Tesco

It's fine but constantly plagued by poor stock or weird stocking decisions.

For example, chicken breasts. Single people are going to want two chicken breasts. They're almost never available in that size because too few are stocked in the fridge. So you can get four or eight instead -- if you want to have to throw them away because you're not eating for a family.

Other products get listed and delisted seemingly at random and often in favour of poor quality Tesco own brand substitutes. The vegetarian section is a prime culprit for this. At one point vegetarian products were removed completely in favour of burgers(!?!). More recently, the available Quorn products have shrunk to favour Tesco stuff. The same with chocolate: why buy Lindt when you can buy Tesco's own. And tea. Branded Assam? Good gracious no, we want you to buy Tesco's (bad) Assam.

Fresh fruit and veg stock is often very poorly stocked with no indication that anyone is in a hurry to fill up the empty shelves. This doesn't appear to be a supply shortage, just a failure to get stock from the back and put it somewhere people can actually buy it with any sense of urgency.

I don't know how much stocking decisions are managed by the store and how much by Tesco centrally, but it is weird and extremely irritating.

On the store design side of things, whoever designed the new permanent store made the truly baffling decision to make half the self service checkouts mini-sized, so that if you have a lot of shopping you either have to wait for the larger ones to be available, or use the tiny ones and watch your bag fall off the scales because the scales aren't big enough. This was a well-used, major supermarket before the move. What were they expecting? For half the clientele magically to turn into convenience shoppers who needed smaller tills?

Very disappointing. No self service cash tills. No toilets. Stock position is dismal. No Finest baby potatoes, No cashews & raisins. Limited range of dried fruits (250)g. No Tesco white vinegar. All things that were available in the temporary store.

Exceptionally poor store. Poorly laid out, poor choice of stock but worst of all appalling queue lengths because not enough tills. Staff just don’t care. This store was meant to be a step up from its temporary predecessor but it’s so much worse I’ve stopped shopping there.

very disappointed with this store,very few tills
open,self check out tills are card only,long queue
at check outs.Saw a few enraged customers
today abandon their shopping and leave.
Even the staff have'nt a good word to say about
the store,I think the store is okay just badly run.
Back to Sainsburys dog kennel hill I think.

I am one of the building team on the Northernrn Line extension (Battersea through Nine Elm to Kennington station). I have been in this yproject now for 4 years but should be finishing within a year.
I must highly praise your Kennington lane staff. They are amazing.........most especially the “Costomer service depth and the canteen section”. Nothing can be absolutely perfect but it is nice to know that some staff just go that extra mile to try. The canteen staff are always polite, very clean and helpful (with a smile).
I wish them luck and hope they keep it up. Mike Williams

This branch is by far the worst supermarket I ever been to. Appalling service, poorly stocked, and cues are rarely shorter then 10 minutes to get to the front.