Stores
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This Wal Mart store, should change their logo of a smiling face, to a scowling/angry one.
Today I found myself in the returns line at this particular Wal-mart. Someone bought us a box of diapers for my baby, but they were the wrong size. They said they had purchased them at Wal-mart, so we decided to exchange them for a box of the right size of diapers.
The customer service representative tried to scan the item, but couldnt, so she informed us that this must come from a different Wal-Mart in Calgary and that they couldnt exchange this prduct and we would have to go back to the Wal-mart this item was purchased to return/exchange it. I thought this was not right so asked to speak to the manager. The wall in the back said the manager today was a guy, but instead a youngish, very sour looking woman showed up. She didn’t greet us, or respond to our greeting, she simply tried to scan the item, and repeated what the clerk had told me, only this time claimed that this must be a Zeller’s or superstore product. When I aksed her about what the other clerk had said, that this product was from another wal-mart but they couldnt take it back here, she denied it, and started to fight aggressively with us about not having a reciept and bringing products from another store. My dad and I left, I woudl go to another store to buy diapers for my baby.
We had no idea Wal-mart hired such hostile aggressors to be managers. I know that I am one person and my voice is not loud enough to raise anything against this corporate giant. I dont even ask for kindness, simply that they uphold Sam Walton’s age old moto, that the customer is satisifed, or at least treated with dignity. Poor Sam, he would roll in his grave if he ever found out about the rudeness and hate spewed at customers in a store that bears his name.
Written by Smriti on December 29th, 2008 with no comments.
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Upon recently having a baby, I got a gift certificate to this baby store in Calgary. I had visited their Market Mall outlet and was quite happy with the environmentally conscience products they carry. Since i live closer to the Crowfoot branch, I decided to go there. I need to find washable or flushable diapers for my new baby, she was only 6lb at the time. Well, once I was in the store, the two nice ladies whom were helping other customers didnt bother to greet me, or even look at me. I browed around for 2-3 minutes, when I noticed that both the sales women were now free, and simply chatting and complaining to each other. I made eye contact with one, and she was polite enough to ask me if I needed help. I said yes, I needed this particular product. The girl promptly said, well, the only thing we have is for babies over 8lb, and turned around to go. I stopped her and asked if they had any slow flow nipples that would fit a Medela feeding bottle, to which she said they had no slow flow nipples and I should probably go to Shoppers Drug mart and look for them there. I asked her if she had any other product that could help me, and she said no they didnt. So I said thanks and decided to look around anyways. In the meantime, I noticed a frantic dad had come in, he asked the other sales girl if they had any pacifiers for a newborn (which I know that they do have). The sales girl promptly said no they didnt and that he should go to Shoppers Drug Mart or TOys-r-Us and look there.
In my browsing, I found a Green to Grow BPA free feeding bottle with slow flow nipples that I liked, and a separate package of slow flow nipples (I guess its not in the sales girl’s job description to recommend a product to a customer!). I brought my items to the front desk, where the two women were sitting and again complaining about something or someone. I asked how many nipples were in the package i was holding, the girl looked at it, and didnt know, so she asked the other girl, and she didn’t know either. SO they simply looked at me and said, that they didnt know. Anyways, I decided to get the items, my baby needed slow flowing nipples and bottles. So I pulled out my gift certificate to pay. The girl looked at it as if it was some kind of alien, then showed it to the other girl, and she said well, we dont take those, when I protested saying that it was a gift for 200$ from Bo bebe, she said, well its from the Market Mall location, you need to go there to spend it. I thought that was ridiculous so I told her so, so she said, ok they would take it, if I would spend the entire 200$ at that moment! I thought that was simply dumb and decided to leave without my items. In the meantime the first sales girl had rung my items through and said that I owed 35$, I said I wasnt going to buy anything, when she looked surprised that I didnt want to pay cash for my items, and irritated that she would now have to void the sale.
