| Product: |
Iceland |
| Date: |
17.03.08 (290 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: cheap products
Disadvantages: not cheerful though
I don't think I've written a review about a store before so this is a new area for me.
Iceland is the supermarket whose tagline is "...so that's why mums go to Iceland"! They have those annoying adverts, the most recent of which feature Kerry Katona who I think used to be in a girl band some years ago.
Did you know that Iceland was set up in November 1970 by Malcolm Walker and another retailer with an initial capital of just £60 for the first month's rent with a store in Shropshire. Initially Iceland sold loose frozen food as domestic fridges and freezers were not yet commonplace. Both retailers were sacked from their day jobs at Woolworths (well I'm not surprised), so then they concentrated on their Iceland venture full-time. By 1975 they had opened 15 stores in the North West and North Wales. Gradually they moved away from selling loose frozen food, opening freezer centres to sell their good and started branding their own goods by 1978. In 1980 they had 37 stores and 4 years later they had 81! By this time they floated on the London Stock Exchange and their £8 million worth of stock was 113 times oversubscribed! Who remembers the southern based Bejam stores? I do! Iceland successfully took them over in January 1989 and became a national chain now with 465 stores. A national home delivery service was introduced in 1995 by which time Iceland had 752 stores. This was a unique service in that delivery was free!
In the late 90s Iceland introduced their own range of GM free ingredients with the banner "Food You Can Trust" as well as launching the home shopping service. They also started working in partnership with the Cancer Research Campaign to promote to the public the benefits of eating more frozen vegetables. 2000 saw Iceland taking over Booker cash and carry (anyone remember them?) and their top manager become chief executive of the new group whilst Malcolm Walker was supposed to become non-executive chairman. This didn't quite work out as planned and in 2001 Bill Grimsey stepped in as new chief executive and with a new finance director identified huge issues which sent the business spiralling into a £120 million loss!
~*~ MY ICELAND ~*~
I have an Iceland store less than 5 minutes walk from my home and one the same distance from my office. I don't use the one near home so often but tend to use the one near my office in Ealing, London several times a week to stock up on items for the office such as tea, coffee, kitchen roll, Coke, fruit, etc.
The two stores I'm reviewing here today are the ones in Ealing, W5 and West Ealing, W13. The W5 store is the one I use most often and most of my negative experiences have actually been at that branch.
~*~ LAYOUT OF STORE ~*~
The stores seem to have a similar layout, as you walk in there are shopping baskets which have a very handy pullout lever which makes the basket into a clever trolley. I was very impressed with these when I first saw them last year. Very clever idea Iceland - haven't seen this in any other store prior to this and it was only when I said to a member of staff the first time I used one "How clever your new baskets are!" that I was told "Yes they are clever but a bit misleading because little old ladies don't realise how much they've piled into their basket as they pull the basket trolley around and when unloading here at the counter they find that the bags are now too heavy for them to carry home!" Good point, Iceland staff member!
On 9 out 10 occasions when I've been to Iceland lately I've had to walk around to near a till to get a basket as there are none by the door - isn't someone supposed to collect these once in a while and put them by the door for customers to use? Bad point number one!
~*~ SERVICE LEVELS ~*~
I pride myself on being a polite and considerate customer. I always say please and thank you in my dealings with people no matter how well I know them or it they are complete strangers. As far as I'm concerned if you work in a customer oriented environment you should have at least some decent levels of customer service skills.
I have found over my visits to Iceland that often the shelves are not stocked with the most common items. In recent months I have been unable to buy eggs, milk, bananas, sandwich fillers, cereals because the shelves have been empty. On every occasion when I have asked a member of staff to check inside their warehouse or storage areas they have not obliged me very willingly but have always managed to come back with the requested items, even though they took their time. Now, if the item is not on a shelf, I will often ask for it, because I feel the products arrive and for whatever reason they haven't stocked the shelves yet. I've often seen 2 or 3 members of staff chatting to each other and laughing in the aisles when just 1 of them is actually doing any work and I wonder if that's how they operate their business.
