Superquinn Charlesland closing??

xIsabelx

The fast lanes are amazing when we're trying to get the sunday papers done or when there's only one staff member on tills, but I don't understand how there were 2 staff members and a manager around and no one was on tills. That never usually happens

FirstIn wrote: »

How do the prices in our Superquinn stack up against the Tesco Select in Kilcoole? Or the Centra in Eden Gate?

I live in Kilcoole and I've been to that Tesco express I'd say, around 5 times. The stock levels there are terrible and the checkouts are NEVER open, only that small kiosk till.

matt-dublin

Continiously i've been down there and seen that they're running a terrible service.

Staff seem improperly trained, or just lazy.
Examples of bad retailism:

5 Staff lazing around the tills, no tills open just express lanes, q for the express lanes was down to the end of the meat isle

on big lotto nights, when there should be 1 staff member dedicated to the lotto till serving lotto only, constantly 1 person serving both lotto and normal tills on extreemly busy nights.

During peak times, unacceptable level of staff at tills, generally peak times are in the mornings and following all dart arrivals from town between 4 and 8. Small till shifts should be scheduled during these times to coincide with dart arrivals, so that when people start to arrive theres people there to serve them, inbetween darts for the 20 mins its quiet the staff should be repacking shelves.

Staff closing tills while there are queues at them for their break, understood they need breaks but timing is essential.

Understocking: one of the biggest sellers in charlesland are ciggerettes, the baggest brand is Marlboro, superquinn are never stocked up especially on large event weekends. They don't recieve their orders of anything until thursdays so if on sat they've no smokes, theres no point going there until thurs. Countless times its stopped me shopping there, i would normally go in every evening or two to buy my dinner and a pack of smokes, but if i know they dont have my brand i wont go in. Im sure others are the same. They don't seem to adjust their customer supply orders to suit customer demand.

I like their produce, breads, salads and meats are of superior quality to Tesco equivelants and much cheaper than donnybrook fair but i think that their service levels are completly below par. Especially in an environment where they should be pushing harder to improve overall customer exerience where meeting the customers requirements adequitly could see a boost in sales as much as 20-30% weekly. Especially when they have a small monopoly right outside their front door.

They should be taking advantage of charlesland, not pissing people off. DOn't get me wrong, their staff are really nice people but i feel that they need to be managed better.

cuddlycavies

Yep, all of that is true. My favourite is every sunday morning. No croissants, no fresh orange juice, papers without supplements. It's almost as if they identified a target market and then set about peeing them off. Hope they read this. But yeah, Avril and staff are lovely and very well intentioned. Managers are incompetent or hapless or both.

loyatemu

matt-dublin wrote: »

Continiously i've been down there and seen that they're running a terrible service.

Staff seem improperly trained, or just lazy.
Examples of bad retailism:

5 Staff lazing around the tills, no tills open just express lanes, q for the express lanes was down to the end of the meat isle

on big lotto nights, when there should be 1 staff member dedicated to the lotto till serving lotto only, constantly 1 person serving both lotto and normal tills on extreemly busy nights.

During peak times, unacceptable level of staff at tills, generally peak times are in the mornings and following all dart arrivals from town between 4 and 8. Small till shifts should be scheduled during these times to coincide with dart arrivals, so that when people start to arrive theres people there to serve them, inbetween darts for the 20 mins its quiet the staff should be repacking shelves.

Staff closing tills while there are queues at them for their break, understood they need breaks but timing is essential.

Understocking: one of the biggest sellers in charlesland are ciggerettes, the baggest brand is Marlboro, superquinn are never stocked up especially on large event weekends. They don't recieve their orders of anything until thursdays so if on sat they've no smokes, theres no point going there until thurs. Countless times its stopped me shopping there, i would normally go in every evening or two to buy my dinner and a pack of smokes, but if i know they dont have my brand i wont go in. Im sure others are the same. They don't seem to adjust their customer supply orders to suit customer demand.

I like their produce, breads, salads and meats are of superior quality to Tesco equivelants and much cheaper than donnybrook fair but i think that their service levels are completly below par. Especially in an environment where they should be pushing harder to improve overall customer exerience where meeting the customers requirements adequitly could see a boost in sales as much as 20-30% weekly. Especially when they have a small monopoly right outside their front door.

