Posted 18 September 2023

Is it just me...or has ASDA gone downhill a lot recently?

Went to my local (Beddington Lane, Croydon branch) yesterday as the missus was "Bored with Lidl" - what a mess the store was!

So many items in the wrong places for the tickets. The entire Yankee candle section was all set out wrong, not one candle in the right place.

Some Yankee candles reduced to to £3.97, took them to self service but they all come up at £11.97

Pizza and hot food section unstaffed - no sign telling people this - there was a queue

Pizzas made by that team are now £5, no sign telling us of the price increase. Even the lady on the till was surprised.

Couple of allegedly reduced items that we got due to the saving came up as full price, I couldn't be bothered to send some poor person round the store to check so just got refunds.

At least two aisles were full of paper towels soaking up water, and this was before the thunderstorms!

What are other peoples experiences like with their local ASDA's?

(On a positive note, was got £16 added to our cash pot for our £166 shop, which was a nice surprise.)

Won't rush to go back - missus hated it too. I blamed her!
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  1. Toon_army's avatar
    I work for them and they have gone massively downhill, last time I said this people said Id get wrong for speaking bad for a company I work for. I'm entitled to my option and work for them 19 years so know how much has changed.
    Prices have gone inside, when I you mentioned the pizzas, the 10" creat your own that are on the counters are £6 now.
    The shops always under staffed and expect everybody to do double the work to when I first started.
    They've changed hours and pay so much, when I first started you worked 3 bank holiday and got the rest off and paid or you could come in and get time and a half, now they try making you work them all without even time and a half.
    Christmas we used to get a £20 Asda gift card, little tub or sweets and cheap bottle of champagne, now we get nothing.
    They no longer do the double discount days it's only 15%
    At the back doors where staff park, loads have stopped parking due to there being about 10 huge pot holes.
    Our roof always leaks when it rains.
    I could be here all day...
    If you ever want to know a price of something download the Scan and Go App, it'll tell you the price then and there, save you going to a till or asking somebody
  2. TheManFromAnotherPlace's avatar
    It's all gone downhill since the Issa brothers bought it and loaded it up with debt, (edited)
    Pandamansays's avatar
    Yes, sadly it was inevitable.
  3. googleboogle's avatar
    ASDA on a Sunday is like hell on earth
    Deleted041071960810's avatar
    Some are, some aren't.

    Our Asda is normally fine (a couple of mispricings on the aisles is normal) for it's usual opening hours of 7.30am until 10pm on a Sunday.
  4. student.223's avatar
    £16 added to the cashpot for the £166 which would have cost far less in Lidl!
  5. greatnameuk's avatar
    UPDATE: New pack of choux buns were also stale tasting! so obviously they have an issue with them IMO. I doubt it is worth informing them , as their tiny brains can't cope with people complaining and they take little note of any complaint.

    Asda seems they are going downhill. Customer service extremely poor as well.


    Bought their choux buns in store .. had two days left on them before expiry... Were stale ..

    customer services wanted to argue about whether I was entitled to a refund even though the packaging states " refund and replacement" if unsatisfied.
    I finally got a replacement but they wanted to argue about it for ages (the item has expired... I ate it in date and it was stale! ALso because the item was near expiration i should expect the item to be stale!!!! i have bought many the reduced item, and never once has it been stale or off. the quality should be ok until AT LEAST the expiration date) and then basically told me to walk to the other end of the store and get one then...
    Complaint is not recorded anywhere. (I would of accepted the complaint being taken seriously instead of the replacement!) but felt this was my only option as they clearly do not take any Quality complaints seriously.

    Also i checked the reviews on the product, about 20 other people saying the same thing, so clearly an issue with the product (and the service).

    No sorry for selling stale goods... Immediately blame the customer! (edited)
    HonourableGentleman's avatar
    Author
    If I had a choice - I would avoid Asda like the plague - but they still sell beef mince in the traditional style packaging, not the vacuum packed stodge that Sainsburys (and others) have changed to.

    So I do some shopping in Asda but not much - tried Tesco for the first time in ages over the weekend - sooooo expensive, even with clubcard offers!
  6. ansonuk1's avatar
    I think they are accelerating down the pan
  7. C0mm0d0re_K1d's avatar
    The owners are trying to make as much money as possible.

    By screwing over the staff on pay and hours, not passing on fuel price savings to customers, complex corporate structures, cooking the books to lower tax liabilities and gain tax credits.

    This makes very interesting watching if you've not seen it. Parliamentary select committee grilling one of the brothers and other management about prices and staff.

    It's amazing how the owner doesn't seem to have much knowledge of certain aspects of the business he owns. They love hiding behind corporate jargon.

    C0mm0d0re_K1d's avatar
    Latest news is, the brothers are looking to totally cash out their share of Asda to TDR who they did the deal with. So if it goes through, TDR will own Asda 100% and the brothers keep all the fuel stations.
  8. bozo007's avatar
    In many locations, it's less of a store issue but customers who move things around. Worse is refrigerated / frozen items dumped in some random shelf.
    C0mm0d0re_K1d's avatar
    It really annoys me when I see someone has just dumped, usually a refrigerated/chilled or frozen item on a random self.

    It means the item will end up being thrown away. Which contributes to food waste, land fill and looses the company money.

