Kroger VS Walmart...why we are going back to the devil

[124c41]

Bottom line with grocery stores is they offer a commodity that we need. They know that and I'm certain they consider their bottom line against customer service daily. Gone are the days of the grocery baggers that know to not put the tomatoes, and potato chips in the bottom of the grocery bag, among other things.

[joe from dayton]

Originally Posted by icewielder

I will say this now to get it out of the way.
Kroger is worse than Walmart but not because of shopping selection or cranky employees. It's business practice.
Kroger can mess up and no one notices (talk to anyone who has worked there over 2 years) but if walmart even sneezes in the wrong direction everyone is on its butt like toilet paper.
Honestly, the rest is case by case. Most products in your particular store are chosen by the area, population, ethnicity, average income for the area, etc... I stay with the organic products myself and the manager's discounted items are nice and plentiful usually. I can't always get my favorite but everything helps.
All in all, it's not so bad for customers. Business standard supplies what is demanded. Until better is demanded businesses will remain the same or atrophy until they must be replaced. They're not self sustained at all. So you, as well as all around you, get to decide what is demanded. Talk about it with people in your area. You may be surprised how similar your wants are. Then bring them to the manager and see what s/he can do for you, or write to corporate.

You're first post is reviving a thread that has been dead for two years?

[Hemlock140]

I'll be surprised if our local Safeway makes it much longer. I haven't seen lines at the checkouts there in 5-6 years.With Costo and Fred Meyer (owned by Kroger) 6 miles away to the south, another Fred Meyer and Whole foods 6 miles to the north, and now a Trader Joe's is being built in the same shopping center as Safeway. The nearest Wal-Mart is Bellevue, about 14 miles away and they have 2 of them. We have been to both and their customer service is surprisingly good. The people at Safeway are just annoying, asking if we found everything, as if it's programmed into their brains. If you ask where something is, they go look for it, which I could have done myself. The best service is at Fred Meyer with better prices than Safeway, not much more than Walmart except for meat and a few other items.

[GoldyViolet]

There are no Krogers in my area whatsoever. And only 1 Walmart within 5 miles that I never go to. No "devils" around here

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by Hemlock140

I'll be surprised if our local Safeway makes it much longer. I haven't seen lines at the checkouts there in 5-6 years.With Costo and Fred Meyer (owned by Kroger) 6 miles away to the south, another Fred Meyer and Whole foods 6 miles to the north, and now a Trader Joe's is being built in the same shopping center as Safeway. The nearest Wal-Mart is Bellevue, about 14 miles away and they have 2 of them. We have been to both and their customer service is surprisingly good. The people at Safeway are just annoying, asking if we found everything, as if it's programmed into their brains. If you ask where something is, they go look for it, which I could have done myself. The best service is at Fred Meyer with better prices than Safeway, not much more than Walmart except for meat and a few other items.

Don't forget, QFC is Kroger's, too.

[reasoned]

I don't understand how anyone continues to shop at Kroger.
I want them to succeed. If they fail, they'll leave a strip mall blight that'll lower home values.
They're unnecessary remodeling attempt to become like high end stores has resulted in nothing other than:
- very ugly floors
- offensively higher prices as they attempt to get their neighbors to pay for their misguided expensive remodel
- unhappy employees
- constant, annoying bombardment with high volume commercials, within the store, trying to brainwash customers into believing the store is great when the reality is that, while it may have been, it obviously no longer is.
- continued entanglement in a shopper's card scheme that eliminates privacy, adds plastic bulk to wallets and/or keychains, punishes first time shoppers with absurdly high prices and barely obfuscates similarly inflated 'discount prices'
- uncomfortably narrowed isles to accommodate additional isles filled with useless non-grocery 'junk'
- an obsession with moving items around so people have to waste more time in the store trying to find what they intend to purchase. I won't stay and wind up buying something I hadn't intended to purchase. I'll wind up driving to the store that hasn't moved their cheese since last week.
- exorbitantly high prices 'gotcha' items, not rarely without price tags scattered through the store and deli (examples: $10 dollar can of tuna and at plastic garden gnome from china priced at $50?!?)
This behavior is surely not leading to higher profits; rather, it is why you are seeing more empty spaces in your store parking lot.
You need to return to a strategy of 'cutting edge' low prices before its too late to recover from the perception your current behavior is fostering ... simply put, you're currently perceived as being an uncaring, woefully misguided neighbor people don't want to visit.
Re-evaluate how much the low maintenance floor is really costing you, stop overpricing items, widen the isles and shut off the damn propaganda speakers. We'll tell you when you're doing well, we don't want to shop where we are forced to listen to you trying to convince us of what clearly isn't true. And, a question, are the department managers really manually taking and recording the hot and cold temperature readings based on the audio prompts or, in reality, aren't there automated systems doing that? And, if so, why would you keep playing that announcement? It doesn't convince me that the items are being kept adequitely hot or cold. Rather, it verifies to me that you think your customers are dumb.
Please improve switftly , we're tired of waiting.