Iceland.
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History.
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Iceland first opened its doors in 1970 when Malcolm Walker raised £60 to pay one months rent to start his idea in motion. The doors first opened to the first Iceland branch in Oswestry, Shropshire in November 1970. Although his venture Malcolm Walker continued working in his day job at Woolworths for several years. Iceland really took off though when Malcolm Walker was able to devote all his time to his project after being fired from his day job in Woolworths in 1975. The original concept of Iceland was to sell loose frozen food at affordable prices, however they decided to progress from this idea in 1978 when they opened there first purpose-built freezer centre in Stretford, Manchester. This was followed in 1979 by another purpose-built freezer centre and head office being built in Deeside and the head office has remained based there ever since. By the early 1980, Iceland was currently running 37 stores and continued to expand rapidly. By 1996, Iceland had 752 stores nationwide and was producing its own home branded products.

Sadly, in 2001, Iceland hit bad times and even when taken over by a new company failed to pull itself out of the downwards spiral. More investors came in, in 2005 new measures were put in place in an effort to save the stores from closing, and by 2006 things were starting to improve. This came at a cost though as they closed there internet shopping facilities, had massive job cuts and had to fully restructure the product ranges stocked as well as slash all there major overheads.

What Iceland Sells.
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Iceland sells a very large range of frozen foods from pies, pastries, deserts, frozen vegetables, pizza's, party foods, meats and oreintal foods. They also sell a selected range on refridgerated foods as well as houshold goods, tinned foods, pet foods, confectionary sauces and much more although most of thiese are the main brand names or Iceland home brand goods. In some stores you can also view and purchase freezers and refridgerators, although this feature is not available in all there stores.

The Newport Stores.
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In Newport, we have four main Iceland stores three of which are extremely close to City Centre and two on opposite sides of the road to each other. Silly I know but that Iceland for you. Only two of the stores in Newport actually sell the appliance ranges you can find in Iceland and the two stores close together actually boasts different features. The one has mainly refrigerated foods, tins, dried goods, bread, household goods and more and offers quite a good range of products. The other offers mainly frozen goods however, they do have a limited selection of other grocery goods.

The Iceland store I have chosen to review is the one located in Clarence place just off the main City Centre and is the branch I always visit due to distance from my home and parking, as there are no car parks for the Iceland customers in the two City Centre stores.

Store Location.
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Unit 307,
3/8 Clarence Place,
Newport,
Gwent,
Wales,
NP19 7AA

Telephone Number: 01633 267216
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Parking Facilities.
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Before I talk about Iceland's parking facilities I would like to mention that Iceland do offer free home delivery on your shopping when you spend £25 or more in store however, this is not a feature I choose to use as I am only able to shop at Iceland when I am with my Partner in the car and therefore find it more convenient to take my shopping home with me.

This branch of Iceland does have its own private customer car park, however it is located off the main road at the rear of the store and is about three minutes walk away from the entrance. I know what you are thinking, that's not bad really but the worst is yet to come as it is a far cry from being a safe, secure place to leave your car and is in no way customer friendly. There are many problems with this car park all of which are clearly visible as soon as you drive in and try to park.

1. The car park is located underneath a pay and display multi-storey car park and is restricted from receiving hardly any natural light. What is the problem with that I hear you say, well a great deal really, when you realise that it gets dark early now and this car park has no other form of lighting in it at all.

2. You have to enter the car park through a slip road and this can only be done from one way on the main Clarence place road. You then have to go all around the back lanes to get back to the main road when you have finished at Iceland, as the car park is located in a one way back alley system.

3. There are no visible marking to show the parking spaces and therefore people just park anywhere. This is not helped by the fact that even if everybody did park correctly there is still only enough room for ten cars in the car park at one time and there is no other parking facilities close at hand as the pay and display car park is for Clarence House office users only.

4. Iceland seem to have chosen not to keep an eye on the maintenance of the car park as the floor is covered with broken glass, the walls are covered with obscene wording and this visit there was even a dirty old mattress taking up one of the limited parking spaces.

The car park is clearly sign posted as the private customer car park for Iceland yet they have chosen to leave it in the state it is in, not a good start to anybodies shopping experience.

The Trolley's
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The Iceland store has only 13 trolleys to it name and they have stores them close to the exit rather than the entrance of the store. This makes it very difficult to get a trolley before you even begin to shop as you have to go through the checkout to collect a trolley and than back through the checkouts the wrong way to begin shopping. This is an absolute nightmare when they are busy and have all three checkouts open as it makes it virtually impossible to get a trolley. To make matters even worst Iceland have opted for the trolley with a tall bar system to prevent you taking there trolley's through there entrance and exit doors, so you cannot even do that to avoid going through a busy checkout the wrong way with an empty trolley.
This is one of the main reasons I always go to this store at 9am as soon as they open there doors to avoid this and the many other problems this store has for its customers to battle through. The fact that you cannot get your shopping to the car with a trolley is another major problem with this Iceland store as you are sometimes left to have to make three journeys full of shopping bags just to load your shopping in your car. It is stupid really, when you consider 99% of the other Iceland stores nationally use the pound coin trolley cash deposit system.

The Store Itself.
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Although the second largest Iceland store in Newport, space is a real issue in this store due to the way they have tried expanding there non-frozen range and displayed these goods. The aisles in this store are so narrow that you have to struggle just to get past on trolley in an aisle and if you have a trolley as well you cannot pass only wait until you get to the aisle end where this is just enough room for two trolley's to pass each other.

This is made even worse as Iceland have placed large baskets around the limited floor space with special offers in them and if it was not bad enough before for space this makes it even worse as you can only just get passed these displays with a trolley. During my visit on more than one occasion I saw one of there pyramid floor displays of good come crashing down as a trolley struggled past. The cherry on the cake to all this though is the fact that the staff them proceed to block the limited free aisle space with there stock trucks and you soon find yourself in a trolley traffic jam whilst they finish stocking there shelves.

On saying this though I will say the store itself is very clean and the shelves are always well stocked, but at the cost of a nightmare shopping experience in my opinion. Another problem with this store, is that they never have enough checkouts open and this then causes the asiles to block with the checkout queues as well. If there are more than two people at the tills here you find the aisle is completely blocked. This is made worse by the fact that this store only has three checkouts anyway and when its busy, it is an absolute bightmare to try and do your shopping. Iceland really do need to sort this matter out and soon as at this rate they will soon find themselves closing down for health and safety reasons.

The Staff.
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The staff in this store is not the brightest bunch in my opinion and really could use some customer relations and safety training. There is never enough staff on the checkouts. You regularly see a member of staff strolling around the store looking into thin air, as they have nothing better to do. They block the aisle with there stock trucks and do not care if there customers are left waiting behind them they do not move until they have finished. The once friendly well presented staff with there uniforms has gone. You are greeted at the checkout with a grunt from a young boy in a bright blue T-shirt, no uniform or name badge to enable you to recognise him as a staff member, if it was not for the fact that he was sitting on the checkout you would not have a clue he worked for Iceland.

The New Pricing System.
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As I am sure you are all aware Iceland changed its pricing system around six months ago, there reason being that the new system of pricing was much easier for the customer to understand and easier for the staff. For those of you who did not know this, gone is the days when items were 99p, £1.29, £1.49 and so on. New Iceland clearly prices items for example as £1, £1.50, £2, £3 and so on and there meal deals are now two for £2 of two for £3 and so on.

At first you think great and what great value they offer, I know I did. The one day it finally stuck me that we are actually not getting such a good deal as customers after all. When you consider that most of the products were previously 99p have now been increased in price to £1 and items priced from £1.29-£1.49 are now all priced at £1.50 Iceland are actually pushing a good profit from us. I know what your thinking, 1p here and 1p there is nothing but look at it another way for example if you have 50 items in your trolley at Iceland that shopping is now costing you a minimum of 50p more than it did before the clear pricing system. Another way to look at it, as some of the items have increased in price by more than a 1p is, if Iceland sells 1 million items through its checkouts each day they are making an additional pure profit of a minimum of £10,000.00 daily from this. Not such a good clear pricing system after all in my opinion, more likes another way to make easy money from the customers without them actually really noticing.

Do not get me wrong I do like Iceland as they do have some good deals on offer on occasions, but I find that I am now visiting them less and less. Either you fight to do your shopping and struggle to the car with it, or as there non-frozen stock is slowly being decreased more and more to make room for seasonal goods you cannot even get all the shopping you wanted. Sort it out Iceland, what happened to your good old days and value for money.

For those who are interested Iceland do have a web site however it no longer offers its customers internet shopping. Instead they now sell appliance and many other elctrical good online as well as instore and you can view all there instore offers online to. The web address is http://www.iceland.co.uk.