M&S Foodhall — Attraction in London

For a small store it is quite well stocked but suffers from the same problems as the West Hampstead store with a cramped, frustrating self-service till area. There is little space and the constant incessant 'scan your Sparks card' auto announcements drive you crazy. I feel very sorry for older people and autistic people who would find it hard to cope in this environment.

I also had a weird experience here when a kind member of staff offered me one of the £5 off a £40 shop vouchers, which is quite common in stores and which usually get automatically printed every time you have a shop for that amount anyway. I politely declined as I had several, only to discover mine hadn't scanned when I paid. I went to the customer service desk and a young lady who was not wearing a name badge refused to refund me the £5 despite me showing her a voucher and her colleague offering me another £5 off voucher. I showed her another identical in-date voucher I happened to have in my rucksack and she said I could have got that from anywhere and was acting very strange. Thankfully a manager came over and sorted it out, although I received a rather strange refund of about £4.50 but by that point I couldn't be bothered to dispute...

This is an amazing store in terms of fruit, veg and meat but when it comes to other things, I can never seem to find what I'm looking for. The majority of the staff are very friendly and helpful. The thing about this store that really annoys me is the fact that they close at 10pm but they send staff in to empty the shelves at 6pm. I don't know if they're meant to do that or not but it means that whenever I go down to M&S (which is very often as I live in the flats right above it) to shop for dinner, all the shelves are empty. Also despite the opening time being 7am on weekdays, they open the doors at 7:00 but are stacking the shelves until 8:00 so if you don't want to be stepping over green crates everywhere and looking on the shelves for something that may not have been stacked yet then I'd recommend ignoring the opening time and allowing 30 mins - 1 hour. I hope this review doesn't sound too negative but I covered the good aspects of the store at the beginning very briefly and went into a bit more detail on the bad aspects. Despite all the bad qualities, for a guy who lives above it it is very convenient but for someone who lives a bit further, I would use Sainsbury's or Tesco or waitrose as your main...

This is a first for me as I don’t tend to leave reviews for supermarkets, but I suppose I’ve never been shouted at at one before. While waiting to pay at the automated tills, I saw there was an employee standing there, I assumed, to call out the free tills since it was busy. However, I quickly realised he wasn’t actually doing this and so, when it was my turn, I started to tentatively approach what I thought might be a free till. He then shouted ‘No! No no no no!’ at me. No explanation, no actual words. Mind you, I didn’t even make it to the till before he had shouted ‘no’ four times at me. He then turned his head and looked away when I tried to look at him on my way out, in an attempt to address it. I’m aware of the stress that these jobs can bring, am always nice to cashiers and don’t expect them to be always lovely, but this was such a disproportionate and borderline aggressive reaction it honestly left me a bit shaken. I guess there are worse problems but it’s never nice to have this happen to you at your local supermarket, if anyone cares...