Anyone else fed up with Sainsburys? Or is it just me?

[2010Aussie]

Just need a bit of rant about my local Sainsburys. Two incidents this week.

I try to take my elderly DM who has dementia to do her food shopping when it's quiet. But a lot of older customer think the same! There was one checkout open and a lot of people with full trolleys milling around getting a bit agitated. No staff on the scene. I left DM and went on a treasure hunt. Eventually found four of them huddled by the fruit and veg having a catch up. I politely asked if they would open another till and perhaps it might be an idea to monitor the checkout area. They did move but rather reluctantly.

Second incident yesterday. I was on my own and picked up a trolley. As soon as I got in the store, my phone went off with an urgent call. So I turned round and went out again. Except that the trolley wheels locked and I was stuck in the entrance with the alarm sounding. The security guard appeared and told me off. "You're not allowed to leave with an empty trolley for security reasons." I explained the situation. "Well, you should have gone through the checkout first," he said

Their stuff isn't exactly cheap and I get better service at the budget supermarkets quite honestly. Anyone else fed up with Sainsburys?

Yeah you should be able to at all supermarkets to be fair - I do - but they can be temperamental and the machines get a bit shirty with you sometimes when you first put the bag down.

I had an interview for a job in Sainsbury's, turned up in good time having done lots of preparation and they had cancelled all the interviews without bothering to tell the candidates. Absolutely revolting behaviour and never shopped there since. Wasn't long ago either

We switched to ocado last year. The quality was going down hill fast, particularly when they removed dates from fruit and veg and it became a reason to sell absolute rubbish that went off within a day or two. The prices still continued to rise. Switching was the best decision we made. Some things are more expensive, some things are cheaper, but we hardly ever throw fresh produce in the bin now, the own brand stuff is far superior, so it's so much better value.

They have one or two proper tills open and huge queues. I had to put £115 of food through self checkout yesterday because I didn’t have time to join the massive till queue. I’m so fed up with it I’ve started going to Waitrose!! It may cost more but I can get served quickly.
£115 through self checkout was a nightmare.

I find that the stores vary. Our local Sainsburys is dire and looks run down. We are always finding pork products in the chilled kosher section. In some cases, it is a box of a particular item (it was pancetta the other week!), so it is clear that the staff have put it there without thinking. They have just taken away most of the tills and it is virtually all self checkout with a gate. You have to keep your receipt and use the bar code to get out.

A few miles down the road, there is another branch, which always looks clean and tidy. It always surprises me that Sainsburys as a brand allows this disparity to continue.

Think we share the same godawful branch of Sainsburys ... the fruit and veg bit is bonkers, you have to just park your trolley and walk all round it now or you spend forever reversing / turning

Having lived in Ireland for the past 20 years but visit UK regularly, we are genuinely shocked how poor food choice, quality and the service is in the supermarkets the last couple of years. I was in a Morrisons in Leeds that looked like a war zone with boxes everywhere and broken packs, empty shelves and really grubby flooring and shelving. The sainsbury in Ipswich was so stressful with no tills open, narrow crowded ailes and poor quality and no proper choice. Asda in Wakefield was are local when we lived there and it is a shadow of itself.
Ireland is the top 3 most expensive European country to live in at the moment but we found the prices high, quality poor and service non existent.
On the upside, you do get the lovely Yorkshire accent if you are visiting a Yorkshire town, which makes up for alot.

It’s vice versa at my one 😂 but the staff tend to be friendly enough (I’m recognisable 😂)

im just fed up of them removing every bloody thing I buy regular. 😂

My local one is mostly ok and better fruit and veg than my alternative which is Morisons.

I always find Sainsbury's staff mostly rude and snobby.

Only one person (staff) I have asked for something and she went to check in the back for me.

Whenever I've asked for items (loads of different staff as I don't go more than monthly) staff point and say that way, ask over there and can't smile.

On the checkouts there are a couple of younger ones I've met who are lovely but the other 60+ bunch are mardy!

Morrisons and Asda are awful anyway, you'd have to pay me to shop there. It appears that Sainsbury's varies a lot.

No, I’m a big fan of it too.

I have exactly the same problen, I was told that I had performed an "unauthorised action" that is why the trolley locked. To be honest, I am really tired of the endless penny pinching ways that they employ, it's supposed to be "a better experience for the customer" but in reality, they just don't give a damn about you.

