Here’s a letter that I just whipped out to Meijer
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Hello,

I am writing with a complaint from my recent shopping visit to Meijer store 224 (Marburg Ave Cincinnati OH) on Wednesday night around 6:30 p.m.

I came shopping with my entire family. Because I only needed to get a few things, I figured it was safe to bring everyone. Normally if I was doing a week’s worth of shopping I may have left my small children at home.

I quickly got my items and proceeded to the check out area. There were only 3 “regular” checkout lanes open, compared to 8 or so of the self checkout lanes. I understand that you probably are trying to save on paying more cashiers, and in general I applaud that. But this evening I had several coupons with my order, and I find that the self checkout machines always seem to “beep” on coupons (even though I’ve purchased the correct products in the appropriate amounts). These “beep”ings require a cashier override and since there is typically only 1 cashier for all of the self-checkouts, it manages to take approximately forever.

So I got in a regular lane. There were 2 people in front of me and I waited my turn. As the belt space opened up, I put my items on and waited. The gentleman in front of me was apparently having a problem. He bought 2 premade sub sandwiches and was arguing that they were supposed to be ringing up Buy 1 Get 1 Free. The cashier made 3 calls to various departments, eventually figuring out that he was correct, while I waited. But then this price correction apparently required a manager override. I waited. She called to customer service to request an override. I waited. As I waited, the gentleman requested 2 packs of cigarettes. The customer service manager apparently forgot about us, so while I waited, the cashier called again. The manager came over and put her code in and finally it was my turn.

The cashier scanned my items. The Cheerios that I bought did not ring up with the correct price, but eventually the cashier put in the correct (3/$5) price as an override. I gave her my coupons, and to my amazement, only 1 of them beeped! She verified that I had (of course) bought the right items in the correct amounts, and put in the coupon. I paid for my items, but of course my checkout (Catalina) coupon did not print out.

This week at my store, Meijer is offering a Buy 15 participating General Mills / Betty Crocker products, get a checkout coupon for 120 Box Tops for Education. Since it didn’t work, I trekked up to customer service where I waited (again) for my turn. Finally it came to be my turn and I explained my predicament to the gentleman working at the desk. He didn’t really have any idea what to do, so I suggested that in past times when these types of things have not worked (which sadly is all too frequent), the CS representative would just scan one of my items 15 times and the coupon prints out. He tried that with a variety of items that I had bought (all listed as “participating” items), but no coupon printed out. Finally I suggested that we try it at a regular lane. We went over there and finally! it worked and printed out my coupon.

I wished him well and left the store. All in all, from the moment I got in line to check out, to the moment when I was finally able to leave the store, it took 43 minutes.

Needless to say, this is unacceptable, and makes me much more likely to do my future shopping at Kroger or Bigg’s (especially since there are 6 Krogers that are convenient to me compared to the one Meijer store)

Thank you for reading this

Dan Miller
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Or actually that’s the letter I wanted to write to Meijer. Unfortunately, Meijer apparently only cares about the first 1400 characters of your experience. So THIS is the letter I actually sent to them.
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Hello,

I am writing with a complaint from my recent shopping visit to Meijer store 224 (Marburg Ave Cincinnati OH) on Wednesday night around 6:30 p.m.

Under the impression that you would be interested in my poor experience last night in the hopes that it would help you improve your customer experience, I wrote a detailed letter explaining my issues.

However, I am limited to 1400 characters. If you are interested in improving your store’s customer service, I would be happy to send you the whole detail.

The short answer is that due to various Meijer issues (price mistakes, coupon beeping, checkout coupons failing to print, etc) it took me 43 minutes (no exaggeration) from the time I went to check out until the time that I was finally able to leave the store.

Needless to say, this is unacceptable, and makes me much more likely to do my future shopping at Kroger or Bigg’s (especially since there are 6 Krogers that are convenient to me compared to the one Meijer store)

Thank you for reading this

Dan Miller