It Hasda Be Asda? (Asda)

Member Name: karenuk

Product:	Asda
Date:	09/01/01 (66 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: cheap, but good quality goods ; can buy almost everything there

Disadvantages: very few, can get crowded and a bit stressful, questionable quality of the fresh produce

We are lucky that our local Asda supermarket is a huge Asda-Walmart superstore. It is a vast place, with just about everything you could wish for. When we shopped there regularly, not only did we do our weekly shop there, but we bought our greetings cards from there, our clothes, toiletries, magazines, CDs, videos, toys and much more.

It is arranged in a good way, although it took quite a long time before I had worked out where everything was. It can still be a bit confusing at times and it is easy to become slightly overwhelmed at the size of the place. It is definitely better to shop early or late in the day, to avoid the crowds.

Asda's own Smartprice brands are worth trying, although some products seem to need to be a brand name. I would recommend such things as Asda Logic washing powder (only £1.77 per box, compared with £3.25 for Persil tablets), Asda conditioner (69p for a nice sized bottle), toothpaste, sanitary towels, plasters, shampoo, tissues and tinned vegetables (kidney beans at 11p per tin, for example).

Being a vegetarian, I am impressed with the range of veggie food available and the labelling is very good too. A lot of Asda's products are vegetarian, but there is a wide variety of choice. It is a shame they only seem to stock one kind of nut roast though.

It is definitely an advantage to be able to do all your shopping in one place, as it saves time visiting lots of different shops.

We have bought a lot of clothes from Asda's own department, George, over the past couple of years. It has a great variety of clothes for all ages and at a very reasonable price.
The sections are clearly organised into schoolwear, boys, girls, babies, men's and women's sections, as well as footwear.

There are always items on sale too, so you can usually buy something nice for only £5, which means you can afford to add that to the weekly shop.

The clothes are a very good quality too
and have lots of trendy designs that my children love.

They last well too and wash well. Some of the things we have bought from George have become favourites with my kids and they still wear them and they are in good condition.

There is a large car park at Asda, with spaces near the entrance for the cars of disabled drivers, pregnant women and parents with children.

There are several large recycling bins at the far end of the car park, which take different coloured glass bottles and jars.

There are also various different types of shopping trolleys - small ones, ones with straps in for twins to sit in, extra large ones, etc.

For the kids, there are little coupe type cars that they can sit in, while they are pushed round the store and the shopping fits in the back - an excellent idea, but there aren't many and they go quickly. They are also quite difficult to push round. Using these at busy times is not recommended!

We shopped at Asda for so long because it is quite cheap, but the standard and quality is high. We used to get a week's shopping for two adults, four kids, a dog, a cat, two hamsters and three rats for around £70-£80.

However, we recently defected to Sainsbury's and have been using that as our supermarket of choice for the past few months now. Although doing our weekly shop at Sainsbury's means we spent an extra £10-20 a week, we have found the quality is much better than at Asda.

We found the quality of the fresh vegetables had been deteriorating at Asda and often items would be sold close to the best before date and became unusable very quickly. The fresh produce at Sainsbury's is much better, lasts longer and is well woth the extra pennies.

However, some things are better at Asda, including their own brand shampoo and conditioner, cleaning sponges and the array of cheap (but good) greetings cards. I also prefer the toys and clothes sections of Asda
to the equivalent ones at Sainsbury's.

It all depends what you need really as to whether Asda should be your preferred supermarket. If you can buy your fresh produce on the day you need it, it will be fine and you'll definitely save money, but for high quality, I don't think you can beat Sainsbury's.

Summary: