The 12 Worst Supermarkets in America

The Fiscal Times ^ | April 13, 2012 ?!? | Blaire Briody

[Daffynition]

...All ratings are based on 24,203 responses, and the four categories – service (includes employee courtesy and checkout speed), perishables (food quality), price and cleanliness – were scored from “very satisfied,” “fairly satisfied,” “neutral, “fairly unsatisfied” and “very unsatisfied.” All scores are out of 100. The highest-rated supermarket, Wegmans, received a score of 88. The following are ranked from bad to worst....

[mmichaels1970]

The one and only time I went to Aldi, the quarter was not redeemed upon my checkout.

Ah...they may do it differently in your area. In ours, there is a little slot on the cart itself. You slide the quarter in and it unlocks from the rest. When you are done shopping, you return your cart and slide the lock back into place. Your quarter then pops back out.

The only pain is when you forget the quarter. I occasionally have to scrape up a couple dimes and a nickle and go into the store to get the cashier to exchange for a quarter.

I do agree that the quality is hit or miss on occasion. Never buy a bagged salad that is marked down from $.99 to $.49.

[Ditter]

The Trader Joe's in my neighborhood is small, the fresh vegetable department is tiny, and the meat is already seasoned and packaged in plastic wrap. The wine/spirits department takes up at least 1/3 of the store. The food items on the shelves is mostly precooked, canned or boxed stuff that you open and heat up.

We have a Fresh Market in our area and I am sorely disappointed with it too. They do have nice flowers at a good price.

We have a great meat market where they sell excellent meat and nearby we have a fish market that is fabulous. My husband is a great cook, mostly cajun cooking but he loves to cook anything.

[mmichaels1970]

Having said all that, every once in awhile I will go to the bigger stores for the sake of convenience and location. It always feels like Christmas.

lol...you and I have much in common!

[C. Edmund Wright]

Well I love the small fresh seafood markets and fresh meat markets too….and fresh produce markets too for that matter - but those are not grocery stores. Completely different stores, completely different functions.

[samiam1972]

I’m glad I’m not the only one!

[Ditter]

Good grief man, sorry that I have dumped over your Trader Joe's wagon but I am 73 years old, I think I know what a supermarket is. We have many great supermarkets within 2 miles of my house, Rice Epicurian, Randals, HEB, Whole Foods and a few miles away we have a Central Market. The meat market I mention is small, Pete's Fine Meats and the fish market is Fountainview Fish Market. You are from a different part of the country and I doubt if you have heard of any of these except maybe WF. I have apologized for bad mouthing TJ’s but I am not the only person who feels that way.

[trisham]

Yes. :)

[ladyjane]

Have to agree about Whole Foods. I was waiting to see if anyone would comment on it. The place is to totally filled with aggressive do-you-know-who-I-am and I-know-better-than-you Elizabeth Warren fan liberals.

Whole Foods has more liberals than the League of Women Voters and Acorn combined.

[C. Edmund Wright]

Seems to me you don’t understand what TJ’s niche is, and you compared it to completely different things……

I don’t think 73 yo has anything to do with it - in fact, may even work against you. For what it is, TJ’s is outstanding and an amazing business success story, but if you want a meat market, or even a Whole Foods, it’s not either of those….and BTW, I love both of those.

[SeaHawkFan]

Best grocery store for value is WinCo; it isnt even close.

Best place for meat and all sorts of other foodstuffs -Costco. Its also not even a close call.

[ladyjane]

Yes, Costco has terrific meat. I don’t find them inexpensive but the quality is excellent.

[reformedliberal]

The quarter is NOT redeemed at checkout. You take your empty cart back to the cart area, lock in back into place and Voila! your quarter pops back out of its slot. One in a while, when it is busy, the clerk will swap you cart with its quarter in place for another cart with its quarter in place. You return the cart, etc.

[Ditter]

I compared it to Rice Epicurean, Randals, HEB, Central Market and you apparently don't know what any of those things are.

You tell me what TJ’s niche is.

[C. Edmund Wright]

You blew it with Rice Epicurean…..right off the bat. TJ is NOT a gourmet grocer.

you don’t even know what you were supposed to get at TJs. And you didn’t get it, but you blame TJs. Not your own flawed expectations.

