[...]Something’s Rotten At the Springwood Coles « Irrepressible Tangent[...]…

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.