    Which means they will have to increase prices or margins to offset the loss. Ultimately we the customer will end up covering the loss, by higher prices.
  9. jamie15's avatar
    This is what happens when a business gets acquired through a leveraged buyout, saddled with debt and more costs, they have to cut corners elsewhere.
  10. Steven_Alderley's avatar
    Definitely agree. I don't really shop in store with Asda anymore, and avoid grocery deliveries from them where possible but the experiences I have had over the past year or so have been really poor. The amount of items unavailable or substituted with deliveries is verging on comical it's that poor. Quality has definitely been stepped down, whilst the prices seem to have been raised, significantly in places. Can't speak for all delivery drivers, but a lot of them I have had don't seem to read delivery instructions, and can also often be quite impatient and at times...rude (I've had one horrible driver in particular with absolutely no customer service awareness whatsoever). They've taken away the option of bags completely now with deliveries, which I think they've done more for their own back pocket and to save time more so than for any other reason. And whenever I do receive a delivery for them, out of the items that do actually arrive... I now always check dates, because they are often either use by same day or the following day. It's supposed to be 2+ days. On my two most recent orders I received an item on both that had already expired. If you compare them with Morrisons home deliveries, it's night and day. Morrisons rarely substitutes items, you order knowing it will turn up, and dates are always good.

    In terms of in store experience, my local ones are a similar sad story. The demographic for Asda was always more budget friendly for families, but without being a snob...it feels more like a cheap and nasty rough supermarket now more than ever, but with increasing prices.

    I've gone from someone who shopped here regularly back in the day, to avoiding them wherever I can now.
  11. spoo's avatar
    Great Bridge Asda definitely has. There's a lot more items out of stock when I shop there than there used to be, really bad stock rotation (I've seen stuff in fridges which expired over a month ago a few times) and the scan and go isn't working more often than it is.
  12. Gollywood's avatar
    Then you have the very naughty people who go in just to move stuff around deliberately.

    Eg. Put nut products in the free-from section; bacon in the Kosher section; meat in the vegan sections etc etc (edited)
    EN1GMA's avatar
    People actually do that??
  13. dunny06's avatar
    My local Aldi in Wakefield has gone downhill where you struggle to get around with a lot of staff who used to work nights are on nearly every aisle restocking with their huge pallet of goods blocking the shelves and if you have a trolley you can't get past them on some aisle. Then theirs the new self-checkout is a nightmare with the machines always acting up then you have to wait a minute or so because the staff member has gone walkabout. It's getting to a point where it's not even worth the hassle of shopping there just to save a pound or so because they are not cheap anymore anyway on a lot of goods.
  14. Ferris's avatar
    Asda is pretty bad these days. Shelves often remain unfilled for a week at a time, there are never any staff on the shop floor to ask about anything. Lots of food past its expiry date that will end up in the bin still on the shelves. A frustrating experience all round. (edited)
  15. TristanDeCoonha's avatar
    I don't know if you've gone downhill recently, but the local Asda has. Barely 20% of total freezer capacity was in use last night, with many compartments completely empty. Shelves with lots of empty boxes, and around 16 of 18 checkouts not manned. The last point is now a standard feature irrespective of day or time.
  16. ASongOfIceandFire's avatar
    It’s been like it for a few years now garbage!
  17. Sprograt's avatar
    I do know something about Asda it has gone very expensive ever since it was taken over.
  18. jase.2's avatar
    Wouldn’t surprise me if Asda are in trouble , when taken over it was riddled in debt

    near me is an Asda to go store / filling station built from scratch plus a Starbucks drive thru. The Asda signs were all up and have now been removed and the finished development is now sitting empty without anything happening behind a wire fenc

    assuming Asda / euro garages have pulled out for some reason 
    C0mm0d0re_K1d's avatar
    The brothers have already made loads of money out of it. They separated off all the filling stations into another company they also own or control. If it goes bang, they stand to loose very little. It's everyone else that will be holding the bag (of giant debt)! It's all leveraged upto the max.
  19. HappyShopper's avatar
    Similar to my local Asda - spoke to a staff member who said they are short staffed and not recruiting so employees workload has gone up - the remaining staff are reluctant to do twice as much work for the same pay which is understandable.

    Same kind of mess in my local B&M and The Range too - probably for the same reasons as they too don't seem to have many employees.
    jamie15's avatar
    B&M have always had lackluster staffing, it's a core part of their business model.
  20. Gynx's avatar
    IMy local Asda has been going downhill for a while, but the past year its been really obvious.

    The aisles are constantly full of discarded packaging left by the staff, other rubbish dragged in by customers, it's usually a mess no matter what time it is.

    Lots of empty shelves too. Half the time the pricing is either not there, or wrong.

    Leaks from the pipes above are all over the shop floor. They've stopped bothering to put a bucket down now. Often no sign either. (edited)
  21. expandingmaan's avatar
    Hmm, I don't know if it's just Asda though
    HonourableGentleman's avatar
    Author
    I haven't seen this amount of mess and general disarray and mis-pricing in any other supermarket
  22. FIFER03's avatar
    I definitely noticed a difference in Asda for a while now. I used go in there for most of my shopping cause I have to walk past it if I've been at my mum's. Never been in it for months now.
  23. Justintime12's avatar
    £166 shop! That's 6 weeks for us.... And we eat well


    But you won't find us queueing for rank pizzas with no staff, then moaning online about it.....
  24. optrex10's avatar
    Agree, empty shelves and items in odd places organised by people who have no idea. I tried to buy bras in there the other day, now they mix the wired with the non and stuff is just everywhere and the sizes are all mixed up
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