They should be taking advantage of charlesland, not pissing people off. DOn't get me wrong, their staff are really nice people but i feel that they need to be managed better.

Good points, well made, but there's no point moaning here - put all that in a letter, send a copy to their head office and another to the branch manager.

Lumbarda

I find some of the prices have really come down in there lately, I'm just back from Tescos and spent about half of what I usually spend cos I've been buying more in Superquinn. Lots of things (basics) same price or cheaper in Superquinn and I prefer to support it as, bad management or not, we'd be lost without it, it was one of the reasons we bought in Charlesland in the first place! They do need to sort things out at busy times tho' and those express tills drive me MAD, I just pretend they don't exist now as always get stuck at them!

dr ro

i complained to manager last year about constant lack of cream labelled/flavoured erdinger in squinn. They got it in but charged 40c more than anywhere else. In fairness it's nearly always there now and i've noticed prices coming down too. You should tell the manager about your lovely fags not being there and see what he can do for you.

xIsabelx

matt-dublin wrote: »

Staff seem improperly trained, or just lazy.
Examples of bad retailism:

5 Staff lazing around the tills, no tills open just express lanes, q for the express lanes was down to the end of the meat isle

on big lotto nights, when there should be 1 staff member dedicated to the lotto till serving lotto only, constantly 1 person serving both lotto and normal tills on extreemly busy nights.

During peak times, unacceptable level of staff at tills, generally peak times are in the mornings and following all dart arrivals from town between 4 and 8. Small till shifts should be scheduled during these times to coincide with dart arrivals, so that when people start to arrive theres people there to serve them, inbetween darts for the 20 mins its quiet the staff should be repacking shelves.


Staff closing tills while there are queues at them for their break, understood they need breaks but timing is essential.

Understocking: one of the biggest sellers in charlesland are ciggerettes, the baggest brand is Marlboro, superquinn are never stocked up especially on large event weekends. They don't recieve their orders of anything until thursdays so if on sat they've no smokes, theres no point going there until thurs. Countless times its stopped me shopping there, i would normally go in every evening or two to buy my dinner and a pack of smokes, but if i know they dont have my brand i wont go in. Im sure others are the same. They don't seem to adjust their customer supply orders to suit customer demand.

I like their produce, breads, salads and meats are of superior quality to Tesco equivelants and much cheaper than donnybrook fair but i think that their service levels are completly below par. Especially in an environment where they should be pushing harder to improve overall customer exerience where meeting the customers requirements adequitly could see a boost in sales as much as 20-30% weekly. Especially when they have a small monopoly right outside their front door.

They should be taking advantage of charlesland, not pissing people off. DOn't get me wrong, their staff are really nice people but i feel that they need to be managed better.

I'm curious about the incident with 5 staff members, none of whom were on tills...was this during the day or in the evening? I can't imagine why that would ever happen

I do understand how frustrating it must be with regards to the lengthy queues during peak times; people just want to get their dinner and go home after work. It's also quite frustrating for us, because we're so short staffed and it makes the job so much more stressful.

Usually, when a staff member closes their till for a break during a very busy rush, it's because they need to get the breaks in before someone else finishes a shift. Again, this is due to the lack of staff. There is supposed to be at least 3 people on tills every evening, but now we're cut back to 2 people and one person finishing at 7.


I don't even know who puts in the cigarette order, but it's the worst thing ever when we realise there's no Marlboro Lights! All I can really say is that I'm sorry, and I'll say to the manager to make a bigger order for that kind of brand, which is the most popular. But please spare a thought for those of us behind the till who have to answer to customers when there aren't any M.Lights

cuddlycavies wrote: »

Yep, all of that is true. My favourite is every sunday morning. No croissants, no fresh orange juice, papers without supplements. It's almost as if they identified a target market and then set about peeing them off. Hope they read this. But yeah, Avril and staff are lovely and very well intentioned. Managers are incompetent or hapless or both.

