The Range, Southampton — Local services in Southampton

We visted this store on Saturday afternoon around 3pm (Winchester road SO16 6TL), we have visited this branch numerous times over the years and have always had a pleasant experience. However not this time, as your stores policy allows dogs we took our 5month old puppy to the store for her 4th visit to the store (socialisation, therapy dog training) unfortunately as we got to the till 3.15pm our puppy became unwell and had a toilet accident by the till.

The young girl serving remained professional, however the two members of staff on each side of her were extremely rude. Both older women , one on the customer service counter with very short hair and the other on a till were making inappropriate comments about myself and the puppy! “This is why our stores policy is stupid, allowing dogs in here” those were the exact words whilst I was cleaning up the mess. They then proceeded to carry on making insulting comments to each other about myself, whilst throwing me dirty looks across the counters.

I work in customer service and have done all my life, I have had children throwing up in the branch, dogs having accidents etc etc , however! I have certainly never been rude or disrespectful to anyone whilst this is happening, yes I may express my feelings to a colleague in private after the incident we are only human, but to be so disrespectful in front of the customer is unacceptable.

After cleaning up, I apologised several times to everyone, and tried to apologise to these two women, but they just glared at me and ignored me.

I left that store feeling humiliated, embarrassed and quite cross that staff members could be so disrespectful. Suffice to say I won’t be using this...

So I go to range rarely and normally I go in and do my own business and don’t ask for help. The staff at the checkout normally a lady with a blonde pony tail is nice. There were two occasions I went and was disgusted by their attitude towards their customers. On the first Occasion (3 hours till closing time) I went to look at furniture, I asked if they had this in stock, the woman just sat down at her desk and took a really big sigh, as if she’s just ran a marathon. She took a look and said there’s three in store and she looked around and said but I can’t find it??? She couldn’t find the 3 in store and didn’t approach anyone else, looked for about a 30 seconds. Ok and I didn’t buy it. The second occasion was when I went in, bad on my part but there was 3 minutes till it closed. I went in to buy something small at the front near the tills and I knew what it was. I had the exact amount of cash so it’s faster. I walked in and the lady told me 2 minutes. I went to the shelf to pick something up and this horrible tall bald man with a thick build told me with a horrible looking face to GO TO CHECKOUT. the lady said I had 2 minutes and the man intimidatingly “pushed” me away and I couldn’t even get what I wanted so ended up buying something else. I know it’s not good on my part to go when it’s closing because I know it’s irritating. But If I was staff I wouldn’t try and push my customers out! Baring in mind I wasn’t the only one in there. Never seen him in there maybe it’s a one off. The second star was only because I like to go to the range as they have good items. This range would probably make a lot more money with...

I like The Range. Over the past 7 years I have been shopping at this branch they have had everything I needed.

Their price for some things is expensive when you consider the quality. For example, I purchased a set of 3 clear plastic rectangular storage boxes with lids. However, when I returned home, I found 2 of the lids cracked in different places, as was one of the boxes. I checked every lid and every box before going to the checkout.

That meant between putting the boxes in the back of my Volvo Estate car, then driving home and taking the boxes out into my dining room. These breakages occurred, and yet I did not bang them into anything.

Either they were swapped at the checkout at the last minute by the person behind me who had somehow broken them. Perhaps by sitting on them. Or they somehow and for some unknown reason split due to it being only 5° outside which fir some plastics makes them brittle. It was not that much warmer in my car as I had the heater switched off to save melting my frozen foods I had purchased from ASDA moments beforehand.

Ther is of course another possible reason. It was St. Patrick's Day, when i purchased the boxes. Perhaps one of Irelands famous leprechauns did the dirty deed by doing an Irish jig on the boxes without me noticing. Something like River Dance would do it!

Joking aside, The Range has some great products at very reasonable prices. For the home, they are my goto shop for items in most...