I figured I'd check the Yelp reviews to see if people are experiencing the issues and concerns I've been having.
It's time to finally leave a review...
At first, I was excited to have Lidl in the neighborhood. I was impressed when they first opened, but everything seems to have gone downhill since July 31st, 2024.
That being said, there are a few Lidl brand items that I'm quite pleased with, and keep coming back for. The quality, taste, and price point is worth the trip.
The biggest problem I have found with this store is with management and how their employees treat the customers. Most of the managers are rather cantankerous, and their team can either be helpful, off putting or just plain rude or apathetic. Their lack of enthusiasm or interest, is often presented with a sense of being emotionally unengaged. As you can imagine, customer service is horrible, especially when you call them out on an error or problem that was caused by Lidl Corp. They just don't want to deal with it. It seems like Lidl Corp has strict rules on how they do business even if they are cheating the customer.
All that said, there are few gems (employees) in the Fresh Meadows staff. They are usually the newbees, the ones that want to do right by their employer and the customers at large. Once they are there for a month or so, they start showing no interest, enthusiasm, or concern about the customer or their questions and concerns just like their teammates do on a daily basis.
Product management and placement needs to be addressed accordingly. Their selections and where they place the items is not consistent and is constantly changing as new stock gets placed. It's a guessing game, sort of like a hunt. Where is that item located today that I just purchased a few days ago?
Their stock is usually low or depleted for many of their "Weekly Ad" sale items. I get it, stocking for a small store must be challenging, especially for the products that need refrigeration.
The fruit and vegetable section is a hit or miss. The produce sold at the Fresh Meadows store goes bad quickly. You truly have to do your due diligence making sure to verify that the product is in good condition. Relying on Lidl Fresh Meadows to properly manage the produce section is usually a bad move. Their mishandling of these fresh goods whether it's their team or the relationships they have with their vendors and third parties is unexceptable.
What about the ridiculously long checkout lines? Why would there only be one or two registers when you have 30/40 people on line?
When they first opened, there were plenty of shopping carts. Where are all the shopping carts today?
One would think that keeping the place clean by removing the trash in the bins, cleaning the aisles of debris, mopping the freakin' floor would be a positive for your good and valuable paying customers.
I can just imagine what the storage areas must look like. If they can be as neglectful as they are cleaning the public areas, I can just imagine what it must be like in the back rooms.
The bottle/can refund machine is usually "out of order" of order not because of a mechanical malfunction, but because they haven't removed the crushed recyclables from the bins. And, I know this for a fact because a kind (newbee) assistant manager stopped what he was doing and took care of it for me. I asked him how long he was at this store, and he replied, "just about a month." BINGO! I hope his demeanor doesn't change because he was an outstanding individual. read more