I wonder where in the world BoBebe hired these two idiots, they have obviously never ever even seen a child forget having or caring for one. I think stores like these should be more cognizant of whom they hire, and yes, they were also only interested in those customers whom were dressed posh and looked like they would spend a lot of money, talk about discrimination. I am NEVER going back here. Infact I went to the market mall store, and they were more than helpful, curteous and patient with new mothers and babies, not only looking out to make a buck.
Written by Smriti on October 5th, 2008 with 15 comments.
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Normally we didn’t do revisits in reviews but maybe we should start doing Revisit reviews to see what happened in the past. Remember our previous Coast Mountain Sports Review?
Last time I mainly wrote about the shoe department but this time we go to something different.
I was looking for a bear Bell and saw them at MEC (across the street from Coast) for 2.75 and thought that was a great price for them. But I had a gift card for Coast Mountain sports so i decided to try my luck there. At Coast the same Bear Bell was 3.99 so of course i didn’t want to pay that much for it 
I asked a girl and said they price match at checkout. So I looked a bit more around in the store and then went to pay.
There I told the girl about the price difference with MEC and that the other person told me they would price match it. At that point the girl walked away with my bell and returned a bit later without it and said we needed to wait……..
And that was all she said nothing more happened for minutes and minutes and then finally she went back to the back and came back with my bell and gave me the discounted price.
The whole experience was a bit strange there was not conversation at all between those wait and payment don’t know much about customer service but to me this didn’t feel like service at all it more felt like you want this bell then you need to wait till I say you can have it.
It is that Coast Mountain Sports is across from MEC so when you can’t find something at MEC this is the easiest place to go but other wise i would not bother bringing them a visit.
Written by George on June 6th, 2008 with 1 comment.
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I like Wal Mart and that means that I visited them on a regular basis. After my move I now live closer to the Wal Mart on 57 Ave NE (next to the Deerfoot Outlet Mall) and this one is even open 24 Hours a day.
In General the people at Wal Mart are very friendly and polite and try to be the best they can for their customers. But this Wal Mart seem to be different then the rest. Let me give you two examples of things that i experienced the last two weeks. I got myself a nice electric kettle and was very happy with my buy but then when I came home I found out that it didn’t work so of course what do you do you go back to return it so I did.
The lady at customer service was not friendly at all she was almost rude and didn’t seem to believe that the kettle didn’t work and till that point I just wanted to get a replacement of the same kettle but after this experience i changed my mind and ended up buying my water kettle at Super Store.
And then today I got a basket full of stuff I needed and went to the fast line for 10 items or less. Put my basket on the counter and was expecting the lady behind the till to start scanning my groceries. But no that didn’t happen she looked at me if she was expecting me to do something and of course I didn’t know what so I waited. Then she says in a mean way you suppose to empty your basket out and put it there and then she grabs the basket and turns it over yep she just turned it over and that while i had some nice bread in there that of course now got squashed by the can of soup.
Yes what do you do. I don’t know I liked this Wal Mart and the fact that I could go there when ever i want to but these last two incidents make me rethink this and maybe I will need to look at going somewhere else next time.
Written by George on May 12th, 2008 with 2 comments.
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Today I needed some keys cut and you know most times you go for these things to a mall but today I just happen to pass by Aboe Lockwork on Centre Street here in Calgary.
Aboe has some parking spots in the back and that is handy specially on Centre Street.
The Aboe Lockworks store seems well equipped for all the lock work you need. My keys where cuts in minutes and although the guy that helped me didn’t seem the most friendly of them all it at least gave me a feeling that they know what they are doing and you wonder about that at a key cutter in the mall.
I guess next time i think of Aboe Lockworks again when i need a key.
Written by George on April 14th, 2008 with no comments.
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We were in the market for a 4×4 vehicle and because the Jeep Patriot is the cheapest car in that class we went to visit our local Jeep Dealer, Crowfoot Dodge.
And because we had lots of different experiences in this whole process of buying the vehicle we will divide this review into parts.
First Visit to Crowfoot Dodge:
At our arrival at Crowfoot Dodge we walk a bit around the parking lot to see what kind of cars they have standing (second hand). Within a couple of minutes a sales person talks to us and we tell him what we are looking for and he shows us the two Patriots they have and offers a test drive.
The test drive went smooth although the sales person didn’t really know much about the car and it’s pricing (later I found out that he was working here just 3 weeks).
After the test drive we look at what the options are and ask about financing. The interest rate at this point is 4.9% for a Jeep Patriot and for us that is to much specially after seeing Jeep ads where they say 0%. So we left without making any decisions.
Next day Phone Call:
The next day I get a courtesy call from Crowfoot Dodge to ask how our experience was and if our sales person did his job right.
And because I write reviews I was more than willing to tell them what i thought and i also told the lady that we are interested if it came with 0% financing but other wise not.
The Lady decides to talk to the manager about it and calls us back to tell me that there are possibilities and we make an appointment with the salesperson to talk about that.
Second Visit:
At our second visit we went straight for what we came for. So when we told the sales guy about the 0% he looked at his sheet and said sorry but 4.9% is the best we can do, so i told him about the phone conversation that i had with Crowfoot Dodge. He want to go to his manger and came back with the news that they could not do anything about it. So I told our sales guy that we would leave then and look for a different car somewhere else. He thought that was the only thing we could do but he decided to go talk to his manger one more time.
And guess what now there was a deal to be made. They could not change the financing interest rate because that was something Chrysler decided on BUT they where willing to write us a cheque for the interest we have to pay so that would make it 0%.
That deal sounded good for us so we decided to sign the contract and when our sales person looked there where plenty of cars available.
We visited the financing person and things were arranged quickly.
The next day:
My wife gets a phone call from our sales person with the message that the car that we wanted is not available???? What do you mean not available? you told us the day before that it was. So I at this point am pretty mad and decided to go to Crowfoot Dodge. Our sales guy can’t do much else then offer us a more expensive car and wants us to pay 910 dollars more for it. I tell him that i don’t want the extra rubbish that they trying to sell me. He talks to his manger and says and when he comes back he tells me that he can’t do anything for me. At this point i just tell him to rip up the contract and that seems to worry him a bit so again he goes back to talk to his manger.
And then finally the Manger shows up. And then things get even more interesting. I guess because i am not my normal friendly person at this point he also gets very defensive and tells me that it is MY fault that they don’t have my car, yes you read it right they blame it on ME. And why do they do that, because THEY didn’t put everything i asked for on the bill of sale!
I now tell the sales manger the same story that i told the sales guy that i DON’T want the extras and definitely not for 910 dollars. And if this is the only thing they can do then they can just rip up the contract so that i can go buy a car somewhere else. He agrees with that and walks out to get that done.
After a bit he comes back with still no ripped contract. He tries to explain again what went wrong and that they can’t do anything else to make it easier. So in my last offer i tell him to try to get me a discount on other things to make it worth it for me. He walks out again and comes back a little bit later with the bad news that he can’t do anything else because i already got discount prices on things like warranty and car protection. And so again i tell him to cancel my sale and he walks out to arrange that.
But then after a couple of minutes he comes back again and now he has something to offer (FINALY) he can give me the extras on the the available car for 500 dollars instead of 910 and can offer me a coupon book with discounts and some free oil changes. And because i at this point really don’t want to be hassled any more by car sales people I agree with that.
We at that point set a date that we can get the car for thursday and they promised me the serial number of the car the next day. When i don’t get it i start calling again but now they seem to have moved my delivery date to the next Tuesday so again things need to be changed and then finally the thursday arrives and we can come and get our car.
