Just venting: Whole Foods complaints

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fresh Market is better

The one near us is terrible. Rotten produce. Ridiculous prices. No selection. I’m repeatedly drawn in only to leave frustrated. They do have a good bakery though.

[Anonymous]

I agree WF went downhill thanks to Amazon. But I recently went back to regularly shopping there because the produce is still way better and more affordable (watch the sales) than HT, Giant and Safeway. Really everywhere has been going downhill for a while in terms of quality, selection and price. It’s really a race to the bottom.

[Anonymous]

I moved away from Capitol Hill a few years ago but stopped at the H St Whole Foods yesterday afternoon because I was nearby. It’s not just the groceries that have gone down but the whole store. Barely anything on the hot bar and the upstairs seating area is just depressing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree WF went downhill thanks to Amazon. But I recently went back to regularly shopping there because the produce is still way better and more affordable (watch the sales) than HT, Giant and Safeway. Really everywhere has been going downhill for a while in terms of quality, selection and price. It’s really a race to the bottom.

Thanks for pointing this out. For the most part I shop at WF for convenience, and Giant for the sales, plus Trader Joe’s. Except for TJ’s, I tend to shop mostly at the same two stores— so I don’t have a perspective on a variety of stores / “everywhere “. OP

[Anonymous]

I have been pleasantly surprised by the organic produce and grass fed meat available at Walmart. They also have a good gluten free selection.

We have been running into the same issues at Whole Foods, plus it’s just too expensive

[Anonymous]

It stinks of fish-overwhelming fishy smell in Vienna WF.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree WF went downhill thanks to Amazon. But I recently went back to regularly shopping there because the produce is still way better and more affordable (watch the sales) than HT, Giant and Safeway. Really everywhere has been going downhill for a while in terms of quality, selection and price. It’s really a race to the bottom.

Thanks for pointing this out. For the most part I shop at WF for convenience, and Giant for the sales, plus Trader Joe’s. Except for TJ’s, I tend to shop mostly at the same two stores— so I don’t have a perspective on a variety of stores / “everywhere “. OP

We do Wegmans for produce. Safeway for everything else. Wegmans' produce seems to be the best but they are so overpriced everywhere else in the store

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My two Whole Foods in the Baltimore suburbs never have the problems people are talking about on here. The biggest complaint I have is that sometimes I can't get the large size container of blueberries.

Maybe the problem is urban Whole Foods, which might be stocked differently. And maybe runs out of food more quickly, so you're left with the last of the produce.

I loved the Harbor East WF when I lived in the area. I’m glad to know that they might still be wonderful. They had excellent shrimp salad, the produce was always fresh, and the associates were always extremely knowledgeable and helpful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just for consideration, the complaints about peaches and mandarins are not really fair. those things are out of season. What did you expect?

Good point. However I’d venture to guess that MOST of the produce available now in grocery stores is out of season— at least locally. So, while I didn’t expect juicy in-season Georgia peaches, I did expect something edible. My expectations, too, had been raised by a neighbor who had mentioned how wonderful the peaches were. Oh well. Fortunately their frozen peaches cook up well, and are fairly priced, so they’ll do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:HUGE complaint here. I returned several amazon purchases to Whole Foods that were scanned and placed into bags. Now I am getting emails from Amazon that they never received the items. I don't have a receipt! I have no recourse because I can't prove I returned the items. Lesson learned. Insist on a receipt.

Did you not get a receipt immediately via email? I haven’t returned anything recently, but when I have, the receipt hits my email before I leave the store. This sounds like a very frustrating situation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I love Whole Foods.

OP if you’re paying for your groceries with cash, you have a right to do that but I think you should expect it to take more time. More customers are happy to be able to buzz around you to the robots than are unhappy to wait to pay cash. That’s just the market.

My only complaint about my Whole Foods is that certain things are often out of stock. But there’s almost always an alternate brand of the same or similar thing so I’m just being picky.

It’s too late for peaches.

I do expect it to take more time — now that I’ve gotten over my shock that not even one of the check-out machines takes cash. And while it’s frustrating, I do get that it’s on me that I’m only getting 2 or 3 things, AND paying cash while the people in front of me have full carts. Still, if enough customers are doing check-outs at the register to have lines extending back through the aisles, it does suck that they don’t open another register. They used to have an additional staffed register by the coffee bar, but it’s not usually open when I’m there.
OP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I moved away from Capitol Hill a few years ago but stopped at the H St Whole Foods yesterday afternoon because I was nearby. It’s not just the groceries that have gone down but the whole store. Barely anything on the hot bar and the upstairs seating area is just depressing.

This varies from store to store. The WF on 7 in Tysons has a horrible hot bar -- not a lot of stuff and it always looks tired and picked over. I wouldn't consider getting anything from it. The hot bar at the WF in Foggy Bottom is great -- I get stuff from it for lunch all the time.

[Anonymous]

For me the main compliant is that the people in the butchers and seafood counters are barely qualified. They used to be quite knowledgeable but now seem to be entirely the vaguely non binary purple haired pierced clique and they know nothing about the meats when I ask questions nor are they capable of doing special cuts or tying up roasts, the way they used to do without questioning in the past. The seafood counter people always botch up requests to cut a large piece of fish into smaller equal portions so I end up with unequal portions or portions so badly cut that I know I can't cook them properly. So I've stopped making these requests.

The actual meat and seafood remain good. But the staffing is very much unreliable. Maybe if they stopped hiring people based on the number of piercings or tattoos or degree of gender fluidity they'd find better staff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just for consideration, the complaints about peaches and mandarins are not really fair. those things are out of season. What did you expect?

Good point. However I’d venture to guess that MOST of the produce available now in grocery stores is out of season— at least locally. So, while I didn’t expect juicy in-season Georgia peaches, I did expect something edible. My expectations, too, had been raised by a neighbor who had mentioned how wonderful the peaches were. Oh well. Fortunately their frozen peaches cook up well, and are fairly priced, so they’ll do.

+1
If they are going to sell it, fruit cannot go from unripe to rotten no matter what the season. That's poor importing or storage or something. If the fruit behaves like that then it is not viable for import or sales. Please tell me somebody knows this.

[Anonymous]

The one in Clarendon has gone way down hill quality-wise and the customer service is non-existent at that location.