I can't vouch for the croissants, as I don't work on the deli. All I know is that it opens at 9 (it used to be alot earlier, at around 7 and I'm hoping it will start up at this time again during the summer)

For some ungodly reason, each Sunday all of the newspapers are dropped off at the front door without the supplements in them, meaning we have to do it all ourselves. There's 4 supplements for the Sunday Times alone and 90% of the time, only one of us is separating them and putting them in; that's a hell of alot of papers for one person to do.

But I can imagine how annoying it would be if you just wanted to go in and buy a newspaper without any hassle. I have said it time and time again to roster a third person on during the Sunday morning shift so two people can be doing the papers while the third person can serve customers and alleviate them of that ridiculous fast lane....alas, nothing has been done.



They've recently hired two new staff members on checkouts so fingers crossed, there'll be less stress for everyone!

cuddlycavies

Thanks Isabel. Unfortunately all of the explanations above are little more than excuses. Are we being charged any less as a result of short staff issues? All of the above conditions existed when we were in the middle of strong retail conditions. Your prices were consistently dearer than Tescos and your service was and is inferior to same. If newspapers are not sorted as required, then the issue should be raised with the supplier. Alternatively a staff member should arrive earlier to sort them out properly. Sometimes the supplements are missing and full price is still charged. As for the croissant thing, well thats your manager's choice. If it was me, I would target the locals by making your store the place to go for brekkie things at the weekend. But thats just me. But think about it. what are people in this estate of 1200 units doing on sunday before 12? Very little. Coffees, papers, breakfast, maybe flowers(and of course Marlboro Lights, for after yunno). Thanks again, but please no more excuses. We are paying for the service.

YraggarY

cuddlycavies wrote: »

Thanks Isabel. Unfortunately all of the explanations above are little more than excuses. Are we being charged any less as a result of short staff issues? All of the above conditions existed when we were in the middle of strong retail conditions. Your prices were consistently dearer than Tescos and your service was and is inferior to same. If newspapers are not sorted as required, then the issue should be raised with the supplier. Alternatively a staff member should arrive earlier to sort them out properly. Sometimes the supplements are missing and full price is still charged. As for the croissant thing, well thats your manager's choice. If it was me, I would target the locals by making your store the place to go for brekkie things at the weekend. But thats just me. But think about it. what are people in this estate of 1200 units doing on sunday before 12? Very little. Coffees, papers, breakfast, maybe flowers(and of course Marlboro Lights, for after yunno). Thanks again, but please no more excuses. We are paying for the service.

In fairness though, Isabel is giving you the reasons why certain products / services are unavailable or inefficient. Its clearly not her fault, so there's no point in labeling her answers as "excuses", because she seems to be doing the best she can for customers. Would you prefer her not to bother trying to explain the reasons things are not up to scratch? Its management who you need to tell to "stop the excuses." Yes, we are paying for the service, but its management that make all the decisions, and yet its rarely management who get the flak for their bad decisions - its usually always the floor worker. As Isabel said: "I have said it time and time again to roster a third person on during the Sunday morning shift so two people can be doing the papers while the third person can serve customers and alleviate them of that ridiculous fast lane....alas, nothing has been done. " She's clearly trying her best when she could just as easily "work-to-rule", not make a fuss about it, and take home her pay at the end of the week. Its not up to her to solve the problems, its up to us as consumers to demand changes in Superquinn's working practice. I'm not having a go at you by the way, I just think you need to cut Isabel some slack.

- Gary

slickmcvic

I've seen they've hired a security guard for the place which is definitely a good thing.

It might prevent future interrogations from checkout women publicly accusing me of supplying drink to a group of young lads hanging outside the place.

I could have explained the gardai had ran them and i was actually a 28 yr old secondary school teacher but,meh, she wasnt worth the justifiaction....

