Staples — Local services in Los Angeles

I went to Staples on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood a few days ago to get some office supplies. I was shocked at the $90 price but I needed extra large color ink cartridge so I paid for it. I was pleasantly surprised to get home and open the box and find two! But why didn't the sales associate tell me? I had asked why cartridges had doubled in price and asked if there were supply chain problems or was it just corporate greed! He said it was just greed. But that's not the truth. The price for the extra large color cartridge has hardly changed at all. I was buying two and didn't know it.

Then I went out to the car and told my friend, who was driving, that I had gotten a great price on notebooks: 35-cents on sale! So he went into the store to buy some notebooks and came back to tell me they cost $3.00 a piece. I said, "No, there are notebooks on sale for 35-cents." He went back into the store and was there for about 20 minutes at least. It took that long for a knowledgeable associate to find the display with the 35-cent notebooks. So, he was refunded his $6 purchase and bought 7 notebooks for the fantastic price of $2.00.

So, the sale on the notebooks was great but the first associate he spoke with didn't know. He had to find someone who did.

I was disappointed that you no longer stock the two-pack of Wite-Out in the bottle with the little wedge-shaped sponge tip. I had to pay twice as much for a small "cartridge"-like bottle.

I also wanted to buy ONE roll of clear shipping tape - not with the plastic dispenser which cuts your hands and screws up the tape all the time. I have a good dispenser already. I wanted one roll of tape and had to buy 3 instead.

So, some things are good at Staples and some changes are not to my liking particularly.

One more good thing: when I hobbled (I need a cane) into the store, I asked the Security Guard if I could get someone to help me because I couldn't do all the walking around on my own trying to find things and he said he would walk me. His name was Emilio and he was pretty good. The manager took over for a few minutes. He was nice but he seemed a bit hurried and he kept walking to fast and pointing vaguely this way and that and then he left and Emilio came back and took over. That worked out better.

I wanted single colored markers. Although there was at least one shelf full of markers, no single wedge-shaped markers were available. There were packets of pointed markers but no wedge shaped ones except a pastel packet which I didn't want. I also looked in the art supply aisle but nothing there for me.

I still like Staples. It's my go-to place even if you did close the store closest to my home. And I am glad to be able to get a trade-in on the old ink cartridges. No one's perfect but I think, in the long run, Staples has been good and continues to be a good place to get supplies and...

In the age of finding everything you could ever want at Amazon, staying relevant has gotten more and more difficult for Staples. Sometimes you have to embrace that which might be your downfall and that is exactly what Staples is doing. In order to get more possible customers to walk thru their doors, Staples has taken on responsibilities that will hopefully benefit them but most certainly benefit the other business that they are partnering with. You can now ship packages via UPS, process returns with "Express Returns" and with "Happy Returns" as well. You can do all of this from their customer service area. But that isn't all. Believe it or not, Staples has really embraced Amazon in hopes that Amazon will begin to view them not as competition but more like a pesky little brother who can be a pain sometimes but who has also secured a place in the retail giants heart. Many Staples locations now have "Amazon lockers" inside the store as an option for easier package delivery. You can also drop off your Amazon returns (after you have gotten authorization for the return from Amazon) Simply take the item you are returning (in its original packaging) along with the authorization email (printed out or on your phone) that Amazon sent you to the customer service area of any Staples and they will print a label with processing information and an Amazon driver will pickup all Amazon returns the next day. It is a very quick and easy process and you don't have to worry about packaging up anything for proper shipping and you never have to worry about printing out shipping labels. The best part is that once Staples has taken possession of your return, Amazon considers the product successfully returned and within just a few hours, all of your money that you spent for the product will be credited to your Amazon account. Ever since Amazon hit the online retail scene, companies like Staples have been slowly bleeding to death and eventually dying a miserable death. Staples is a very void of customers type of store these days. It is a very lonely existence for anyone who works at a Staples these days. It is hard to see how all of these new services they now offer will do anything other than just prolong the pain. Based upon an almost complete lack of customers in any Staples at any time of day during business hours, the patient is dying much sooner than later. Anything you can buy at Staples can also be purchased from Amazon and can be delivered the next day. It is also going to be cheaper at Amazon because Amazon can flex their bulk purchasing muscles and negotiate much lower wholesale pricing. This is indeed a case of "strange bedfellows". You can't blame former Staples customers for shopping for their office supply needs via Amazon though. More variety and lower prices is a powerful drug. Staples embrace of Amazon is to...

Okay here we go! The reason I’m giving this store 2 stars is the manager Daniella. Absolutely the worst! I bought a brand new ipad 9.7 6th gen online and realized I picked it to be shipped. Since our mailman likes to throw packages, I quickly called staples customer service and changed the order to store pickup. Since they close before i get off work, I asked if my husband could pick it up for me and was told yes, as long as he had his ID. So my husband went to pick it up and daniella the manager refused to give it to him. She told him ( that she didn’t believe that he was picking it up for me) even though he had pictures of the online receipt, his ID that has our last name on it and the address on his ID that matches the address i put in online. She also told him that i never spoke to anyone because I didn’t talk to her. I’m sorry I called corporate customer service instead of her since I placed the order through the main website, not the store. So she doesn’t believe my husband was there to pick a $300 dollar ipad that I bought, he’s just a random guy trying to steal an ipad and he’s a lair. So i talk to her on the phone and explained everything in detail and she was all yes ma’am no ma’am to me. Then she told me i had to call customer service back and get my husbands name put on to the order?knowing full well they were closed. She also made my husband wait for over an hour while she tried to get ahold of someone on the phone to help her with this whole thing. All the while the other employees were talking to my husband and asking him what was going on and they all took a look at my husbands ID the receipt and told him he had all the correct information and documentation and she should of given him my ipad. She even told him he didn’t look like his ID. she said it is store policy. Even though corporate said no problem. He even had the security guard on his side telling her to give him the ipad. This is most absurd experience I’ve ever had with a store manager in my life. I would like to say thank you to the employees and security guard that...