What I've found most frustrating when I've gone in there in my lunch break is that there will only be one till open and there might be a queue of 10-15 people with baskets and they don't open another till. Recently I got so annoyed at having to wait for so long - there was just one cashier that was actively working the till and the person had a trolley full of items - it was for home delivery - if you spend more than £25 you get free home delivery. Now the queue was getting bigger and bigger. I asked another member of staff if they were planning on opening another till and he said quite rudely "There's already one open!" I could not bear to stand there a moment longer and waste my lunch break, so I put my basket down on an empty till and walked out of the store.
This wasn't the first time this sort of thing had happened, I don't understand why it's so difficult to open another till. I have seen the same members of staff who operate tills standing around having a chat with colleagues whilst the queue gets bigger and bigger and when it's lunchtime they should account for the fact that people are on their lunch break and open a few more tills.
Another issue I used to have with the Ealing store was that it advertised that it opened at 8.30 in the morning. I have been there at least a dozen times at 9.00 when the doors weren't even opened when I wanted to buy milk and other sundries for the office and have tapped on the window and had a member of staff shaking their head at me and mouthing "We're not open yet!" Why have a sign showing they're open from 8.30 if they're still not able to open the doors at 9.00? How many customers walk away when they behave like this? I've ended up walking a few doors down to Budgen's to buy milk (which I resent as they're far more expensive)!
~*~ PRODUCTS & PRICES ~*~
The items you can buy in store are quite varied in range but I would have to say that most of their frozen products don't really fall within the healthy eating category!
There are lots of party nibbles and I'm sure mothers everywhere are happy to shell out money in Iceland as per their advertising tagline "...so that's' why mums go to Iceland" - they're cheap and cheerful and easy to make - mostly just stick in the oven and follow the directions on the pack.
I'll give you here a sample list of products and prices so you can gauge how it compares to where you do your shopping (NB these prices listed are current at 16th March 2008 and valid till mid April 2008):
350g Garden Vegetable Mix - £1 a pack
4 pints of milk - £1.10
6 pints of milk - £1.96
12 Duck Spring rolls or 12 Tortilla Wrap Selection or 24 Chicken Goujons or 24 Vegetable Spring Rolls - £2 a pack or 3 packs for £5
Indian Platter - 75 piece (including samosas and bhajees) or Chicken Platter - 60 piece or Tex Mex Combo Platter - 75 piece or Oriental Platter - 60 piece - £5
I've tried quite a few of the above when having a few friends over, they've been very easy to prepare and have gone down a treat with guests.
Now for some prices on their ready meals, which I'm not very keen on, I've never had one yet that I would choose to buy again - for these prices I guess you can't afford to be too fussy though:
500g Chicken Curry with Rice or 500g Lasagne or 500g Cottage Pie - £1 a pack
490g Chicken Roast Dinner - £1.50
1.1kg Family Cottage Pie - £2
Chinese takeaway range:
200g Crispy Chilli Beef or 400g Sweet Chilli King Prawns or 400g Duck in Plum Sauce - £2 each
Indian Delights (not that I found any of these delightful):
400g King Prawn Bhuna or 400g Tandoori Chicken Tikka Masala, £2 each
Accompaniments:
350g Special Fried Rice - £1.50 and 350g Pilau Rice or 350g Egg Fried Rice - £1 each
There's also a range of Birds Eye Healthy Options costing £1 each including:
400g Minced Beef Hotpot or 400g Cottage Pie or 400g Chicken Hotpot or 400g Spaghetti Bolognese or 10 Mini Chocolate Eclairs (although how éclairs can be considered "healthy" I'm not too sure)!
There's also a range of pizza's costing £1.50 which I think you can feed 2 people with - well 2 people with my appetite anyway.
Of the following chicken range, I've tried most of them and have found them quite tasty and very good value:
620g Southern Fried Chicken Wings or 12 Breaded Chicken Burgers or 40 Battered Chicken Dippers for £2 a pack
2 Garlic Butter Chicken Kievs or 275g Southern Fried Chicken Fillet Strips for £1 a pack
Who likes ice cream & desserts?
