My husband does our shopping and the nearest major grocery store is the Coles at Arndale Mall in Springwood. Frustratingly, at least once a month, and lately as often as once a week something we’ve purchased is rotten or rancid. At first I put it up to bad luck, my husband had bought some Lilydale organic chicken breasts, and the next day when I went to cook them for his lunch meals, I found they were well and truly rotten. I checked the use by date, and it was three days into the future, but the stench coming off the chicken was sickening. I was ticked off, but he didn’t want to bother with a return, and I wasn’t up to it, so I let it go and chalked it up to bad luck.
Next time around it was a bottle of Jingli olive oil; the day we bought it, I opened it up and it was noticeably rancid. I was up to taking the oil back, and I got my money back, but had to deal with an annoyingly rude young woman in customer service, who apparently had never heard the word rancid and was unwilling to smell the oil in order to learn the definition.
After that it was produce, pre-packaged vine ripened tomatoes with which I’d never before had an issue; suddenly I was finding at least one with soft fur growing out of the stem. More recently the top of nearly every tomato in the pack has been rotten. I thought that might have been a one off, but two packages in a row now have been full of rot. That isn’t it either, packaged bags of rotten onions or onions absolutely blighted with black mold between the layers. Rotten bulbs of garlic. Today was the kicker though.
Friday afternoon my husband had made a grocery run and one of the items he happened to pick up was a dozen fresh eggs. Today we had a bit of company for brunch and I went to make some Ricotta Buttermilk Pancakes which require four eggs. I pulled the eggs out of the fridge, and the first one I break open it rotten, the yolk is dried to the shell and the whites are cloudy and smell fishy. Feeling lucky I’d found the rotten egg straight away and hadn’t cracked it open into a bowl of good fresh eggs, I cleaned out my bowl and cracked another… same result. Getting a bit pissed at this point I dumped the stinking egg into the sink, washed out my bowl again, and… you guessed it rotten AGAIN. I went through the whole dozen and found only three that weren’t rotten.
This is pretty much my last straw with respect to the place. It’s ridiculous the premium we’re having to pay for food in the first place right now, but to have the food you purchase turn up rotten within a day or two of use is absolute BS. You don’t boost your profits by robbing your customers. Surely there must be some measure of quality control a major chain grocery store should be living up to here in Queensland. I don’t now what’s going on, or even if it’s limited to Coles, but I’d be interested in hearing if other people have had or are having a similar experience. In any case I’m planning to write a nasty letter to Coles, even if they were to replace all the rotten items we’ve bought over time, they can’t replace the time and the fuel it takes to have to run garbage back to the store. In the meantime I think it’s going to wind up being cheaper for us to drive to the Woolworths on Underwood Road instead. It may be further away, but if we’re not wasting $10.00 – $15.00 on rotten food, it should even things out.
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Something’s Rotten At the Springwood Coles : Irrepressible Tangent…
Anyone else regularly finding that grocery purchases from the Coles at Arndale Mall in Springwood are turning up rotten items with increasing frequency?…
Wouldn’t you just shop at The Springwood Woolworths instead of driving to the Underwood one? It’s right across the road from Coles??
I’d email this link to the company,the only way th eproblems will be fixed is if enough shoppers complain (I know,I used to work there)
Shows how often I do the shopping I didn’t even know there was a Woolworths across the road.
when was the last time you went to “Woolworths on Underwood Rd” there has not been a woolorths on underwood for a couple of years now.
Actually there is a newer Woolies there in the complex that contains the Coffee Club & Terry White’s Chemist. I’ve been there as recently as April or so. Admittedly I don’t get out that much though. I had cancer in my pelvic bones that wasn’t diagnosed until early March of this year, but I had slowly lost the ability to walk without assistance over the last two or three years, and my husband has taken on most of the shopping in that time. I have been out with him a few times though, and I know he checks things over as best he can when items are pre-packaged, and I just really find it annoying how frequently he brings home food that ends up inedible.
well thats woolworths is in Kuraby/Underwood and is no where near underwood road it is on the cnr of Logan and Beenleigh road.
Sorry you’re right that’s what I meant, the Underwood Woolworths on Logan Road. As I said I don’t really get out much, and I’ve only lived in the country about 4 years.
Haha! Jacq, Bernie needs to let you out of the house more often.
It’s true, it’s not the cancer… my husband’s afraid I’ll escape
As a follow up to this, I’d complained to Coles directly about the problems with their food stuffs, and the corporate office sent me a letter of apology promising to look into things and gift cards totaling $15.
Do you know what i find really interesting about all this? i work at springwood coles as a supervisor and i heard a little bit about your complaint Jacqueline.
When they told the three of us supervisors working there at the time of the complaint was known, one of the older women couldnt stop crying thinking it was her that you complained about (even though she knew what rancid meant). They had never told us it was a younger woman and the second supervisor who was also older was worrying too because she actually had no idea what rancid meant.
I could say some things about coles, but since i work there i should probably bite my touch. But i think its wrong that coles had made staff feel bad that they didnt know what rancid meant, as a way of making the whole complaint staffs fault. Not every person knows every word in the dictionary.
I am a young lady, and i know what rancid means, but if you were waving that bottle in my face explaining how disgusting it was then im sorry but i wouldnt be sniffing it either.
