I have been going to this Ralphs for only the past 3 years, however, the quality of their fresh items has gone downhill and the shelves are never stocked. This has been very noticeable in the last 6 months. I am so sick and tired of, for example, checking the shelf for shampoo and finding the shelves almost bare without the one I am looking for, only to find a huge standee blocking the aisle 15 feet away with a bunch of shampoo and conditioner literally thrown in wire racks, unorganized. I have complained to this store on every single survey about having standees in the aisle that make navigating a cart around another shopper almost impossible. I feel like I can never stop in the aisle to dwell on finding an item because there is so much crap blocking the aisles you constantly have to move your cart all the time for other shoppers. You should be wanting your customers to feel comfortable while shopping not irritated all the time trying to serve around the crap in the aisles! Sometimes, I have to push the standees out of the way to grab a protein bar that I want in the cereal aisle because the standees block the items on the shelves. I once tried to find a can of beans in the canned aisle, and there were only three types of bean on the shelf because all the others were located back in the refrigerated pasta section on the complete opposite side of the store on a wire stand, where no one would think to look for canned beans!!! Don't even get me started on the lack of items on the shelves! I've taken photos in the store that show how empty they are. I've timed items being out of stock for over two months at a time! Then, they mis-stock things so you have to look at the shelf tag for the item you want and dig all the way to the back of the stock to find THAT item. Half the time the shelves are being stocked in the afternoon with big dollies full of boxes blocking the aisles. Don't MOST stores do this early morning or late night when stores aren't full of customers? In the last few months, I have had to return strawberries that all molded the very next day after purchase, kale that when I opened the bunch was infested with bugs, loaves of bread that were moldy yet not past the expiration date (ones you can see inside the bag), and today I have to return some crab legs I bought 2 days ago that smelled like ammonia today that has a sell by date of today. Two days ago, they had chicken on sale for $0.88/lb but more then 3/4 of the chicken selection was priced incorrectly so I had to find two that were correct. Last week, the entire meat department called in sick so a butcher from the store down the street (Granary) was there and barely anything was stocked. We were talking and he told me how disgusted he was with the condition of the meat department at this store.
I prefer to shop only once a week, so I end up with a full cart at checkout, but there have been some times I came in where there is ONE checker with a line of 6 people deep because they changed HALF the registers to self checkout. No way am I going through self checkout with a full cart nor am I going to scan my own groceries while I shop and bag them as I go. It already takes me over an hour to shop once a week, but when they are so obviously NOT staffing the front end, to makes me irritated that I have to wait over ten minutes to get checked out then the cashier has scanned all my items, I've paid, and there is no courtesy clerk to bag anything, so it takes the cashier another 5 minutes to bag. And you wonder why people are just ordering online through Amazon!!! Grocery stores are a goods-and-services based industry, but this Ralphs on Decoro and McBean is neglecting everything I used to love about this store. Guess I'm heading back to Albertsons.
OH...one last thing, the Signal wrote an article about some council member coning to the store talking about recycling plastic bags. You know, I have tried to find the bag recycling bin at this store at least 5 times, and they don't have one. I asked employees every time, and the one time I had bags with me, I watched the employee throw them into the trash can. This store is such a disappointment, especially since they just "upgraded" it to a Fresh Fare. Sad, very sad. read more