Retail Experiences – Page 5 – Not Content to Crawl

Just Say No (To Starbucks)

Posted onAugust 21, 2020

Yesterday I was browsing deal sites and saw Starbucks was having a BOGO deal from 2-7 pm if you ordered via the app. Now, you have to know something – we rarely go to Starbucks these days. And by rarely, I mean the last time we went was in January to get my free birthday drink which I let Joe have because I was too sick to give a crap. I’ve spent more time in the local Starbucks’ parking lot meeting up with buyers from Offer Up over the past two years than actually buying any drinks.

But seeing that deal made me think it would be a nice treat, which was cemented by the fact that they now have a peach green tea lemonade. Chick-fil-a got rid of their delicious peach lemonade so I’ve been trying to get my hands on a good peach drink ever since (side note: Lipton peach iced tea drink mix is great. I call it tea kool-aid). Joe wanted to try their Chai Creme Frappuccino, so we decided to place an order.

I was perplexed why our local store wasn’t listed in the app, so I had to pick one a little further away. The app claimed our drinks would take 15-18 minutes to prepare and that it would take 13 minutes to get there, so I placed the order as we pulled out of the driveway. Mistake #1.

We arrived at Starbucks to see a huge line in the drive-thru, so we decided I would run in to get our drinks, but there were a bunch of people in line inside too, and we had brought Wookie, so we opted to get in the drive-thru line so we could be together (and also because I didn’t feel comfortable standing in line for god knows how long). Mistake #2.

We watched as people pulled into the parking lot and left five minutes later with their drinks while we slowly made it to the window 45 minutes after we got in line. My drink was watered down (although not too bad since I had requested light ice) and Joe’s was melted/liquid which we didn’t notice until pulling away.

I ran inside with his drink to ask if they could re-make it since it had clearly been sitting out for awhile and they said yes but it would be a long wait because there were other people ahead of me. Say what? I dunno, I think I should have gotten priority, but I wasn’t about to cause a scene – everyone was stressed out enough. I asked them to explain to me how mobile ordering works so I don’t get an old drink again and according to the barista they usually wait until you get to the order board to start your drink but when it’s busy they just crank out the drinks. That seems like a recipe for shitty drinks and angry customers to me, but what do I know?

I didn’t want to wait any longer (our little adventure took over an hour as it was), which I explained to the barista, so she gave me a gift card for $4. Not quite enough to cover Joe’s drink, but good enough. We took it home and stuck it in the freezer and it eventually firmed up enough to enjoy a little. Also, Wookie got a puppuccino which was nice.

When I placed the order, Joe was concerned our drinks would end up sitting out, but I really believed Starbucks would have a way to prevent that. Silly me. Lesson learned! I also found out that our local Starbucks, which is on a extremely busy major road, closes at 3 pm even though all the other stores in the area don’t close until 8 pm or later. WTF?

As for the drinks – the frapp was pretty good, but chai flavored drinks taste like Christmas to me, so it seemed out of place for this time of year. My drink was ok, even though I could taste more of the mint green tea than any peach or lemonade.

To add insult to injury, even though I only drank half of my venti around 4:30 pm last night, I could not sleep for the life of me. I didn’t fall asleep until after 2 am and only after taking a Midnite, which I haven’t had to do in four months. Then today I got bad stomach issues, if you get my drift, probably from trying Joe’s milk-laden drink. Ugh! I curse thee, Starbucks!

Overall, I don’t think Starbucks is worth the price, and definitely isn’t worth the hassle when they’re having what they call Happy Hour (or the baristas on the Starbucks subreddit refer to as Horror Hour). I have about $20 left in my account that we’ll spend on snacks and the occasional vanilla latte for Joe until we run out of funds. Then it’s hasta la vista, baby.

I much prefer Dunkin Donuts anyway.

Bath & Body Works Shenanigans

Posted onJuly 16, 2020

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Bath & Body Works, as in I love some of their products, but I hate their prices and their practices leave something to be desired.

