Terrible service (Pets at Home)

Member Name: josollsam

Product:	Pets at Home
Date:	28/04/01 (109 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Clean, bright, well-stocked

Disadvantages: Seriously bad service

I buy my dog food at my local Pets at Home, which used to be Petsmart.

The store itself is wonderfully well stocked with everything for every kind of animal.

The store is also clean and bright and doesn't have that strange musty, dank smell that most pet shops have.

However, the service is appalling. On each visit, and I visit alot due to having 3 large dogs.

It appears to be the case that Pets at Home employ youngsters either on job placement/ experience or who need a Saturday job.

I have nothing against this, it is a positive thing for youngsters. To learn what it is like in the workplace etc. However, in order for the staff to learn customer services etc there really ought to be an adult supervisor available to them and to the customer at all times. I have very rarely seen an adult present.

The youngsters seem not to know that to shout out to each other about their love-lives or about the arguments they have had with thier parents or friends is not how shop assistants should conduct themselves in front of customers.

I have often stood at the counter waiting to pay for the items I have selected having to listen to 2 staff members finish thier conversations before they bother to serve me.

I found out that Pets at Home end their promotional bargains at the end of each month, just before pay day, through a shouted conversation between 2 young staff members, one at the till, the other about 30 feet away, both ignoring me as I stood their with a heavy dog food bag on my shoulder waiting to pay.

I have often seen them playing around with each other, running after each other down aisles playing catch or whatever, rather than re-stocking or whatever it is that must surely be done.

On one occasion I asked a young girl (a customers daughter, I thought) whether she should be putting gold fish netted out of the pools provided for them and into the tropical fish tanks, and then back
again. She told me she worked here as a Saturday staff member and knew what she was doing.

I looked around and finally found a senior staff member, told him what was happening and he shot off to sort it out. Why was there no supervisor with that girl (if she had been a Saturday staff member)? Why was there no supervisors at the animal cages and tanks anyway?

The prices are fine, the cleanliness is fine but the customer services are awful.

Summary: