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Recommended Reviews - WHSmith
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9 years ago
There's only three things you can be sure of in life: Death, taxes and finding a WHSmith at every train station and airport in the UK, and this is the case today. This branch is a decent sized one, located in Manchester Airport at Terminal 2. Ahead of my flight to Barcelona, I decided to call in here to take a look at the gluten free food on offer and pick up some drinks to get me through my flight which would last 1 hour and 55 minutes, being unsure of what would actually be available on my Monarch flight, as flight food of course tends to be unreliable for gluten free after my experience with Easyjet on my flight from Liverpool to Madrid, and expensive which I have found with many airlines such as Easyjet, Ryanair and now Monarch, I'm actually writing this review on a flight on the latter and I was glad I came prepared. I picked up two bottles of Lipton Iced Tea for £3, this is an offer which they seem to do at all travel stations including train stations such as Manchester Piccadilly, which I regularly travel from. They also tend to do the offer which gives you a free Telegraph newspaper with a bottle of water, however the prices of the water were far too expensive, some were nearly 300% the price compared to buying a bottle of Glaceau Smartwater in a supermarket, which once again is an example of Airports ripping off their customers due to a lack of real competition. They did also seem to sell a decent range of newspapers, which are pointless buying as you can normally get free newspapers at airports anyway based on my experience at Paris CDG last year, and Manchester's Terminal 3, and Terminal 2, the latter of course Is the terminal this store is in. The staff member working seemed friendly enough, although he was slow coming to help me at self-service, which nearly all the tills at this branch seem to be, so it can be frustrating as my boarding pass didn't seem to scan, and the person who was next to me also had troubles. I honestly don't understand the need to scan your boarding pass, as you must have one to get to this stage anyway as there are extensive checks as you check-in your bags and then go through security, and it is just adding extra hassle and time onto the transaction. Food did seem over-priced here and there was a very poor/non-existence selection in terms of gluten free, some travel locations sell gluten free sandwiches/wraps and this was not the case here sadly, so while considering this and other factors with the service and delaying the transaction, I sadly feel this store hasn't done enough to earn anything over two stars. read more
