Giant Food — Local services in Ellicott City

Wow, things have really changed and not for the better during my last two visits. Most of these things are probably decided at the main office and not this location, but they are changes for the worse regardless. I used to be able to get away with following the specials and getting out of there with more food for my money than Wally Mart. Though there were some decent meat prices like $2.99lb ground beef, the prices were insane on many things and well above Wally marts, even for the "specials". There were also some obvious false deals. I consider marking something as if it was a deal but it being almost none or no discount to be misleading. Stuff like on close inspection the original price was like $3.99(hidden by the special sticker) and the huge special sign shows it for like $3.90. A whopping 9cents. It used to be that there was always one brand of soup or tv dinners on sale and that would alternate. Now there were no deals in Soups, No good tv dinner specials. That had been the case for the last two visits. Hungryman TV dinners $5 (used to be $3.50ish) still less than $4 at Wally Mart. The was Myers(?) sliced italian bread "buy 1 get 1" but the single loaf price was over $4, for the same brand it is usually $2.50. The most glaringly obvious misleading special was on some Coke products. Coke 12oz Cans in a 12 pack were "Buy 2 get 2 Free" so were the 8 packs of 12oz bottles. Guess what the price of one (1) just one of those packs was? $9.99!! If you looked at any of the other packs they were inflation higher but not insane. Specifically the ones that were part of the deal were almost twice their "normal" prices!! When have you ever seen a single 12pack of cans be $10. So the deal should have read "Pay twice as much for one pack but if you take another we'll charge you normal price for both", what a deal!! It also used to be that the shelves were full and labels accurate too, not so much on my late Sunday visit. There were many things that were simply gone, like cheese pizza in any of the pizza deals, or plain seltzer water. Some of the McCormic taco spices were on sale - none available. Some other changes: I used to like going through the self checkout because i could bag things the way i wanted to and check that coupons were being deducted as expected and prices were correct as well. Well now you cant use self checkout if you have more than 20 items. Does this mean that they have multiple cashiers at 8 on a Sunday? No way, 1 cashier who is also the only person answering questions for people. I must say that though she is an elderly lady, she is sharp as a whip and faster than any cashier at Wally Mart, but its still just one person, so why a restriction on the self checkouts especially in the late evenings when there is not a huge amount of traffic to clog the self checkouts with big orders. Oh yeah, make sure you get on the Giant app and clip those electronic coupons at least 30min before you plan to use them or they dont work. That was according to a cashier there and i confirmed it that very night. The one thing that has not changed for the worse was the quality of the meats and produce compared to Wally Mart. The Giant produce and meat sections look like they just got done filming a commercial they look so good. Not usually the case at Wally Mart. I guess thats what you're paying the higher prices for and for some things it might be worth it, but not for things like Coke...

I had been using Giant/Peapod for deliveries since the beginning of the pandemic so almost 4 years. That service was very good when they were sending a truck. Then they switched to sending me my stuff via a carrier last Fall. At that point they removed the possibility to have individual substitution per item. They also had a lot of stuff I was ordering but not receiving due to « out of stock » - then why was it on their website when I was ordering the same day?

But the « best » was my last order: they called me to tell me they were backed up and could not deliver. First time ever. OK we agreed they would deliver the next day at 10am. By 10:30am I had received no email from them, I called and learned that they had cancelled my order without even bothering to let me know ❗️ This was my last order ever as I cancelled my membership with them and will never order anything from them again. Terrible way to treat...

This Giant was lovely when it opened in the new space but has steadily gone down hill since then. The staff is the biggest part of the problem. Most are rude, boorish, and disinterested in actually working. It's hard since they are clearly short staffed but having 2 people man the customer service desk while having long lines at checkout seems inefficient. And when those people are more likely to be having personal conversations that addressing staff, it's worse. So many people have started driving further to shop at Harris Tetter since the staff is ALWAYS pleasant and helpful. Hopefully Giant can fix their issues before it loses too much more business. Too many grocery stores close by to want to deal with the attitudes of their current employees with the 2 exceptions of Kathy and one of the current stockers...