First, for those who don't know it, Value Village is not a non-profit or a charity. It is…read moreprivately owned and makes a huge profit. Nothing wrong with that, but I wish they would not try to give the impression that they are a charity. Last time I was in the cashier thanked me for donating to Diabetes. Not true, no profits are shared with Diabetes. Read about it on the internet.
Now for my review of the Belleville store:
Pluses:
The store is clean and well laid-out, and open late hours for people like me.
Minuses (some really odd minuses):
- They hang up pants on the racks in an awkward sideways way, makes no sense at all so I don't shop for pants there, it is too irritating.
- They push clothing and other hanging items tight together on the rack so you have some items tight together then an empty rack for a couple of feet. Why not space the items out so they can be seen.
- They put sticky price tags in the worst places on an item - on the front of things where they are next to impossible to remove. Using fingernail polish remover etc. only makes a mark on the item where the glue was. THINK, people, put the stickers on the back where they can do the least damage. Especially, don't put stickers on glass! UPDATE - Most of the stickers have disappeared off the glass since I was last there.
- Prices can be astronomical - more than you would pay for the item new in many cases.
- Dishes. Why on earth would anybody take a perfectly nice set of dishes and break it up? So... we have a set of dishes. We decide to put the side dishes with all the odd side dishes. We decide to put the dinner plates with the odd dinner plates, completely separate from the other parts of the set. We decide to break up a nice teapot-creamer-sugar bowl set and put the teapot with the odd teapots, the creamer with the odd creamers, and the matching sugar bowl way over there with the odd sugar bowls. I can't bear to go on, it is too ridiculous. UPDATE - Last time I was in, this seems to be much improved - most dishes sets are reunited and it is so much nicer and easier to find matching things...
- Along the same lines, they will take a set of curtains and price them separately, and put one curtain over here and the other matching one on a separate hanger 6 feet away. Come on, people, who buys just one curtain panel? Why not keep the set together? Clearly this boggles my mind.
- Pictures are often placed sideways instead of right side up on the picture shelves. Since there is lots of room and no good reason to place the pictures sideways so they cant be seen, ya really gotta wonder who is doing these things. A chimp? No, a trained monkey could probably do better. And what is management doing while staff are placing pictures sideways? Sleeping on the job?
- Although most items for sale are clean and serviceable, for some reason the furniture area is full of dirty junk that nobody would every buy. What's up with that?
- Staff can be nice or they can be snarky, it's a crapshoot if you need to speak to one of them. Some are very nice and others just wish they were somewhere else.
- Cashiers can get long lineups and don't call for another cashier to help. Sometimes there is only one cashier, who pays no attention (and neither does any other staff) to the long lineups. I have found that if I leave the lineup and search for a supervisor they will gladly put someone else on cash, but why cant they figure this out for themselves? (And now I've lost my place in the lineup.)
All in all, it is the only game in town for some items and their system is well thought out (except for the above points).