Welsh Wizard

YraggarY wrote: »

In fairness though, Isabel is giving you the reasons why certain products / services are unavailable or inefficient. Its clearly not her fault, so there's no point in labeling her answers as "excuses", because she seems to be doing the best she can for customers. Would you prefer her not to bother trying to explain the reasons things are not up to scratch? Its management who you need to tell to "stop the excuses." Yes, we are paying for the service, but its management that make all the decisions, and yet its rarely management who get the flak for their bad decisions - its usually always the floor worker. As Isabel said: "I have said it time and time again to roster a third person on during the Sunday morning shift so two people can be doing the papers while the third person can serve customers and alleviate them of that ridiculous fast lane....alas, nothing has been done. " She's clearly trying her best when she could just as easily "work-to-rule", not make a fuss about it, and take home her pay at the end of the week. Its not up to her to solve the problems, its up to us as consumers to demand changes in Superquinn's working practice. I'm not having a go at you by the way, I just think you need to cut Isabel some slack.

- Gary

Spot on Gary..

aoifee

I shop there pretty much every day and i really dont see that much of a problem, sure you have to wait a while at the checkouts during peak times but you can see the checkout staff are doing all they can to get people through, and sure your going to get that at most shops anyway. Ive always found the staff on the floor to be very helpful as well, the young guy with the crazy hair always goes out of his way to say hello and offer help and every1 seems to be on hand to direct you to a product!

I really dont think the shop is as bad as were all making it out to be??

happyhappy

aoifee wrote: »

I shop there pretty much every day and i really dont see that much of a problem, sure you have to wait a while at the checkouts during peak times but you can see the checkout staff are doing all they can to get people through, and sure your going to get that at most shops anyway. Ive always found the staff on the floor to be very helpful as well, the young guy with the crazy hair always goes out of his way to say hello and offer help and every1 seems to be on hand to direct you to a product!

I really dont think the shop is as bad as were all making it out to be??

i agree! and i actually think the staff are very friendly. i always seem to end up having a laugh with one of them when i am in there!

GAN

They can't be any worse than the staff in Tesco. I don't think I've ever seen one of them smile, or say hello. I think the staff on the checkouts in Lidl are the best in the town, they are super quick, and they always smile and say hello. The people in SuperValu are nice too in my experience

loyatemu

Folks - please don't have a go at individual, identifiable members of staff on here - if you have a problem with the way a particular shop is run, fair enough, but don't use this thread to air your grievances against individuals (I've edited a couple of posts to remove identifying features).

thanks
L.

Welsh Wizard

Heres the best one....

So walked through their door at quarter to ten last night picked up a few items and beers, stood in a que for 10 mins, only to be told that it was past 10pm and she couldn't sell me the beers... but the chap in front of me with the box of Miller was fine...

Got back in the car and the clock on the car said it was 2 mins to ten..

Now, dont get me wrong but if she knew I wanted the beers and could see me then why not say to me to put them through the auto check out things....

Needless to say, Im never going in that place again, even the father in law hates the place... "Not going in that kip, 15 mins for smokes, Place would give you fecking brain damage"....

Rant over...

KYE409

^ I go in to Superquinn there all the time and I NEVER wait til 9.50 to buy my beers....you can't blame them just because you didn't get them in time. it's your own fault.

I used to work in Bray and some of my mates are still there. Apparently when it reaches 10 on the dot, the tills won't let any alcohol go through.

ian_m

I disagree. You wouldn't (and shouldn't) have to wait that long anywhere else to get served. In fact, you wouldn't even have to wait ten minutes for a Guinness to settle in a bar, never mind getting served in a Supermarket.

KYE409

Well yeah, fair enough that it's annoying having to wait for that long just to get something small. But when you leave it until the last minute, knowing theres a chance you mite not get your alcohol, you can't blame the shop for that.

MyPerfectCousin

KYE409 wrote: »

Well yeah, fair enough that it's annoying having to wait for that long just to get something small. But when you leave it until the last minute, knowing theres a chance you mite not get your alcohol, you can't blame the shop for that.

Well, the shop closes at 10pm. The customer (obviously) entered it while it was still open. He should be able to buy what he came there for.

If the till automatically won't allow sales as from 10, then they need to make sure they get everyone served by then.

I really don't think blaming the customer for poor service is in the best interests of consumers.

Welsh Wizard

Like i say... "I waited for 10 mins in the que".....

joeybloggs

Welsh Wizard wrote: »

Heres the best one....

So walked through their door at quarter to ten last night picked up a few items and beers, stood in a que for 10 mins, only to be told that it was past 10pm and she couldn't sell me the beers... but the chap in front of me with the box of Miller was fine...

He was lucky and not organised.
You were unlucky and not organised.

Going into the main shop that caters for '1500 houses and apartments' on a Friday night to get a few items and beers at 9.45 is cutting it very fine.

It doesn't matter how fancy or accurate your car clock was, if it's 10.00 on the till screens it not going through. It's against the law.
It happened last year just in case you forgot. http://www.oireachtas.ie/viewdoc.asp?fn=/documents/bills28/bills/2008/3208/document1.htm

If you have a problem with this, I would suggest that you should bypass the Superquinn Manager (It sounds like he has his work cut out for him already) and go straight to your local TD and inform him about your situation.

In conclusion, get there earlier.

cuddlycavies

I doubt the store caters for 1500 houses anymore. Many of us are so browned off with them, we'd rather drive to the village. 15 minutes at 10pm is more than enough time to serve a customer effeciently. They're just ineffecient. Stop making excuses for them. It just encourages bad service,

joeybloggs

I doubt the store caters for 1500 houses anymore. Many of us are so browned off with them, we'd rather drive to the village. 15 minutes at 10pm is more than enough time to serve a customer effeciently. They're just ineffecient. Stop making excuses for them. It just encourages bad service,

I doubt it too, that's why I put it in abbreviated commas.

joeybloggs wrote: »

'1500 houses and apartments'

And NO, I'm not making excuses for anyone. In fact I was just pointing out to the poster that there's plenty of blame to go around and suggested that he should not leave things too late.

ian_m

joeybloggs wrote: »

You were unlucky and not organised.

Don't you think that it might be the staff who are not organised?

joeybloggs wrote: »

It doesn't matter how fancy or accurate your car clock was, if it's 10.00 on the till screens it not going through. It's against the law.
It happened last year just in case you forgot. http://www.oireachtas.ie/viewdoc.asp?fn=/documents/bills28/bills/2008/3208/document1.htm

The issue of legislation never arose. The customer was there at 21.50.

joeybloggs wrote: »

If you have a problem with this, I would suggest that you should bypass the Superquinn Manager (It sounds like he has his work cut out for him already) and go straight to your local TD and inform him about your situation.

I would hope my local TD has better things to be doing.

joeybloggs wrote: »

In conclusion, get there earlier.

That's unfair. In conclusion customer service should be improved.

thecommander

ian_m wrote: »

The issue of legislation never arose. The customer was there at 21.50.

Doesnt matter if they were there at 9am. Legislation says that you cannot sell the alcohol at or after 10pm. Its out of the staff and managers hands if you arrive at the till at 10pm, even if you queued for an hour.

xIsabelx

cuddlycavies wrote: »

They're just ineffecient. Stop making excuses for them.

Wow, you have no idea what it's like to work there at the moment.

Every single night we have to deal with customers screaming in our faces because of things like this; I come home all the time so stressed out because of how busy the place is and we don't have enough till staff to cover the hours because of a stupid hiring ban.

It's like, we can never win with the customers..even though we're working as hard as we can.

Recession....it's a bitch isn't it? :rolleyes:

cuddlycavies

And you have no idea what I mean by inefficient. Being short staffed in spite of customer traffic is inefficient. Hiring bans and recessions are no excuse. It's not just SQ using recession as an excuse for staffing. The other crowd are also cutting staff in spite of rising profits in the ROI and higher margins than the UK. People just need to go wher the value and service exists. While you are very nice Bel and are genuinely concerned about customers, you have to understand that it is we the customer who are spending their hard earned. We deserve better. For a short staffed operation, it must be said, the managers are not adapting a hands on approach to traffic at the tills.

loyatemu

Tills blocking alcohol sales automatically @ 10pm is something that happens in all the big supermarkets - its there to protect them from breaching the alcohol laws.

Bad service in Superquinn is a different issue and there's really nothing further to be said about it here - if you're not happy put it in writing to their head office.

The original topic here was Superquinn Charlesland closing?? and the answer appears to be no.