Well I do, but this section I really do have to avoid as much as possible (being a diabetic) but gosh, it's so tempting and especially at Iceland's prices:
4 Strawberry and Vanilla Ice Cream Cones or 4 White Chocolate Majestics or 540g Strawberry Cheesecake (this is fantastic) or 500g Apple Crumble (this is delicious) - £1 a box
20 White & Milk Mini Cones or 16 Large Profiteroles or 475g (10 portion) Tiramisu or 470g (6 portion) Raspberry Pavlova - £2 a box
875g Banoffee Cheesecake (divine) or 875g (serves 12) Raspberry Brulée Cheesecake - £3 a box
I think I'll stop talking about the desserts now as my mouth is watering!
Aside from their frozen products, here's a list of some of the other items they stock and prices, most of which are very reasonable:
4 x 185g Princes Tuna Chunks in brine - £2.50, Pot Noodles (all varieties) - 3 for £2, 6 Lucozade Energy Drinks plus 2 Free - £3, 15 Iceland Large Eggs - £1.25, 8 Hot Cross Buns - £1, 400g Breaded Ham - £3, 12 Cadburys Mini Rolls plus 50% extra free - £2.19, 800g Kingsmill Bread - 2 for £1.60
Iceland also sells a range of beers and wines and other alcoholic beverages as well as a mixture of other household products such as cereals, tea, coffee, cleaning products, toilet rolls, etc. They also stock fruit but this is often out of stock and for example, the bananas are already rotting and the oranges might say easy peel but they're definitely not. They have a limited selection of vegetables although what they do have is fairly cheap.
I won't bore you with any more prices but if you browse around Iceland's website, you'll see a wide variety of products with current prices listed.
~*~ WEBSITE ~*~
The Iceland website is at
http://www.iceland.co.uk/
They also sell appliances and details of these can be found at:
http://www.icelandappliancesco.uk/
Details of their home delivery service can be found at:
http://www.iceland.co.uk/page/view/home_delive ry
You can look up store locations at:
http://www.iceland.co.uk/page/view/store_locat or
And if you want to send them feedback, you can go to:
https://www.iceland.co.uk/feedback
~*~ OVERALL OPINION ~*~
I would rate Iceland's prices as a strong 8 out of 10, I thought it was rather steep hiking the price of 4 pints of milk from £1 to £1.10 overnight and the price of 15 eggs from £1 to £1.25. It's not expensive compared to other supermarkets but percentage wise it's quite a steep rise, I felt. Also, I think it's very odd that you can buy 4 pints of milk for £1.10 but 6 pints costs £1.96 which means if you buy 4 pints it works out to be 27.5 pence a pint and 6 pints works out to be nearly 33 pence a pint! If you want to buy just 1 pint it costs 40 pence.
I would rate the store layout as 7 out of 10 - mostly things are conveniently placed but like all supermarkets, the marketing powers that be dictate that milk and bread have to be at the back of the store so you have to pretty much walk all the way round to get what you need, in the meantime passing other items that you might need to pop into your basket.
Customer service - now I would rate it as a fairly decent 6 out of 10 at the W13 store but for the W5 store, I'm afraid they're not worth more than 3 out of 10. They really need to pull up their socks with serving customers somewhat more promptly, sticking to their advertised opening house and keeping their shelves stocked of everyday products which have run out!
My overall rating for Iceland as a business is 4 out of 10. However cheap their products might be, if they can't provide a decent level of customer service, I would rather take my business elsewhere. If others feel the same way as me, Iceland will suffer overall as a business and those same people who can't be bothered to provide a decent service to customers because they're on minimum wage will end up being out of work when their stores close down due to lack of business! Quite simple Iceland, pull your socks up!
NB: this review is also published by myself on Ciao.co.uk on the same username
Summary: recommended only if you can put up with poor customer service
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