Customer service has dropped at the 74th Street location
Saturday, October 11, 2008
I've regularly shopped here for 15 years and am accustomed to the extremely heavy crowds and the understandable waits in busy periods. Mostly the checkout clerks here are very nice. The folks who run the coffee bean area are great. So are most of the deli clerks except a hyper angry one I encountered in Fall 07. However, Fairway's processes and customer service seem to be continually dropping over the last year or so. People should not have to struggle to understand Fairway's changing checkout line procedures (one line used to feed into each lane. now apparently they have one for each side of the lane). And when you bring it to the attention of the management, they shouldn't turn their back and walk away.
The Express line still seems to work the old way and run fairly well. But I'm not interested in getting into fights with other customers over something so easy to correct (such as signs or routing customers as Whole Foods does).
So I'll take my business next door to Citarella's or down the street to Whole Foods or online to Fresh Direct. The feeling you get when shopping at Fairway is they're large and busy and they do not remotely care if you shop there or not. In 2008, too many other stores have their act together for an Upper West Side staple to not have something as major as checkout lanes running like clockwork.
Pros: good variety. good turnover with produce and other perishables.
Cons: heavy crowds, displays that make it tough to navigate, poor cooling for dairy area freshness