Stop & Shop — Local services in Brookline

I am updating this review to upgrade my earlier review regarding the produce department. I came in Sunday night (8-9-2020 at 745 p.m.) and I can say that the produce department looked VERY GOOD! Maybe they read my earlier review from the week before and decided to bring their "A" game. lol. But, yes, the produce department was very well stocked in all areas and I was very impressed. Keep up the great work guys. Recently my shopping experience here has been below average. The shelves of the of the Haagen Dazs ice cream, are usually close to being empty, whenever it is on sale. The ice cream section of the freezer case is generally poorly stocked. This has been the case since I began shopping here 2.5 years ago. The grocery shelves are not always stocked well and the selection could be better. But, specifically, I wanted to mention the produce and meat departments. They are below standard in many ways. The produce department is always dirty and poorly maintained. Water is usually on the floor, which is a huge lawsuit waiting to happen. Their navel oranges are usually "greenish", damaged and of very low quality. The produce manager should be asked to undergo remedial training to help him/her develop the knowledge on how to effectively run a produce department. I suggest they follow the Lakeland, Florida based Publix Supermarkets' business model, on how to successfully and profitably run a produce department. The meat department is almost as irresponsibly run as the produce department is. Their meat selection is limited and they do not have a butcher to handle special orders. All of their steaks, etc., come pre-cut from the warehouse, according to a gentleman I spoke with, who works in the meat department. Their packaged meat case is also poorly stocked. That is wholly unacceptable for a major retail supermarket chain, such as Stop and Shop, to not have an on-site butcher-meat cutter to handle customers' special order needs. The COVID-19 situation is NOT and excuse for the failings of this Stop and Shop. I have been to dozens super markets in the area and NONE of them has had the inadequacies of this Stop and Shop. Brookline is one of the wealthiest and most highly educated cities in America, yet, this Stop and Shop does a below average job in providing the residents here with an excellent shopping experience. If things improve here I will certainly update this review to...

Past experience: personnel in customer servicer who can't handle ordering a replacement courtesy card, items ordinarily carried that take WEEKS to be reordered. (I've taken buses and/or walked to the Stop & Shop in Allston when I really need an item that this chain carries.) Actually, bagging my own groceries is no problem; I prefer to do it given my own professional experience as a grocery store bagger.

Today the cashier said my 2 bags of groceries came to $38.49 and I handed her $40.55. Then she claimed I owed a balance of $17.94 which I knew couldn't be right, but she claimed I'd see why after I got my receipt. So I gave her an additional $20. The she figures out that she has made some kind of mistake but can't articulate what it is. A manager gets involved and I overhear that she entered into the register that I only gave her $20.55 rather than $40.55. (I also have personal grocery store cashier experience, so I know they had a choice of two simple fixes; simply add $20.00 received from customer or void the whole transaction, have me empty my bags, and scan the items again making sure to correctly record the amount of cash I gave her.) I was prepared for the second fix, but this cashier and manager acted like this was a rocket science problem hard to figure out. My frozen items are thawing and the line of customers behind me are forced to other checkout lines. I finally just demanded my $40.55 back, left their merchandise at checkout, and started my shopping all over again at Trader Joe's. TJ's might be a zoo of crowds, but there are reasons for that; their cashiers and managers are all very competent and their prices are better than S&S. Going forward, If I need anything TJ's doesn't carry, the S&S in Allston or the nearest Star Markets in Boston are also more competent. (There is one older cashier lady with white/grey hair at this otherwise sad store who is both very competent and very friendly; maybe she should be running the place. Or perhaps Town of Brookline should have gone ahead and displaced this 155 Harvard Street store with a school as they had planned a...

My first time here and the store itself is clean, well-lit, and pleasant. Pretty good amount of produce, dairy and meat, and various everyday products. Price is on the "okay" side (not cheap). But there are some good weekly deals one may take advantage of. Most disappointed though, that the online sign up does not work. The verification email does not get sent. Tried multiple times with multiple emails and asked other people to try making an account, no one was able to get the verification email to work. Customer service desk manually put in the details (which I later hated because they got extra information out of me with my Driver's License that was not required to create Account online). But you still have to LINK your card to the online account I cannot create. Got no apologies for this inconvenience and wasting an hour of my time. Customer service (on the phone) was closed for the weekend. The service desk in the Shop told me to call tomorrow as they can't fix the issue, but I don't want to waste more of my own time to fix a company's problem. Found it very frustrating how no-one took ownership and kept saying it must be my email/phone/network that is the issue. And yes, I checked the Spam folder multiple times. Will probably not Shop here unless I super-urgently need something because of the location. Not cheap, bad customer service, even basic online function does not work. Quality of produce and products were okay, cleanliness great, felt safe inside and around the store. Uploading some updated photos as the ones I checked before coming into the store were from 7 years...