99 Ranch Market — Attraction in San Diego

Gave four stars six years ago.

Upon entering, it's not the cleanest place. I took my friend here one time and it was a little embarrassing. My friend couldn't stand the smell of this place... There's this smell, but probably because they have live fish. Not all stores I've been to have that though. The aisles are crowded. The cash register area which is right where the entrance and exit is, is also crowded. Sometimes the floor is just a mess and sticky. They had food sample stalls set up in between aisles which also crowded the store. Everything is quite packed and busy. They have dead bamboo plants hidden right underneath the live plants. That just seems ominous.

I forgot to get a shopping cart, thinking I didn't need one at first since I wanted to make a quick trip, which ended up being an extremely arduous process. Then, I had to go all the way to the entrance/exit to get a shopping cart and was looked at by the security again. Carts were also not that clean. The whole place just seems like a market you would see in a rural area. Not trying to put down rural areas. Just saying the layout could be better.

The deals are pretty decent (for certain items), but I prefer the other location in Balboa much more. The service here is just absolutely terrible. They don't bother to improve. That's one thing. If you go into the aisles looking for something, good luck! Sometimes they don't speak Chinese nor English or they simply don't want to talk to you. I don't know what they speak and sometimes they don't even know the items in their own store. It's like you're bothering them when asking a location of an item. I've been coming here for years now since I was a college student. I definitely don't come here because the service is great, but I come here because they have particular seasonings that I cook with. Zion and Hmart have much better service, so I've been going to other Asian supermarkets instead as things seem like they keep declining here.

THE REASON WHY I AM WRITING THIS REVIEW is because of my last visit at this store (7/26/25). I have been here several times with friends and family who use EBT cards. They all feel discriminated here. If this store trains their employees to discriminate customers based off of socioeconomic status, race, gender, etc then I really am utterly speechless in this day and age. It should be a seamless process to use whatever payment method you prefer. Not a "let's hold up the line and let everyone know how poor you are" kind of situation every damn time they shop here. My friends and family should not feel ashamed. I'm extremely disappointed at this location and their employees. I was frustrated this time for the last straw and was finally helped by a higher level employee that knew what she was doing and could sense my frustration. We're all paying customers at the end of the day. If they don't want that form of payment then don't accept it in the first place. Don't make it so inaccessible and difficult that I need a manager to come help me correct my transaction. It's a very...

The cash register employees and hot food servers are blatantly rude. Last year I went to pay for a hot food order and was asking where I should line up because I saw only 2-3 customers being directed to move back and forth by the employees and each had to wait more than 5 minutes to even ask or request orders. For context, I understand Cantonese fluently – they started speaking in both Cantonese and Vietnamese about how annoying it was that they had to direct customers all over the place when they were the ones confusing the customers in the first place.

I’ve been to this 99-Ranch countless times and I can confidently say that those employees have not been properly trained to communicate with customers with basic respect with the situation I had encountered this evening. My boyfriend was paying for his food via EBT at self-check out. The employee was speaking in Mandarin with unnecessary frustration to the cashier that she doesn’t understand why my boyfriend tried paying EBT via self-pay. Mind you I also understand Mandarin, and we have paid EBT without a problem at this exact 99-Ranch. I asked her what happened and she could speak to me in Mandarin so I can let my boyfriend know. She waved her hand in dismissal saying it was someone else, then proceeded to point at my boyfriend. I said, yes that’s my boyfriend, you can let me know in Mandarin because she was speaking in English with so much frustration I couldn’t understand what had happened. She proceeds to speak to me rudely in Mandarin about the situation dismissively again and I asked her why she was speaking to me with an attitude about something that was a minor misunderstanding. The manager then walks over and proceeded to tell me that she wasn’t speaking with attitude, and I had to tell him that I just asked simply to understand the situation and she gave me more attitude when I was trying to just pass the word to my boyfriend.

I was hoping, from the first incident, that the managerial team would have informed their employees about the unnecessary verbal rudeness – but clearly it didn’t, and I had to really step up to tell the manager today that I speak fluently in the languages of these employees I encountered. With my same cultural and ethnic background, I am very aware when someone is mistakenly frustrated vs. actually frustrated. I shouldn’t have to express my discomfort I experienced with the employees to a manager that was not as the scene and tried to back up his employee. Very poor management and appalling...

I moved to Towers At Costa Verde- 8775 Costa Verde Blvd, San Diego, CA 92122 on July 15..2024. The leasing office asked me to do them a favor and change my moving schedule from July 14, which is Sunday to July 15 Monday. I hope they are less busy and will have more time to make the apartment done well. As a new tenant, I try to be good to office staff and make my life easy to live here.

However, I first saw the door and window screen in the living room and bedroom were missing, and the leasing office immediately solved this problem. I was very appreciative.

But nightmare is continuing, the washing machine was very dirty and disgusting. The leasing office woman did not take it seriously and told me it was not an emergency and had to wait until tomorrow to fix. I asked her again and again if she could call the repair department, and she said they didn't have a phone number and she had done what she could do and all I should do was to be patient, and it was already 3:30pm, that they would be gone in an hour - we are very busy you have to wait until tomorrow.

These are necessary things they must check before a new tenant moves in. This is because of health safety and if the dryer has so much lint it might cause a fire, basic knowledge. Next, I checked if the cooking and dishwasher had the same problem....and yes, the fan, very dirty and oily, sticks to my hand. I just tried to clean, the components falling apart, more nightmares with the dishwasher. Someone left food and dry steel chopsticks inside, five chopsticks! Why wasn't this checked during the inspection and maintenance?

This apartment was on the market two month ago and until the move in, but it wasn't cleaned or maintained properly. It is totally unlivable for anyone.

I am really concerned about Health and Safety here.

I don't like to complain, but I don't know what to do and I am afraid to tell the office. I feel I can only write here, no one tries to talk to me and find a solution. If someone can tell me what I can do it...