Delivery Day:
I guess by now you wonder why so much can go wrong, but unfortunately this is not the end 
So we meet at Crowfoot Dodge at the time we said and then the waiting game begins to see the financing guy. Finally almost an hour later then we expected we see the guy. He is kinda pushing all kind of extras on us and most of them we say NO to, but then the extra warranty comes up and I tell him that i don’t think it is worth that kind of money. Of course he disagrees but still I am not willing to spend that much. Then he offers us to do it for an lower price this price is more then 700 dollars below the offer we had (and they already offered a discount on that). So we say we want to quickly talk about it and so he leaves us alone for a couple of minutes. When he comes back we tell him that we want the extra insurance and he tells us he made a mistake. Apparently he offered us the warranty for a 2 wheel drive Jeep Patriot and not for the 4×4. It ends up that we get the warranty for the LOW price. When that all is done we meet up with our sales guy who puts go’s with us to get the plates and fill the tank.
When he puts our new plates on i notice that there is no Crowfoot Dodge logo on the car and that they also didn’t put a thing around the licence plate. I am happy with that but i guess they don’t want me to advertise there business.
And then we go home………
And what happens then:
When we get home of course we have a good look at our new Jeep and we notice all kind of black spots on the roof and the hood. Hmmmm. so the next day it is back to the dealer to get them removed. It turns out that the black spots are the stuff they use for the undercoating off the car. But doesn’t undercoating mean under the car? why does it end up on top of the car. Ah well they take care of it and that is fine.
In the mean time we are still waiting for the Cheque and the Coupon Book. After a bit over a month I started calling to ask where our stuff is. After 3 more calls the Cheque finally arrives and guess what, the amount is wrong and this time we are lucky again because they offer too much just a couple of bucks but still is it that difficult to see on the bill of sale how much it should be?
Then we are still waiting for the Coupon book. And after another couple of phone calls still nothing. In the mean time we get a letter from Crowfoot Dodge that we should contact them if something is wrong. I find out that the person in the letter that you should contact is the general manger so i try to give her a call. Of course she is a busy person and after a couple of calls i ask if she can call me back.
Apparently she doesn’t take care of case like ours herself and lets someone else call me back. This Gentleman takes care of things and two days later the coupon book finally arrives.
First Service Appointment:
I didn’t realize that Jeep wants you to bring you car in every 3 months for service and i guess that is how they try to make up for there lost money. So when i get a letter from Crowfoot dodge that my first service appointment is made i think wow very organized so i decide to check it out. Also because of the coupon book this service appointment is free.
At arrival at the dealer I tell them to check my tire pressure because one of them is way of and the girl tells me that they always check the pressure. I decide to wait for my car because it will only take 1 hour.
In the waiting room is a lady walking around not looking very happy 1 hour later i find out that she is waiting for hours now because they forgot about her and her car but they finally got through it.
Then 1.15 minutes after i arrive i see my car standing outside. I still wait for a bit longer because i guess they staff still needs to make the bill and stuff but after 20 more minutes i am sick of waiting and walk to the reception desk where they put my bill in the wrong drawer and so if i didn’t say anything i would have been there all day
On the service statement it states lots of things they did and one of them is the Tire Pressure. BUT as my Jeep has a tire pressure monitor inside i still see that one tire is way of and needs adjusting YEP they didn’t check the tire pressure and that makes you wonder if they did any of the other things on the service statement.
I think i will go for one mores service appointment at Crowfoot Dodge and see if they improve but other wise i really need to start looking for another service place.
CONCLUSION:
If you are looking for a good deal and can live the all the hassle that comes with it then i would say try to get a good deal at Crowfoot Dodge but if you expect service and wish to feel like a customer then i say stay away from Crowfoot Dodge. I know for sure that they will not see me buying another car there.
Written by George on January 23rd, 2008 with 10 comments.
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Everybody needs a grocery store to get there daily needs. Ok i may stay in a fancy Hotel in Banff but that doesn’t mean that everything you need is here.
So this morning i decided to go to Safeway to look for something to eat like a croissant or something. I was surprised by how empty the bread section was and that while it still is early morning (10.15 am). And this meant to me no bread
Then i wanted some fruit juice and of course they had that but the package that cost like 1.79 in Calgary (maximum price) was here 2.19 and that was on sale! I noticed some other insane prices to i guess that in a place like
Banff you can charge anything
My advice bring you stuff when you get to Banff and spend it on something more fun that groceries
Written by George on December 12th, 2007 with no comments.