Wow I’m at least heartened that it seems Coles Corporate talked to staff about the issues with the produce, and I haven’t had any problem with rotten food of late, though my husband is now obsessive about checking packaged tomatoes.
It was indeed a young woman who took my complaint about the oil, and I never waived a bottle of rancid oil in any ones face. I had placed the bottle on the counter and explained that we had just purchased it, and it was rancid. She had the bottle in her hands at that point and said in a rude tone “What”. I do have an American accent so I thought maybe that was the problem and said again a little more slowly that we had just purchased the bottle of oil and it was rancid, she said rudely, I don’t know what you’re saying, what is rancid anyway, and I said sorry if I’m not making myself clear, the oil has gone off, you can smell it if you don’t believe me, to which she just rolled her eyes & called someone else over.
I’m sorry that the main office would attack any of your supervisors over the girl’s behavior as though it was theirs; I wish they could have just identified the rude one, but I was frankly a little too put off to even notice her name tag. I was definitely more upset over the girl’s rudeness, eye rolling and huffing than her lack of vocabulary; though I’m surprised to learn that rancid is apparently such an obscure word. I really don’t think Coles Corporate should have been chastising people for not knowing the word rancid though. The real problem was a rude individual asked to perform customer service and what I suspect was bad handling of produce and meat either within the store, or more likely during transport. Who knows what the issue with the oil was all about, maybe the shelved stock hadn’t been turned over quickly enough and the bottle wasn’t rotated out of stock before it became rancid.
I don’t know how the corporate office presented the whole issue, but it’s odd to me that someone who hadn’t been rude to a customer was crying uncontrollably over the complaint. I thought I had been clear about the issue being a rude staff member and repeated problems with our being sold rotten food; it’s a shame they shifted the issue to that of a vocabulary lesson.
Yeh when people complain via email to management in victoria they always seem to respond. the one great thing that you should complain about to them too is that we never have enough staff
i am aware that there was a time when there were rotten eggs, we had quite a few returned. i had never come across it before that, but for that one week the eggs stank even before you broke them open. one thing that is good about springwood is that we at least have eggs. i shop at coles garden city and 90% of the time they do not have any eggs on the shelf.
I am a little surprised about the produce story. i know little while after the prices of bananas came down that we had a few items that seemed to come back rotten, avocado seems to be the one i remember most. it must have been the drought. i can assure you that i haven’t had anything returned rotten in ages.
I have to admit i’m kind of curious who this rude young lady is that you’re talking about, but i guess i will just have my suspicions. I’m sorry that she was so rude about it. Do you think that we have good customer service otherwise?
no, no one attacked the staff haha they just said how it was and wondered who it was and some people were just sensitive about it. i think management were missing the main point of the complaint, im not really sure.
So you still shop at coles springwood? i suppose you would get the same thing in all the grocery stores yes?
Yes we’re back as Coles customers. I was actually writing in my blog to see if the problem was a Coles problem or whether it was just produce across Queensland that was suffering for some reason, but things became more focused on my lack of knowledge of the shops in the area and local geography
We went a few times to the Super IGA on Underwood Road, and landed some red and green capsicum that looked perfect on the outside but were absolutely festering with mold on the inside and a couple of rotten avacados, and at Woolworths we got some flour that was infested with those little moths and rancid nuts so maybe it’s more a staffing issue all around.
For the most part we’re now getting our produce from Rochedale Market, but we’ve come back to Coles for the things we can’t get there. My husband is still the main shopper and he just doesn’t like Woolworths. I wasn’t able to walk much before, but since my chemo ended the fractured bones in my pelvis have started to heal and now I go shopping with him about once a week, and I’ve always been better at spotting suspect items in the store, but I haven’t really noticed much that’s been off lately at Coles (with the exception of one very bad potato one day, but you’d have had to have been incapable of smell to accidentally take that home). As for the Coles staff, that young lady was the only person I’d ever had a problem with. Most of my interactions with staff have been good, and certainly the cashiers are always friendly and nice. I’ll have to send another email to Coles corporate I guess letting them know that things have got better, but you seem a little short handed.
Thanks for comments on here, it’s really good to hear from someone who works at the store and can give a better idea of what goes on. I also appreciate that you actually care about what goes on in your store. If I ever have a problem again, I’ll ask for one of the supervisors.
haha yes i noticed that people were not really commenting on your story. but i found it interesting when i found your article because i had only typed in ‘springwood coles address’ in google and your article was the first thing thaqt popped up!
hmm yes we have had the phase of the flour problem also
haha sadly if you asked that lady about a refund on the oil and she was in kiosk then she would’ve been a supervisor. If its over 20$ then we have to clarify with a manager on the floor first.
anyways im glad i couldve been of help
Just stumbled upon this.
I had the same problem at Coles Ormeau for a period of time. Nearly everything I purchased was off well before the due date.
For most part, I’d put it down to lack of staff not being able to get new deliveries in to appropiate storage in time. Chocolate was melted, milk was off a week before the due date, frozen meals appeared defrosted then refrozen and so on, so obvious that it was left in the sun/not refrigerated.
This would have been around the same time or a tad earlier than your original blog and has since been resolved as well.
Thanks for your reply. I was really curious as to whether it was our bad luck, or an ongoing problem for Aussies in the area. I appreciate your taking the time to comment, and happy that it was sorted for us both.
Sandy…
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