The new Asda at Eastlands certainly won over our shopper this week. It supplied the cheapest full basket at £37.20 and would have been 20p cheaper if its regular eight-rasher pack of bacon had been stocked. Inside an amazing range of food and non food items was on offer, while outside Asda had even given the old gasometer a makeover and plastered it with an enormous Asda ad. Only five out of stocks were notched up this week. These included Tesco with no 500g packs of pasta shells for the second week running, and Somerfield, Chelmsford, with no 320g Dolmio pasta sauce because a bogof on larger jars had left no room for it. Not enough checkouts were open at Safeway to cope with how busy the store was, but staff compensated by helping to load our shopper's car without being asked. However the feelgood factor vanished once a pricing error came to light showing our shopper was charged for Pembroke potatoes instead of Jersey Royals which were 5p cheaper. Sainsbury at Sunderland only had 11 out of 24 checkouts open, and two checkout lights were not on to show they were open for business. In spite of all the checkouts being open at Morrisons there were still big queues and congested aisles compounded the problem. Leaking freezers, dirty floors and blocked aisles were enough to put our shopper off at Sainsbury, Newton Abbot. Aisles were also blocked at Somerfield, Chelmsford, and while the checkout assistant automatically packed all the goods, it didn't appear to be done willingly. Nor was our shopper impressed by the scruffy male staff whose shirts were all untucked. In contrast, Somerfield at Haslemere provided an easy shop, but there was no offer to help pack the shopping. {{GROCER 33 }}

Topics