AIBU to think that shopping is now a cumbersome and alienating experience?

I used to love shop browsing of a Saturday and treating myself to a coffee and cake rarely went home without something even if it was an essential from Boots and something from M and S food hall but now I never go to just browse. Anything resembling work wear is just not there, T-shirts are so thin you can read newsprint through them no sizes in stock and stores have reduced staff levels so much there’s never anyone available to ask a question. If you do manage to find someone they are usually polite but say no we don’t have it in the store but you could order it online, if I wanted to order it online I wouldn’t be in the bl•••y store in the first place. I had a funeral to attend recently, 5 shops I had to go into in our city centre before I could get a pair of basic black trousers in my size. My only hope after that was Primark or Tesco. I need new clothes in general , some of mine are getting a bit threadbare and I need some new towels but I just can’t face a horrible shopping experience at the moment. I do order quite a lot online but deliveries up to 10pm at night, parcels going missing, quite an expensive item being damaged in transit the box looked like it had been used as a football, one delivery guy being outrageously rude to me means it’s not a great option either. No wonder shops aren’t doing well at the moment if people like me need to buy things, have the money to buy these things, but are just scunnered of the shopping experience on offer.

On a positive note I used Dunelm and twice Evri delivered things that weren't mine from Shien..But, Dunelm online chat was a real person who apologised and processed the refunds really quickly. That's a needle on a haystack experience though, most companies are awful in this regard. I still have this bag of junk from Shien, trying to get either Shien or Evri to acknowledge the problem and collect their junk is beyond any more human energy on my part.

supermarkets , i usually put it in trolley then take it to a manned till, i prefer them due to the reduced sections that you dont get online

Supermarkets - don't even get me started. Find your stuff, scan your stuff, pack your stuff into your own bags (or pay £1 for each) with not a staff member in sight ... that's a warehouse, not a shop. And, most times the shelf tickets aren't accurate, the offers don't go through, the self scan tills are dirty, the shelves are dirty, everything is in the wrong place, loads of things are missing and the entire place is freezing cold. (Why are they so cold?) It's fucking garbage

Yeah this is maybe why I do online grocery shopping most of the time. I went to a supermarket for the first time in months today and it was so grimy but I did get a friendly staff member put my stuff through at the checkout while everyone else was going for the self service lol

But then I went to boots for click and collect and 4 young female staff looked at me with great annoyance when I asked one of them to come over since no one was at the click and collect till at the other side of the store.

I recently ordered from Argos and didn’t realise they use yodel for delivery. Nightmare. I was in all day and yet had stuff left outside my building, and other stuff dumped inside in the foyer. I ordered it to my flat not to be left outside and around my flat building. Ridiculous.

I found shopping in the US a lot less depressing despite it being the centre of late stage capitalism really .

Target always seems warm and bright. Even their wholefoods supermarket seemed nicer too. I always avoid Walmart though!

Yes! And shoplifting clearly such an issue that front doors are locked and you can’t get in or out without the manager coming with their key; then all the places that have their items locked together with big loops of wire, again to stop theft but they’re locked so tightly you can’t even see the clothes properly when browsing so have to ask for them to be unlocked if you even want to take a look - it’s all so tedious it just puts me off browsing at all as it’s just not a pleasant experience. It will lead to the death of more physical shops but then of course I then don’t buy online as without being able to feel the fabric or assess for fit it’s far too unlikely the item will be right and then you’ve the faff of returning it and huge outlay of cash flow just to try stuff on.

High streets are identical from one town to the next. It's as if there's a ticklist.

M&S✅
Boots✅
Superdrug ✅
John Lewis ✅
Next ✅
WH Smith ✅
McDonald's ✅

And many more big chains.

Yes I think shopping has become an unwelcome experience once enjoyable now mostly depressing. I dread it.

I feel hard core control by marketing media and advertising omg it's like being a zombie online and real shops 😱

Yes - all the fun and glamour of a prison visit

made me smile and nod in recognition. I feel sorry for the staff having to work in such a depressing environment.

I feel like I want to go to a big European city like Paris, Berlin or Barcelona for a shopping weekend, where hopefully the experience is more fun and interesting!

Agree, it's a depressing experience these days. In my city centre there's only 5 shops to buy clothes, and they're all fast fashion, except for M& S, where I rarely find anything that suits me and is stylish. And I used to LOVE clothes shopping!

Also, the clothes are so dull. Everyone wears those unflattering, dark coloured puffa jackets. No fun, style or individuality...

I feel for retail staff as I believe that they probably do encounter some unpleasant people but I have to say I find some of them very rude and unhelpful even though I am unfailingly polite and pleasant. I sometimes wonder do the staff complaining about customers online have the self-awareness to recognise that they may sometimes provoke bad feeling.

Good customer service feels like a rarity now and it definitely influences me on where to spend my money.

There's a few second-hand bookshops I like and a handful of independent shops where everything is good quality, you aren't overwhelmed by choice or exhausted by lugging your other shopping all around the store and the overall experience is straightforward and easy ....... but, aside from that, I now hate shopping.

Online shopping is the worst. I ordered some presents before Christmas that got lost in transit and it took so much time and effort to sort it all out. Just stressful.

My local supermarkets are vast and crowded and the staff always treat the customers like they are in the way. It takes ages to get from one side of the store to another and it feels like you've been on an assault course when you do.

Just after Christmas I had to buy a new washing machine. I went to an actual shop to buy one in the sales. There were lots of staff in the shop doing things but not one single person was serving. After eventually engaging a staff member I was told I had to order the model I wanted online and that after paying for delivery and installation it was going to be as expensive as one of the models not in the sale which came with those things for free.