TJs is a low price grocer - with an emphasis on private label store brand bargains that are high quality, and a pleasant friendly atmosphere. They are NOT a gourmet, NOT a fresh market, etc, altho they have a small amount of that stuff.

Tiz you who was wrong. You were disappointed because you assumed it was a Fresh Market Whole Foods Rice whatever…..

[C. Edmund Wright]

From Trader Joe's "ABOUT" icon: Would you believe we started out as a small chain of convenience stores? It's true. Way back in 1958. We were called Pronto Markets. In '67, our founder, the original Trader Joe, changed our name (yes, to Trader Joe's) and the way we do business. We made the stores bigger (if you can imagine), decked the walls with cedar planks and donned our crew in cool Hawaiian shirts. Most importantly, we started putting innovative, hard-to-find, great-tasting foods in the "Trader Joe's" name. That cut our costs and saved you money. Still does.

As for Rice Epicurean, sounds like an awesome place…but totally totally totally diff niche than Trader Joes. I'll take your apology when convenient…..

[Ditter]

Rice Epicurian is not what the name implies, it is a regular supermarket not an upscale fancy place, if you lived here you would know that. I honestly went with an open mind about what I would find at TJ, I went on the day it opened after watching the signs when I passed. I bought a box of tomato basil soup that was excellent and didn't see anything else I wanted. We season our own meat, I guess that was the biggest surprise, but you obviously like that. We don't drink wine or beer. It was so full of grey ponytailed liberals that I wanted to puke. (I should have known that from the obama bumperstickers in the parking lot)

You apparently have a lot invested in TJ..... hummmmmm....

[WhiskeyX]

“I generally use a personal check to pay at Wal-Mart without any trouble.”

Many of the Walmart stores began to use the new EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer) policy at least six years ago in 2007-2008. The customer is asked to fill out an agreement form, sometimes misleadingly described a survey form. The customer must agree to being charged a fee for a bounced check. One store said the fee was about $25, but other customers have described NSF (Non-Sufficient Funds) fees of $39-$49. The customer is issued a PIN (Personal Identification Number) to be used for these EFT transactions. The personal check is run through the cash register, stamped with a void imprint on the check, and returned to the customer along with the cash register receipt.

This assumes of course there were sufficient funds available in the checking account to fulfill the immediate electronic funds transfer out of the customer’s checking account. In other words, the transaction results in an immediate electronic debit of the funds in the account in a manner similar to using a debit card.

One of the troubles with an EFT transaction like this are the occasions when something goes wrong. There have often been complaints about cashiers debiting the checking account two or more times for the same transaction. There are complaints about EFT and debit card transactions resulting in the funds in a checking account being blocked for a period of time because of valid and invalid transactons on the account. This blocking of the funds has led to NSF alerts and bounced check charges of $30-$40 even though the funds were not actually spent.

Worse still, at least one poster described how they worked at the Sheriff’s office and witnessed Walmart reporting a NSF check as a complaint to the police without trying to cash a check a second time or first contacting the customer.

Bottomline, even scrupulously honest people can find themselves the victim of unanticipated circumstances and potential law enforcement encounters where transactions have been made against your checking account balance without your prior knowledge that result in a NSF transaction despite actually having sufficinet funds.

Are there still some Walmart stores that have not yet adopted this EFT check payment policy? I don’t know. I talked to three Walmart stores before writing this post, and their customer service representatives did not know of any Walmart stores that had not yet implemented this EFT policy. Their stores use the EFT check policy. Perhaps you are lucky to use a Walmart that is not using EFT check transactions?

Blogs are reporting there are many elders who are still using checks at Walmart but do not yet realize or understand they were signed up to use these EFT transactions.

[fwdude]

Yeah, great prices, just very poor variety.

They don’t even sell aspirin!!!

[C. Edmund Wright]

no, I have a lot invested in truth. I think TJ’s is still private equity actually…same corporation as Aldi and a few other retailers…

[OldNewYork]

Albrecht and Dieter were too lazy to unpack the boxes in their parents’ grocery store, and a new paradigm was born! They do pretty well - Trader Joe’s is connected to them.