M&S Simply Food — Local services in London

Sometimes, one gets treated really, really well and sometimes the service is not that great. For my last few visits to this place, it is mostly the latter.

If you want to be treated like a piece of dog mess, this is the place for you to shop. Members of staff are rude, curt, lazy and lack manners and class. The machines simply do not work properly. When I attended an M & S at London Gatwick, where I gave the place five stars, they did not have self service machines. I was happy to wait in the queue because the members of staff were ever so nice.

I saw one woman be so vile and unnecessarily to someone who was just trying to shop. I should have said something and stood up for the customer. Some of the staff need an attitude adjustment.

Shopping there is now a burden and it used to be a pleasure. If you want to buy a bag, you have to find a member of staff and then explain. Nothing is easy nor simple. Staff are too busy talking to one another to do any good. When other people are using the self service machines, one cannot tell if they are machines which accept cards and which ones accept cash. Thus, people don't often know where to queue. Members of staff just point in the general direction and are too busy talking to one another to be of any use. Members of staff never seem to listen to their customers. The machines never seem to make purchasing anything an easy task and it gets very annoying.

This place used to be nice, but since the self-service tills have been installed, this place is absolute rubbish.

Members of staff seem to be completely unaware of when customers need help. There are tills constantly in need of carrier bags and staff do not pay attention when the red lights are flashing, indicating that there is something wrong with a machine or a customer...

I live and work in London and security guards at my local Sainsbury’s always stand back as £30 of washing detergent are swept off the shelves and openly stolen. Meanwhile in this M&S I make a genuine mistake scanning a meal deal and get physically restrained.

I visited this M&S inside Waterloo train station, 7 mins before my train was departing. I pick up a meal deal and mistakenly scan 2 of the three items (£5.90 paid instead of £6 - current meal deal prices 🙃). The security guard spots this and points out I missed one item. I explain I may miss my train if we have to process a refund to make an additional payment for 10p, and apologetically I head for the door. It was not at all ideal, but at Waitrose we would put this down to goodwill given the situation and the premium prices. At this point the security guard squares up to me, physically grabs my arms and restrains me, saying he can’t allow me to leave.

He knows my situation having seen the till price and my receipt, and knows I will be late for a train. Yet marches me back to the till and I pay again for the meal deal, £6 this time. At this point I would rather have given up an item of my meal deal I hadn’t paid for but the security guard is not making sense or being reasonable, demanding I pay for the whole meal deal or he he would lose his job. As I explained before, I don’t have time to process the refund and so have to leave.

I have contacted your customer support email for the CCTV footage of the security guard working this morning at 7.05AM. Physically restraining someone late for a train for 10p, and subsequently overcharging me £11.90, is a wild way to...

There are 2 branches of M&S Simply Foods at Waterloo Station and the security staff are obsessed with me in both. Today for instance, I went into the one opposite platform 6 looking for a granola bar, as I walked through the aisles I became aware I was being followed by the security guard, wherever I was, he was.

This shop didn't have the bar so I went to the other branch opposite platforms 20-24. As I walked in, the security guard was on the entrance, I picked up the things I needed and walked to the till to pay and he runs around the corner to the tills to watch me pay. There are 30+ customers in the store and he wasn't interested in watching them pay, so what was the urgency when I got to the till?

Later on, I went back into the larger branch to pick up my dinner and an assistant left his spot to stand behind me to watch the till as I scanned a prawn curry. I gather he was checking the item and price on the till because obviously all Black people will change the barcodes right? It wasn't enough that I was paying, he needed to see if I was scamming the till because obviously Black people don't pay for things right?

All of the instances today involved Asian male staff. These 2 branches have a disgusting problem with racial profiling. Just read through the reviews. Black customers are tagged, stalked and followed in these 2 branches and it...