Bigger is not always better ! (Asda)

Member Name: jason_webb

Product:	Asda
Date:	08/11/00 (189 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: some good offers

Disadvantages: Chaotic, messy and crowded

I had always shopped at ASDA, up until about two months ago, when our local store started it's conversion.

Our local Asda (Minworth, Birmingham) was a large store anyway and always very busy, but it was easy to get around and the parent and child parking was always easy to get into ( i have five kids ).
That was until they started converting the store after Wallmart took over and it all went to pot.

In the first instance, all of the builders sheds and equipment were placed over the parent & child and the disabled parking with no prevision made elsewhere in the car park. This meant that i now had to guide my kids through the minefield of moving traffic to get to the store.

In the second instance everything inside the store was moved into new positions. Now i am not unreasonable and i understand that something has to give to include the new items, but nothing has been placed in any logical order. There are fridges at opposite ends of the store, freezers in the middle and everything else scatered around. That is everything but toiletries and nappies, which have been placed in a health section in the furthest corner of the store behind the electricals and clothes ??

The new isles are also smaller, meaning that there are less items stacked, so unless you get there early most of them are empty.

The new stack it high, sell it low attitude means that the isles are clogged up with pallets of offer items, which makes it almost impossible to move sometimes ( god forbid they ever have a fire ).

On the plus side there can be some very good offers, but the last time i visited there were four shelves of cranberry sauce on offer for less than a quarter of its normal price, but the catch is that it was all a month out of date !!!

Overall the new store looks chaotic and low grade, even feels dirty sometimes and since my experiance of the grand opening, (at which two out of three entrances were closed and half the
car park was still missing) i have not been and have no plans to go back.

ADDITION

I made a mistake and went back last saturday (11/11/2000), to give the place the benefit of the doubt.

Now normally, myself, my grandfather and my mother can complete our shopping at Sainsbury in about an hour tops, from getting out of the car to driving away again. Last week we arrived at ASDA / Walmart at 2:30pm and finally left at 5:45pm. The place was a disgrace, parking almost impossible even with attendants directing traffic (or should i say because of the attendants) and the isles were packed with pallots, trolleys and cages for staff stacking shelves, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY !!!

I have written to ASDA to complain and i will now take my own advice and NEVER GO BACK !!!

Summary: