When I was living in KL, I didn’t use to do my grocery shopping in Carrefour as I found the quality of their products rather lacking and not as fresh as some other grocery stores. Unfortunately, my opinion of Carrefour was confirmed when I headed to Carrefour Tropicana City Mall last weekend for some groceries. Read on for our unpleasant experience at Carrefour Tropicana City Mall.

Not Fresh Products at Carrefour

I generally don’t like to make comparisons between grocery stores in Singapore and Malaysia but when I saw the state of some of the dry goods in Carrefour, I couldn’t help making that comparison in my mind. The Carrefour store in Singapore carries fresh and delicious-looking quality products while the dry goods I was looking at in Carrefour looked really bad. The onions looked like they were rotting with sandflies buzzing around them and I actually saw packets of dry chillies that were starting to mould. Needless to say, that cut my grocery shopping list much shorter!

Higher Prices At Carrefour Tropicana City Mall

In general, we found the prices at this particular Carrefour higher than other similar Carrefours. A box of Sunsweet prunes we were looking at was RM9 compared to only RM7 to RM8 in other Carrefour stores. Why are similar products priced higher in this store? Is it because it services the Damansara area and hence assumes people in that area have higher income levels? As a hypermarket, one would think that prices will remain controlled all across the country!

Terrible Service At Carrefour Tropicana City Mall

The unpleasant experience carried all the way to the check-out counters where we were served by inept cashiers who could not speak English or Malay well and screwed up the person’s transaction ahead of us, making the wait terribly long. While we were waiting in the queue, we saw a sign that promised a mystery gift for every shopper who brought their own eco-bag to the store. As we had our own bag, we filled it with our groceries and asked the cashier about the gift to which she rudely said it was for purchases above RM100. If that’s the case, please clearly state it on the sign as the sign had absolutely no indication of such a condition.

Purchases above RM30 from Carrefour entitles the person to free parking. When sis went to claim our free parking, the lady behind the counter told her it would only be valid for the first hour. However, when we went to pay our parking fee, a sign on the machine clearly stated that parking on a weekend was per entry and not hourly – which means we should have gotten our free parking. However, because the lady did not validate our ticket, we ended up paying RM2 for parking which was totally against the parking policy Carrefour had.

It was a very unpleasant shopping experience and I personally thought it a pity that a multinational company like Carrefour had allowed itself to degenerate that way. It will not cost much more to ensure good quality products are sold, to remove any rotting products and to train a team of good staff to serve your customers. We are, after all, paying customers and should be entitled to a good level of service.