finally forced to walk out…read moretoday, leaving a full cart order to cancel. I have come to expect a lack of staffed cashier lines (reminiscent of lesser grocery opportunities in town), and frequently out-of-inventory items (especially items which you have tempted me to purchase with coupons). However, today I struggled to even obtain service.
After doing my best to complete my shopping list, again with missing inventory items, I walked to the deli for chicken. I am the only customer at the deli area (including sandwiches, salads, desserts, etc.). There were four workers doing things behind the counter. After a few moments, one offered that he would be with me in a minute. I walked away after 2 minutes of watching the 4 people do other tasks. I know everyone is busy, I get busy at work myself, but that behavior is completely unacceptable on my team.
After giving up on getting chicken for dinner I went to check out. Aside from th10-15 items or less lane, only one cashier lane was lit, and it had 3 full waiting buggies. I selected self-checkout. I zipped through all of my items (buggy full, total was about $140). The last thing I had was five (5) twelve (12) packs of Power-aid. I had a rain check for these because, well, you know. Luckily there were 5 left in the store...exactly 5. I spent the next 10+ minutes working with the lady to ring up those and handle the price override. The order had to be transferred to her station. When she attempted to scan my coupons afterwards, her machine would not work. She called to another line for assistance and that lady came down after finishing up her existing customer. She verified the machine scanner was not working and moved my order to her station. As I got over there, she was scanning my coupons and I attempted to make sense of the Power-aid entries----about 32-34 lines showing Power-aid (original price, discount, remove original price, add back discount, price override). It seemed a few entries had been double voided and perhaps some added incorrectly. I spent some time trying to make sense of that from the receipt and it seemed everyone around (3 workers at this time) might be getting irritated. I was being informed "yes, there it is, you had 6 right, you see the...", I said no, I had 5. Then I realize I have been in checkout, without my chicken dinner, for over 20 minutes. It had started heavily raining in the last 3 minutes. Now I would need to walk out in the monsoon, without my chicken dinner, having my frozen items now defrosting for over 20 minutes before even making it to the car, and wondering if I had overpaid for my Power-aid....of course that assumed I could complete the purchase in a timely fashion. It was here I gave up and asked to just void the sale and I wanted to speak to a store manager.
It went downhill from that point. I dropped by customer service and asked if the store manager was available. The lady did ask if she could help me, but I said no, I needed to complain. After a bit a person (Jamie Parks) did come down to talk. I explained all of the issues to him. At that point I suggested I would like to just file a complaint with the regional/district manager---I felt it important. Jamie said that the store manager was in and I could speak to him. Then it hit me, I had already asked for the store manager, yet here I was talking to Jamie. Obviously my request was about as useful as my trying to obtain service at the deli. Here I figured I would never get the contact for the regional/district manager and Jamie did not disappoint. All I was able to obtain is that I could call the Kroger on Hartley Bridge and that is where I would find that person. Really Kroger? You can do better than this.....