It’s clear no thought has actually been put into having checkouts open. For us scan and go is the easiest option but it’s not for everyone and the management need to realise there isn’t a one size fits all policy.

In relation to the trolley, Asda do the same thing, it’s incredibly odd though as how can you actually be stealing anything. Just a little tip if you ever get another emergency call, leave the trolley to one side and just exit the store, someone will move it eventually and you won’t get delayed further by the empty trolley policy. Security do have an override facility but again that’s time consuming.

Yes this!!

The change in policy is so annoying.

3 weeks in a row I ordered 2x6 of cheap sainsburys mini cartons of lunchbox apple juices and they deliver 2x3 instead. I have 2 kids and there are 5 school lunches to do. Repeatedly delivering half what I ordered so they don't have to give me a voucher is maddening. This is just one example. It's happening all the time now. Half what I asked for - i don't need to feed half my family. We all need food!

Sainsburies online have definitely got worse recently and this a policy change of theirs. I've already paid for deliveries till the end of the year but when it comes up for renewal I'm changing to one of the others. Had enough.

I stopped shopping at Sainsbury's when they axed the deli counters.

Waitrose all the way now. They still have a cafe too

I used to shop in Sainsburys all the time, now I mainly shop in Waitrose or M&S.

I occasionally shop in Sainsburys and they are still miles better than Asda, Morrisons, Lidl and Aldi.

I agree with this. A new sainsburys local opened up in my village a few months ago. I was looking forward to having somewhere convenient to pop into apart from the corner shop but I veery quickly changed my mind! The customer service is appalling! As a previous poster says it’s clear that there is nobody competent managing them and that they don’t care. They also have loads of people picking up stuff for Deliveroo orders - one of them practically snatched something out of my hand saying I couldn’t have it as it she aaa collecting it for an order. I was very quick in snatching it back and giving her a piece of my mind but that shows the general
atttitude.

My local one is actually quite good when it comes to staff although they seem to have issues with some of their supplies and quite a few empty shelves (fruits especially).

I do have an issue with them as a company in general though as I knew someone who was quite high up in their head office in London and the stories I heard from them about how things are run really were not great.

I live in a small town and the Sainsbury is the biggest supermarket available but I am trying to find alternatives and maybe have some home deliveries so I don't need to shop with them anymore.

I understand the thinking behind the dates on the BB dates BUT I'm also wasting food because you don't know how long its been there. It might only have 1 day left or may have just come onto the shelf!
If they remain with this i think they need a 'packaged on ' type of date so I can make an informed decision if its worth buying it!

That explains a lot. Our store never seems to have enough staff, and seems very disorganised compared to a few years ago.

I haven't read the whole thread - I'm paying in case Sainsbury's are reading. I really resent them setting up the system where you check your own food out and THEN you have to scan your receipt to get out. I spend so much money in Sainsbury's and their default attitude is to treat me like a thief. If the self check outs are actually losing you money because of theft, employ PEOPLE to do the job. It's like they've recently had a tightening up on shoplifters which is all very well until you start treating your regular (and tbh lifelong) customers as criminals by default.

@5foot5 I agree, the self scan is great, convenient and saves time…when it works! I used to use this for every shop and then had problems with it stopping working and losing all my scanned shopping halfway round the store. I would have to start again and scan everything again, or go to the checkout anyway. This happened multiple times so I just gave up on self scan eventually. Obviously a problem at my local store for some reason.

We have a very big Sainsburys here and all the issues mentioned by other posters. We have lost the deli, fish counter, butcher and cafe in recent years. There are always empty shelves, often a lot of them! I often cannot get very basic items. Very few tills open, massive queues, and the self service tills are so close together it’s really hard to scan a trolley shop - you end up contorting yourself in an effort to scan your shopping without getting in the way of the other self service tills.

Generally a miserable shopping experience and vastly changed from a few years ago. Not sure if these are changes brought about by COVID, brexit, the war in Ukraine, Sainsburys policies or the perfect storm of all these things! I now avoid Sainsburys as much as possible - do a big monthly shop at Costco and a top up for fresh stuff from local shops.

I totally agree. My local Sainsburys now does this so I won't shop there anymore.

Also just having a receipt doesn't mean anything. I could have ten items, scan five and still have a receipt that gets me out of the door.

I used to like Sainsburys but Aldi and Lidl are cheaper, better quality and have friendlier and happier staff.