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I was looking for a couple of Trail Runners and decided to give Gord’s Running Store a try. I heard good stories about them so i thought why not.
Last Monday Morning I went to Gord’s and i was the only customer at that point and there was at least 4 people staff (or looked like staff). So after a while looking at the shoes on display a guy came to me to asked if he could help me. I told him that i was looking for some trail running shoes and that i now run on Asics shoes (that i was wearing) with that info he told me that he had two shoes that would be right for me 1 Asics and 1 other (that he didn’t show me). I told him that i would like to try the Asics shoe and that i had size 7.5 / 8. He went to the back and came back with a box with one shoe in it and gave it to me and walked away.
The Shoe looked nice and i guess that the other shoe of the pair was the one on display. I tried the shoe that he gave me and it was to big (believe it was size 8.5) so i put my normal shoe back on and waited and waited and waited and then after like 5 to 10 minutes i decided to leave. I never saw a sales person again?????
After visiting like 11 stores the last couple of days (my size is difficult to get) i have to say Gord’s Running Store definitely gave me the impression that i am JUST a customer and that they don’t care about those. Even at places as SportCheck and Sportmart where you don’t really expect service i got way better service then at Gord’s.
My advice would be that if you are in to running check out the TechShop or Runningroom but please stay away from Gord’s. After this experience you will definitely not see me going there to look for my gear.
Written by George on October 18th, 2007 with no comments.
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I am in the market for a couple of trail running shoes and when I didn’t find what I liked at MEC in Calgary I decided to try Coast Mountain Sports just across the Street from MEC.
Coast Mountain Sports in Calgary had some nice looking shoes so i decided to try some the guy helping us was nice and really try to help as much as he could. The downside of trying shoes here was that i got a lot of shoes that where in wrong boxes and so the wrong size. And then when I finally found the shoe i really liked but just not the right size they guy told me that in his computer it said that they had two pairs in the size i wanted but that he could not find them because it was such a big mess in the storage room.
In the end i guess i tried like 9 different pair of shoes and all the once i liked where not available in my size
A well lets hope that i have better luck next time. And one piece of advice to Coast Mountain Sports, maybe it would be smart to check your stock of sizes so that at least people in my size range have a changes to find a shoe they like in the right size!
Written by George on October 15th, 2007 with 2 comments.
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We booked a Car at Hertz in Thunder Bay and this is our experience.
Our booking we made through travelocity 
that gave us the best price and let us use coupon codes for an even bigger discount. Hertz is not located at Thunder Bay airport and that makes is a bit cheaper because most airport charge a fee to the rental car companies. OK so Hertz in Thunder Bay is not at the Airport but they offer a free shuttle so why not use them :) At around 10.30 PM we arrived at the airport and there was a nice man from Hertz with a sign with my name on it, he helped with the luggage and drove us to the Hertz office (just across the road from the airport).
This Hertz person was very nice and helpful told us what we needed to know and we where of to our hotel quickly.
Yesterday we returned our Rental Car to Hertz. This time we there was a guy hanging in his seat didn’t really say anything and didn’t even respond to the things we had to say about the car. Then another fellow would drive us back to the airport. And this gentleman made it a race to get us to the terminal. It was good that this car had some handles to hold on to because i don’t think that he really knew where the breaks where on this car :( and he also didn’t care about his customers he just sat in the car when we got our luggage out and didn’t say a thing.
Conclusion. if you rent a car at Hertz in Thunder Bay then don’t expect anything when you return the car. To me it seems like the are only interested in you when you pickup your car when you return it they don’t care at all.
For me this means that next time I go to Thunder Bay i will definitely use a different Rental Car company even if it costs double the price!
Written by George on September 4th, 2007 with no comments.
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