This is supposedly the "good" Kroger in town (my faculty friends call the one on the north side "ghetto Kroger"), but that's not saying much. I'll put it this way, I despise Walmart, and Walmart is another mile out of my way...but Walmart is more convenient than this place.
Where to begin?
1. Terrible selection. From produce to frozen fruit to dairy, many times I've gone there I've realized they don't even have what I need, or I'm forced to settle for some ridiculous (e.g., overpriced, wrong-sized) substitute. Even some of the things they regularly carry are frequently out of stock. If I have to go to Walmart anyway for those things, when even bother with Kroger? Especially considering...
2. Awful prices. Kroger doesn't seem to get what it is, or is simply exploiting customers because they aren't Walmart. News flash: the Crawfordsville Krogers are low-quality, poor-selection grocery stores. If I was getting warehouse store prices, maybe I could justify shopping there a bit more, but I'm not. And I'm even missing out on discounts because of their...
3. Absurd loyalty program. Full disclosure: I hate store loyalty cards in general. Just give customers the same dang price without jumping through hoops and invading their privacy. But I wouldn't give a negative review over them, because they've become ubiquitous. To Kroger's credit, they don't *make* you register the card and will even swipe an employee's (or ask another customer) if you forgot it. I've been to stores that will flat-out steal from you (refuse to swipe another card, tell you you're holding up the line and can't register for one then)--cough, ShopRite, cough--and Kroger isn't that bad. But then they started with the *digital coupon* nonsense. It's bad enough that you're making people carry your card. Now they don't get the price you display on your shelves unless you jump through hoops BEFORE you get to the store (or struggle with the awful wireless signal strength of Crawfordsville and try to do it on your phone in the store)? C'mon. I literally walked out of the store without buying items on my list because they were offering a discount that they wouldn't give me. When I tried to go online before my next trip, I couldn't register the card and got...
4. Awful customer service. They basically told me that the card (my card) had previously been linked to a phone number (maybe in the past my friend did so to register a digital coupon), so they couldn't reset it. So, basically I have to get *another* card just to get your discount? Off to Walmart I go. Also...
5. Poor in-store customer service. It's not the *worst* but it's not very good. There are some downright unpleasant folks behind the customer service counter that make the place very inhospitable. And then there's there policy of closing off all the registers at 10 p.m. and forcing everyone to use self-service. I get that 24-hour stores grapple with how to shift into a night mode, and there's a time and place for scaling down to one register--and MAYBE just self-service from like 2-5 a.m.--but 10 p.m. is not that time. I've seen a line of 6 people waiting to use a self-service checkout and two employees trying to help expedite things. Doesn't this SCREAM "let's open a register and get these folks home"? It's inevitable that using a self-service checkout is going to take you three times as long and frequently require an associate to fix an error, especially given Kroger's oversensitive "place/remove the item from the bagging area" protocols. Inevitably you're not saving that much employee time when that assistance is needed. So keep a regular register open until 2 a.m. (the employee doesn't need to be camped out there; they can accomplish tasks at the service desk and rotate as needed), and then keep someone at the service desk to help with self-service afterwards. Heck, recently I saw someone at a (closed) register just farting around, as they blocked off the main entrance and the widest part of the main exit, making it more difficult to even enter the store with a cart. Of course that woman couldn't be bothered to check out the customers, though. :-/ read more