Coles store slammed as a 'dump' - but is there a good reason?
A concerned shopper has taken to social media to slam a Victorian Coles for what they saw as a lack of in-store cleanliness.
The customer posted a captioned video to Coles’s official Facebook page.
“This Coles is a dump,” the video says.
The five second video, tagged at Coles Victoria Gardens in Richmond, shows the customer’s point of view walking down the store’s freezer aisle.
In the footage, collapsed cardboard boxes, plastic scraps and scrunched plastic bags can be seen on the floor across the aisle. In the video’s background, stock boxes are stacked near the fridge doors.
Other customers are shown standing behind the piles of boxes and looking in the refrigerators.
“I’m guessing safety for customers and team members went out the window in this store,” the customer wrote in their post.
A person commenting on the post suggested that the store’s team may have been in the process of stocking the shelves.
“There’s a limited amount of time to get things on the shelf, maybe they haven’t finished yet,” she said.
The woman said she used to be a shelf re-stocker and could relate.
“Then you would know that you don’t leave rubbish and cardboard all over the floor when the store is open,” the original poster replied.
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Coles says lockdown partly to blame for mess
A Coles spokesperson has confirmed to Yahoo News Australia that they have shared the video with the store’s manager.
The spokesperson also commented that Victoria’s lockdowns may have had a part to play in the mess seen in the video shared by the customer.
“With Victoria in lockdown, we’ve seen increased demand for groceries as more people cook at home, so our team members are working extremely hard to ensure we maintain well stocked shelves,” the spokesperson said.
“This is often done in the evenings or overnight to have minimal impact on customers."
This isn’t the first time a Coles store has come under fire, with a customer blasting the grocer on social media after a wheel stopper pulled off a car’s bumper in a Coles car park.
Coles has also criticised recently for Click and Collect delivery which arrived missing an extensive number of items.
Coles store had Covid-19 contact 5 days before ‘dump’ video
The Coles store that was dubbed a "dump" by a concerned customer was exposed to Covid-19 just five days prior to the customer’s video complaint.
The Victoria Gardens Coles in Richmond was listed on the Coles website as having a Covid-19 infected customer attend the store between 12.30pm and 1.05pm last Monday.
The supermarket, which is in Victoria Gardens Shopping Centre, is listed on Coles’s ‘Shop Safe’ hub as experiencing "frequent cleaning and sanitisation".
“Coles standard cleaning procedures comply with the Federal Government’s Covid-19 Hygiene Practices for Supermarkets and frequent cleaning and sanitisation,” the website reads.
“We’re working closely with the Department of Health to ensure the most effective protection for both you and our team members in our stores during the Covid-19 situation.”
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