Morrisons > Reviews (12)

Mainly due to the wide range of goods for sale, I prefer to shop at my local Tesco. However as my nearest Tesco is 5 miles away, and my nearest Morrisons is only 2 miles, I tend to shop once a week at Tesco, on Tuesdays, and top up from Morrisons if necessary.

My local Morrisons used to be a Safeways until recently. Safeways range of goods wasn't as wide as my local Tesco, but Morrisons stock even less of the brands I prefer, in the same amount of space.

Another thing I find annoying is that Morrisons seem to be on an economy drive with the number of carrier bags they want customers to use. I don't want the smell of things like toiletries mixed with my food, or any blood that might leak from fresh meat getting on other things, especially those I am planning to eat raw. Even if I wasn't fussy about such things, the allocation given by the cashier, before the goods are scanned, is often inadequate. Asking for more slows the check out process down.

Comparing this to my experience at Tesco, the bags are either packed for the customer by an assistant who uses their common sense, eg packs the frozen foods together, or the customer can pack their own shopping into any reasonable number of carrier bags that are left at the end of the checkout.

My Tesco encourage customers to bring back their old torn carrier bags for recycling, which I do. It is very easy to put them in the container provided, when I first arrive at the store, as it is left near the entrance. I recycle untorn supermarket carrier bags as bin liners.

I sent my hubby to Morrisons early this morning, to avoid most of the Saturday crowds, to get a small amount of food for us.

After the food had been scanned, he tried to use his credit card to pay, as he usually does. The cashier said the computer wouldn't accept it, and asked him to get cash. As he didn't want to pay the interest on a cash withdrawal on a credit card, he refused. The cashier called for a supervisor, who confirmed that the credit card couldn't be accepted, and so he left without any groceries. He said that he felt as if they had treated him like a criminal.

He then went to get some petrol at Morrisons own petrol station, right next to the main supermarket. He filled up, took his credit card to the cashier, typed in his PIN, and the transaction was carried out with the usual ease.

He went back into the supermarket, found the same supervisor and showed her the receipt from the petrol station. The groceries, including fresh meat and frozen food, which the supervisor had said would be put back on the shelf, hadn't yet been at that time, which was a little worrying. He waited while she opened up another till and re-scanned the items. Again the credit card was not accepted. Yes, it was the same one that he had used in their petrol station. The supervisor said that the supermarket was on a different system to the petrol station, and they couldn't accept it.

He told me that he briefly thought about asking if they could take the food over to the petrol station to be scanned, but decided his blood pressure couldn't take any more.

He then came back home, and showed me the till print outs to prove that he had tried to do the shopping. We then both went to Tesco.

I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly we did our shopping and got through the checkout at such a busy time for the store. We took a different bankcard with us, in case it was needed, but it wasn't. The credit card that Morrisons refused was accepted by the Tesco system.

My conclusion is that it is easier and quicker to travel the extra miles to Tesco to do my supermarket shopping, than to go to Morrisons.

The Essex supermarkets I am talking about are Morrisons, Canvey, and Tesco, Pitsea.