Dan C.
Yelp
I used to be a very loyal customer of the Kerrville H-E-B. The attractiveness of finding the lowest prices in town coupled with a better selection of products was compelling.
But ...
Sometime roughly eight years ago, your store had one of the finest selections of pasta products I had ever seen. It made the idea of grocery shopping a no-brainer for someone trying to decide where to shop. But that selection has since been reduced by almost 50 percent. And that reduction occurred before the economy took a nosedive, causing many other product discontinuations.
But nosedive, the economy indeed did. And the result has been that people have less money to spend, and spend it more judiciously. So stores stock less product, since sales are down. That's not your fault, and I know that. But it is still annoying. And with all the other problems I have encountered from your store, I now have a new policy that stems directly from your reduced inventory levels and product line eliminations.
I try to consolidate my shopping into a single trip. I no longer buy substitute items from you when you see fit to allow the items I want, to run out of stock. If it is not on the shelf, I no longer just take a similar product. Now you lose the sale altogether, as I make a note of the item and purchase it from your competitors instead.
Since you have discontinued the McCormick seasoning called ground Savory, I have listed all the herbs and spices I can get someplace else, and I buy them ALL there now instead of at H-E-B.
You dropped an excellent product in an economical size by discontinuing Herb-Ox bouillon cubes (25/can) and replaced it with two alternatives that are both inferior and very heavily over-priced. One of the substitutes is the same brand in a much-reduced quantity, but at an exorbitant price. Now, to get the equivalent of 25 servings I would have to pay over four times as much as I should. You do offer another brand, but it (as are most bouillon products) is heavily laced with added MSG. Monosodium glutimate makes people sick, and the lack of it in the superior Herb-Ox product makes it an easy choice. Except when you cut the quantity several times and then raise the price in the bargain. I no longer buy bouillon from you.
Since you have apparently discontinued Mama Rosa's supreme pizzas, I no longer buy my pizzas at your store, either. All my pizza purchases are made at your primary competitor.
The last three consecutive times I shopped at your store, your fresh bread department had no Hill Country Fare rye bread on the shelf. I typically bought a loaf every week, along with any other bread purchases I needed for the week. But since you have apparently discontinued my favorite, I will make ALL my bread purchases elsewhere now.
Your produce department is a meager substitute for what it used to be. The customer can no longer get the very helpful "spring mix" of various otherwise rather expensive items to spruce up a tossed salad. There are also no fresh bean sprouts in a reasonably sized package. Now if you want fresh bean sprouts, you must buy a ludicrously large package (if you have any of them at all), guaranteeing that a substantial percentage of the product will spoil and go to waste. To top it off, you have since also discontinued the canned bean sprouts that we used to get as a substitute for the fresh product. I now buy all my bean sprouts regularly from your competitors. Overall vegetable quality is down, and the selection is WAY down.
After the horrendous news item on your egg supplier last year, we no longer purchase any eggs from you. That special was literally sickening to watch, but I am grateful for them airing it, so I can spend all my egg-purchase dollars elsewhere now.
Your meat market's ground beef has been sold in fictitious percentages, which I have documented on two separate occasions. Both times it was marked as 80/20, but the actual ratio of beef to fat was right at 50/50. This I determined each time by frying out exactly one pound and weighing the remaining drained beef. I had already decided that I could no longer rationalize buying ground beef from you at that point, but some that I already had on hand firmly decided the issue, when a foreign object in the beef broke one of my teeth. That's right, it broke a tooth. One tooth was cracked and is completely destroyed, and the facing tooth in my jaw is weakened to the point that it is useless.
And milk is another story, altogether. A gallon of milk I purchased from you last year was the last one I will ever buy from you, as it was laced with something we still have not yet identified. With that milk you darn near poisoned my three-year-old grandson. We still have not decided whether or not to sue you for damages.
Your downgrading of customer service and product availability, your false advertising, and health and safety issues are more than enough to send me and my "shopping experience" to your competitors.
