Cannabis 21+ Mission Valley — Attraction in San Diego

First of all, I would like to say that I’ve been a loyal customer since you guys first opened and have been coming almost twice a week ever since. I love the place and people that work there. From David, to Gio, to L J, and everyone else there has always treated me great, even Nick, but today was drastically different. Before I arrived to SDRC, I called prior to see if they can do something about my leaking cartridge. Louis told me to come in, and that they can see what they can do. Once I get there, I’m pleasantly approached by L J after letting the budtender know about the issue with the cart. She then takes it back to Nick for him to review. During that time, I was told by my BT that he purchased the cart over the weekend and he has the same issue. Nick then approached and stated that “it was a definite no,” in which I replied with, “why?” He then proceeded to explain to me, with aggression and a weird attitude, that the cartridge needs to be leaking out of the package, as if I knew the reasons why they can’t do returns. I then asked even if the cart was leaking after using it? He then replied, “you can’t go buy liquor and drink half of it and try to get your money back, can you?” Of course not, but the liquor isn’t defective, the cart is. Not a good example at all. And while he is explaining all of this, he waving his hands around in my face and slamming the table. Why? Not sure what’s the reason behind his attitude towards me. I wasn’t arguing with him, I wasn’t even disagreeing with him I was simply explaining my issue with him, and I’m given complete disrespect. All of the while, L J is watching this happen right in front of her and I ask her, and say it out loud so Nick can hear me, Why is he being so aggressive? And he responded after approaching me by saying “If I was aggressive towards you right now, we would be fighting. I would be fighting you.” Is that right? So now I’m threatened by one of your employees. I didn’t know it was customer appreciation day! I then was told that I had to leave and Nick had Auggie come over and the new guy escort me out. Really? There has to be something done about this situation, otherwise this will happen again with Nick, he seems as though he is a ticking time bomb in a sense, waiting to blow up. Unfortunately, I was that guy he blew up on. Completely unacceptable behavior that shouldn’t be tolerated anywhere, part of a great company or on the streets, behavior that causes potentially huge complications.

Update [3/26/21]: After sending this exact review as an email to SDRC HR, here is their response:

Good Morning Noah,

We would like to offer a sincere apology for the awful experience you had in our store yesterday. We have read your email and public reviews, and are so sorry for the way that you were treated and dismissed without solving any issues you had or satisfying your needs as a customer. We have addressed this instance with all of our managers, and action is being taken on multiple levels.

To extend an olive branch, as it were, we would like to offer you a care package that you could pick up along with a face to face apology. While we realize your experience was terrible and entirely our fault, we also suffer greatly from negative public reviews, and ask that in accepting our olive branch that those reviews could be taken down as to not hurt the entire company for the actions of Nick. We hope that you will accept our apology and our offering with forgiveness. You are appreciated and valued.

Sincerely, Human Resources Department

Not sure what to say about this one guys, I'll let you guys be the judge of this,...

Here we go....

I placed an order for delivery a week and a day ago (Tues. Sept. 8) and I have had the worst, most frustrating customer service experience I've had in a long time.

First, after placing my order for delivery online around 8 pm, I received a phone call from a representative who told me you were unable to deliver that night--which was fine--but I told him I would not be home the next morning and that delivery in the afternoon would be a good time. He said that was fine and he would make a note.

The next morning, I receive a voicemail from another representative telling me they were processing my order and that it was going to be delivered shortly. I tried to reach SDRC through the only phone number listed on the website, used the appropriate extensions, but the phone line was busy. When I tried to leave a message, saying I would not physically be home to receive my order, I was given an automatic message that the voicemail box was full. Why is a "business" using a phone number that is clearly inoperable?

I tried calling multiple times to no avail. Luckily, the man who delivered my order came a few minutes before I was about to leave--so I thought it turned out okay. But oh no that wasn't the end of it.

When I opened my order later that day to ensure the quality of the goods I ordered, the disposable vape pen, which came straight from its packaging, didn't work at all! $30 for a useless waste of plastic.

Well since calling did not seem to work the first time around, I tried sending several emails to SDRC--and no surprise here, not a SINGLE REPLY.

Okay well now it's already Wednesday/Thursday. I had to go out of town over the weekend--so I figured I'd just go to the store and physically return the expensive, useless piece of plastic that they sold to me for $30 claiming it was "disposable vape pen."

So here I am, Tuesday Sept 16--physically in the store, risking my own personal health in the midst of a global pandemic--attempting to return the "disposable pen," receipt in hand.

But if it were that easy, this wouldn't be a one-star review. Nope. Nah instead, they told me that because they don't know how people store these devices, etc., etc., they CAN'T ISSUE REFUNDS MORE THAN 24 HOURS LATER. But hey--they could offer me a 25% discount?? That's exactly what I wanted! A $30 25% coupon--that I could get pretty much any other dispensary just by signing up--cool!

TLDR: Non-communicative dispensary that will mess up your delivery, deliver items that DON'T FUNCTION AT ALL (straight out of the packaging), not answer your calls/emails, and then smile in your face as they tell you your $30 can get you a nice coupon instead.

In conclusion--I don't generally believe in leaving scathing reviews for a one-time bad experience, but their website claims to be the best dispensary in San Diego, and boy is that false advertising.

Also--if you're going to employ fancy limited warranty language when speaking with customers, you should at least pretend you can also...

SDRC is/was, as far as I know the only San Diego dispensary taking card as a form of payment. They are basically splitting the fee with the client as a courtesy function. I’m not sure how that all works for them, but in this cash game it’s a standout feature. I hear this feature is going away while a new bill is introduced to the state assembly.

The other things that stand out is the parking. Some of the worst around, and not much better when it was just the gym/shops/car rental. Now you have a steady flow of maybe 20-30 cars an hour. Uber in/uber out. Size, it’s a large square footage with maybe 8 stations, lots of windows and tv screens. They are progressive in keeping all the stations close to identical, but they just fail, coming in for a specific product has service people scrambling down each station looking for things.

Service, I wouldn’t even call them weedtenders, I felt like it was more a best buy vibe, definitely sales people. Not only are all the stations never fully manned or stocked, but most transactions take a few minutes, but for some reason here it’s always some delay. I didn’t feel like I was tended to, but rather rung up. They have a solid selection, but really jam pack things since they are trying to get flowers, edibles, tinctures, extracts, prerolls, etc all in a glass case.

You register at the front desk, security will let you in, they are armed, but inconspicuous for the other guests in the center (gym shops). I don’t recall getting wanded or going thru a metal detector. Once you are through, you have to find a person, rather than are greeted and walked in. I like that about other shops. Prices are pretty good, but I find that their bags are small, not much bigger than a flavrx edibles bag. Most use a larger bag.

Prices are good, but from my opinion there are certain brands that they carry that others don’t and visa versa. Select CBD is big for them, they don’t carry much of the PAX pods styles. They do offer a lot of edibles from some big companies, but don’t offering anything in the savory category, everything is candy/dessert, sweet.

I wish the menu was a little better curated for products. Sometimes it’s not about price, but quality. Sure you can get some .5g cartridges for $25, but it’s gonna clog and you won’t be able to vape the whole thing. I’d rather pay $70 for a Heavy Hitter 1g that won’t do that and has an open draw. This is where companies could have learned more from the vape world. They have a lot of product, but nothing that brings it’s own name and sells itself. They probably get good deals from the bigger distro companies and overstock some items and forget about everything else. All in all there are pluses and minuses here and overall it’s ok, others have set the bar high. Bad parking and no delivery...