Boots — Local services in London

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had very good experiences with this shop and most staffs are friendly and helpful. Today I visited for an eye test appointment for my mum, at the start the optician lady was very helpful and patient when asking and answering questions.

However, after the regular tests my mum was having two other tests using the machines with another lady in the other room. First of all, the lady struggled to operate one of the machines and had to ask a few colleagues about how to switch on the system, which was understandable and we waited for around 10 minutes.

As English is not my mums native language she was having problems understanding what the lady was talking about, so I was translating for her. The lady was extremely inpatient and not giving me any chance to speak or translate for her. As a result my mum made a few mistakes when taking the test. Then my mum requested to do it again as the mistakes would affect the results, the lady was acting very annoyed and told me the procedure could not be retrieved but to do everything again. We said it was ok and she did it with a very negative attitude.

At the end of the appointment the lady asked us to look at the frames as the optician was writing a referral letter for my mum. We did so. But we had to leave as we had another appointment to go to in 30 minutes. The lady told us we cannot leave anyway as we had to wait for the referral letter. When she came back with the referral letter we told her that we want new glasses but cannot get the glasses today as we had to leave, she said we were “wasting her time” if we didn’t want glasses today.

My mum felt really stressed as she couldn’t understand fully what the lady was saying and found it hard to follow what she wanted. I personally felt being treated very unprofessionally and disrespectfully.

The lady’s name is Irute. No intention to name and shame, but please avoid if you need a little more help or time during an appointment or your day...

About an hour ago, The lady from basement payment area been very rude. I scanned 3 items, i thought 1 item was on promotion but when i scanned its shows original price on the screen but i saw the sign SAVE and i did’t understand. However i couldn’t find the price after promotion, so I called the lady to cancel that item. I called her “ hi” she wasn’t far from me. She came and asked “ what is the problem?”. I said, “I just want to cancel this item”. She asked me to pick up and show her the item i want to cancel. So i picked it up and showed her and put it back. She said “ its said oil”, and i pick it up again and show her “ yes it is this one and i just explain her “i thought this item was on promotion, but the price its shown seems like it is not”. She shouting at me “ this is not this price, it said SAVE so its not this price”. We stand not even one feet apart and no need to use that tone to talk to the customer like that. So i just back off one step and told her that “bec i don’t see the actual price on the screen, so i rather to cancel it”. she cancelled it and walk away. What so difficult to talk politely and properly? Is she racist? I just asked her to cancel the item which i was confused with, i didn’t even asked her to check or explain why its not the same from the shelf price. I am also working at retail near by. So I totally understand when staff got inpatient and agitated during tired long shift And I understand she is elderly who working very uncomfortably at such customer service area. But her attitude is...

Usually quite good service here but 25 minutes queuing to collect a couple of prescriptions isn't great. At times there was only one person serving who, it turned out, was not actually qualified to hand out prescriptions (really?) So, although he was able to find the items quickly enough, we both stood and waited for another member of staff to sign this off. Not there yet though as that member of staff wasn't actually a pharmacist so a query on my prescription had to be checked and authorised by a pharmacist - another wait. Lots of apologies for the waits etc but, sorry, this is not a system that is working.

Update - went again this week and the lass serving was in a different league. Quick, polite and super helpful. A point to note, as I was waiting for my prescription to be signed off, she was serving a customer when another person walked to the front of the queue and tried to interrupt her to ask a question. The server was polite but asked him to wait as she was dealing with a customer - which turned the guy into a disgruntled idiot who stormed off swearing. A small reminder that the staff here will often have to deal with some very rude, self important idiots and to retain a cheery friendly demeanor must...