Once the washing machine was delivered I found out that in order to activate the guarantee I had to register my purchase online and to do so I had to set up an account with the manufacturer. There was no manual in the box and to get one I had to download the manufacturer's app and then used that to download a manual. I just wanted to use the bloody thing but had to spend ages online making up new passwords and finding product numbers. It was all so irritating. Now the manufacturer keeps spamming me with offers on washing machines even though I bought one from them only last week.

I think I would like to go back to the days when Alf Roberts stood behind his counter in a brown overall and you could go in with a list and he would fetch it all for you, ring it through and bag it up. Although the bag would be a wicker basket.

Agreed.

I live in a small town and only shop locally at quiet times and I avoid big shopping centres.

I also mostly buy stuff from charity shops rather than new and I have reduced the amount of clothes/shoes/makeup that I buy drastically over the past couple of years.

I try to support small independent shops as much as I can. I am sick of chains..

I hate supermarkets and I just decided that I am going back to Ocado as I just can't deal with the busy and noisy environment big shops like that.

Totally agree. For most things, I do most of my shopping online because it’s the only way to guarantee stock. And quality is shit despite extortionate prices. Currently looking online at the sales (for clothes in particular) thinking “no wonder that is on sale, who would have paid $200 for it in the first place?”

I’m a very average clothes size 12, but if you go in store you can only find tiny size 6s or very large sizes, so have no option but to order online. I have quite small feet so can usually find shoes in store, whereas more average-sized people probably can’t.

In the sales I have just purchased four items from a homewares store online. This is a medium-sized chain store here in NZ which has four stores within a 15 minute drive of my house. Yet not one of those stores had any of the items that I wanted, and my four items came in separate packages from three different stores across the country.

Added to this that “service” in most stores is a joke - certainly in the supermarkets etc, if not other shops.

Lol no.. So there's more of these stores then and companies putting profit above their staff safety?!!

Do you work in jd sports 🤔

I love shopping in supermarkets as long as they're not too busy. I find it strangely relaxing just wandering around them.

Try working in these "shops"
Multi Million pound business and our store is literally falling apart beneath us...
The roof is leaking so bad thousands of pounds of stock is being wrote off every year, there's walls crumbling from water leaks, the toilets are an actual health hazard.. There's mushrooms growing in the toilets, they've ripped up the tiles in the ladies and the men's are disgusting and now the heating is broke and on Thursday I went to work in 5 layers of clothes coz it's absolutely freezing in our big store.. They've said they need to get onto the roof and they won't be able to hire the crane to do the job til at least April...
Our big company pay a million pound a year for the lease of our building..

But it's OK next week they've made a huge number of us redundant and the rest of the store they can't decide whether they are making it smaller, meant to be refurbing it but who knows...

If you think shopping in retail is an awful experience, working in it is really no laugh either and that's without the rude customers and abuse we have to put up with every day!!

The whole country is slowly going to pot... 😭

I agree with you op. I shop on-line but for the very first time this Christmas, the experience was so problematic that I have vowed to shop as little as possible from now on!

First, many of the websites are clunky and once you click on a thumbnail, you get sent back to the beginning again, rather than being taken back to where you were last looking! So annoying.

But purchasing things is not really a problem; they encourage you to do that of course!

The main issue was that the deliveries were very hit and miss. We had so many parcels go missing it was ridiculous. Most were sent directly to a pick up point which got so overwhelmed that they sent parcels back before the time limit and they have not yet been processed by the vendor so I haven't got a refund! Some got delayed at a warehouse and according to UPS are still stuck there!

I've come home to find parcels on the pavement outside my front door. Goodness knows how many were stolen before that.

And in order to complain, with the vendor, post office, or delivery company, you get sent down an endless rabbit hole of logging in, registering, filling in endless personal details, verifying you are not a robot, deep diving in to FAQ pages, engaging in an on-line chat with a bot or customer service rep, and going around and around in a circle that goes precisely nowhere! It's started to dawn on me that this is a deliberate policy so people just give up trying to get a refund!

The system is broken!

I hate the way Sports Direct don't even give you a bag, you have to buy a bag for life. Spend €€ there and won't even give you a bag...such a poor customer experience to save a few p.

You are being a bit unreasonable..it always has been!

Ok, maybe it is getting worse...the quality and cut of clothes now seems so bad...I remember when high street shops had much better quality (lots of them have closed down now)

Sounds a bit like my local lidl 😄. I picked up some chicken wings in the frozen section and had to dig to the flavour I like. At the bottom of the freezer was loose prawns, veg, berries and a fish finger. Absolutely grim. They clearly never clean the freezers as that 5 stock type moves all collecting at the bottom. You can use a manned till in quite a few clothes shops like Uniqlo and Matalan. You have to remember to remove the security tags.

I was only thinking this morning that only enjoyed shopping as a teen and young adult. I only buy things I need as I need them. I don't browse anymore. I saw some jeans I liked online but postage was £5. Then paid returns. I don't want to take the risk of paying £8 postage to find out they don't fit and return. It's good overall for me personally to buy much less than I did pre covid times. Covid sped up the downfall of the highstreet imo

Is this just what late stage capitalism looks like
That's exactly it - corporations going down your pockets for the last few pounds before the giant Ponzi scheme that is capitalism collapses. There's little in the way of choice/competition as most shops are now owned by the same handful of parent companies. The in-person supermarket shopping experience has all the fun and glamour of a prison visit - and with every trip prices have risen by another 10% and the list of chores you have to complete before you can take home your overpriced rotten potatoes, soft apples and strawberries that taste like wet onions is even more complex.