It’s gotten to the point where I am not interested in their lotions, body wash, or hand soaps, but I do still like the wallflowers and candles. I’m picky about scents, however. For the most part I like vanilla, marshmallow fireside, and a newer one my cousin turned me onto two years ago, heirloom apple. I was too sick last year to care about any of that stuff but now that I’m feeling better, and I’m down to my last wallflower, I went looking for heirloom apple only to be unable to find it. So I contacted B&BW via Facebook Messenger:

I took to the internet to find out whether anyone could point me toward a dupe scent, whether that be from Bath & Body Works or another company. In the meantime, I got this Yankee Candle macintosh votive at Meijer to try out.

It’s ok, but not what I was looking for.

Someone online told me to look for B&BW’s honeycrisp apple scent, but when I checked online it was only available in a one wick candle for $10. No thanks. I don’t mind the occasional candle but I prefer how a wallflower tends to fill the house with scent.

We went out yesterday and I decided to stop in a Bath & Body Works store. I asked about the heirloom apple, or any apple scents, and they only had one and it didn’t smell at all what I was looking for so I quickly left.

I just so happened to be on their website today when I searched for apple again and this time a honeycrisp apple wallflower showed up in the search results.

I looked at the fragrance description and then googled to find out how heirloom apple used to be described. They were identical. Hoorah!

But then it got weirder when I noticed a scent called farmstand apple.

That too has the same description. Interesting…

So basically they retired heirloom apple and replaced it with two different scents that are actually the same as heirloom apple but never bothered to tell any of their employees so they could help someone looking for heirloom apple. Got it.

They annoy the hell out of me as it is by making certain scents only available during particular times of the year. I know it’s a ploy to drive interest and get people in their doors more than once a year, but it’s seriously annoying.

Right now the two scents I want (marshmallow fireside and honeycrisp apple) are only available online and I’m not buying $75+ of product or paying $6 in shipping. They will appear in stores at some point and then I will wait for another sale. Wallflowers are currently 5/$24 but it turns out they can get as low as $3 each so a better sale is due to come around soon.

Valli Produce Is On My Sh*t List

Posted onJuly 4, 2020

I had to email one of our local grocery stores (Valli Produce) this morning to let them know how their employees were acting. I only had 200 characters on the form to do it, though, so it doesn’t seem like they really care about feedback to begin with. Therefore I will be surprised if I hear back from anyone.

Basically, only two registers were open and they were directly next to one another. That alone is stupid when they have 10+ lanes to work with. That plexiglass doesn’t protect a cashier if someone standing in the lane right behind them is too close.

In addition, the cashier at the other register, who was literally a foot away from where Joe was standing while trying to pay, was wearing her mask around her neck while talking to the bagger for her lane who was wearing his under his nose, basically spewing her germs all over Joe.

We purposely went early to avoid the public only to be put at risk by their own employees.

Needless to say we won’t be shopping there anytime soon, if ever again. It’s too bad because I prefer their produce to the grocery store closer to us or Aldi, but I’m not giving my business to a place that have such cavalier employees. Also, last time we shopped there one of the cashiers was so unfriendly toward us. I said hello to him and he literally ignored me. I guess upon further thought it’s no big loss.

Instacart Review

Posted onApril 1, 2020

Joe and I have never used Instacart before, but decided to try it out since between my current health issues and his asthma we’re considered “at risk” (I realize we all are to varying degrees) with this whole Coronavirus debacle (or Covid-19 if you prefer).

The order was placed last week to be delivered this past Tuesday. I like how you can keep adding items to the order until it is fulfilled. Ours kept growing each day as we thought of other things we wanted/needed. We figured we might as well maximize the opportunity to stock up so we don’t have to shop as often.

One thing I didn’t realize until Monday night was that everything defaults to “replace with best match” in case something is out of stock, so I spent time going through each individual item, marking most of them as do not replace.

Over the weekend I read that Instacart workers were going to strike on Monday so we weren’t even sure if our order was going to be completed or not. However, around noon yesterday I got a notification that our order was being shopped (at Aldi, the store we chose since it carries the majority of items we needed).

I was strangely thrilled “watching” the shopper pick out our groceries live on the Instacart website. This qualifies as entertainment these days, I guess.

There were a couple of hiccups, as noted below:

1) The shopper put every canned item (plus some other stuff) in a single bag which made it very heavy. At least one can is dented. Everything was organized and grouped by type, however. Plus she made sure the bread and candy were on top and not crushed.

2) We ordered one cucumber and one zucchini. We got one cucumber and a bag of mini cucumbers. No zucchini. I’ve actually mistaken the two before when not paying attention, so it’s an understandable mistake. I just have no idea what I’m going to do with more cucumber than we need, though.

3) We ordered Aldi’s version of Cinnamon Life but it was out of stock. I marked regular Life as a suitable replacement, but the shopper suggested some type of cereal with berries in it. We didn’t want that, so I tried to just cancel the item altogether but the website wasn’t letting me. I messaged her and asked her to just skip it. She then sent me a picture of the cereal aisle stating she got what I wanted. I couldn’t make the photo on the website any larger to verify, but I took her word for it and said ok. What she actually gave us was Aldi’s version of Rice Chex. Not sure how she confused the items, but we can make due. Also, I learned the Instacart app will let you enlarge photos; now I know for next time (since looking at the photo closer I can tell the shelf didn’t have the cereal she said it did).

4) She wanted to replace a bag of frozen green beans with peas. I hate peas so I requested a refund instead, and since she was in store at the time, she just didn’t buy them. This illustrates my point about not liking the best match option. Had I not caught that I would be stuck with gross peas. I guess I just assumed she’d pick a different green bean, not a whole different vegetable.

5) The delivery window on the order said 2-3 pm but she dropped off our groceries just after 1 pm. Again, no big deal, just noting the difference.

6) I put in the delivery instructions to text me when dropping off the food (to maintain social distancing), but she knocked on the door twice. Turns out she was just doing it to let us know the food was there, but it made me think she was waiting to speak to us, so I ended up opening the door just as she was leaving. We just waved to one another so no big deal.

I pointed out some of the mistakes made (the dented can, no zucchini, and cereal replacement issue) on the website in order to help the shopper with future orders, but still gave her a high rating and tip as I wasn’t looking to punish her. I didn’t request any refunds and labeled my notes as merely helpful feedback. Hopefully she understands my intent when she reads the comments. I also thanked her for her service.

Overall we’re still pretty satisfied given the circumstances. We’d obviously prefer to do our own shopping to maintain control and save money since after Instacart’s markup, delivery fee, service fees, and tip, we paid $30 more than we would have otherwise. Right now it’s worth $30 to minimize our risk of getting sick, though. In normal circumstances, however, I wouldn’t bother with Instacart. It has it’s place, but for able-bodied frugal people such as ourselves, it’s normally not worth the markup.

Petco Experience

Posted onJanuary 16, 2017May 18, 2020

Last month I had a frustrating Petco experience when they were holding a special sale. It was eating at me, so I decided to contact them about it last night to see if they’d make it right. Since they don’t have a known email address, I messaged them through Facebook. Below is what I wrote:

I’m writing to express how disappointed I am in Petco with their recent holiday sale. Back in December I was ready to submit my order at DrFosterandSmith.com when I learned that Petco was offering a $15 e-gift card with a $50 purchase so I decided to order from Petco instead. Imagine my surprise when I went to use my $15 and learned it had expired!

Now, I understand I should have read the email with the gift card more thoroughly, but I think it’s pretty misleading to call it a gift card when really it’s more like a coupon. People do not expect a gift card to expire in less than a month! And at the very least those restrictions should be laid out as part of the terms of the sale. The fine print on the website only indicated the gift card would be emailed by 12/19/16. I know this because I took a screenshot which I still have. So in essence you gave me less than two weeks to redeem it (since it expired on 12/31/16).

Needless to say I am wary to keep spending my money at Petco which would be a shame since I just adopted a puppy and I like to spoil her. If you could re-issue me a new $15 gift card that doesn’t expire in a short time frame I would reconsider boycotting Petco in the future.

Thank you.

They responded within minutes letting me know they escalated my concerns and they’d get back to me. This morning they reached out again to let me know I was given a $15 gift card and asked if there was anything else they could do. I promptly checked my email where there was a link to a $15 gift card (which doesn’t expire!) and printed it out to put in my purse. I then thanked them for making things right.

This experience demonstrates that complaining does work if you do it the right way.

And just for posterity below is the screenshot I took which I still had sitting on my desktop because the year before I had an issue with Petco.com where they had the same deal but it had expired even though the deal was still appearing on their website.