Tesco Metro
Tesco Metro
- Tesco Metro offer a smaller, convenience store version of Tesco supermarkets, stocking fresh produce, groceries, baked bread and alcohol, as well as household products and toiletries.
- Supermarkets
- 2 Royal Avenue
- Belfast, Northern Ireland
- BT1 1DA
- 08456 779025
| Price range: |
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| ££ |
20 February 2012
Always packed, long queues, unfriendly staff. Much better places to shop in Belfast City Centre
26 May 2009
This is a Tesco Metro store in a great location. Belfast could do with a good sized supermarket in a good city centre location. It stocks a lot of good food at reasonable or good prices and it has the Tesco wine and alcoholic drinks selection which is generally very good, right in the city centre. For convenience it’s very good.
The building itself is very nice. It may not be the best use of the building itself - as this is one place which would benefit from residents and visitors alike being able to relax in a bar in one section, a deli in another and a nice restaurant in another yet (like Cafe Vaudeville in Arthur Street, another wonderful building). However, as it is a supermarket, it means that residents and visitors get in to see the interior, nicely restored and it’s certainly a very pleasant interior to look at while doing shopping.
Until quite recently, the only down point I have found is the lack of space, especially at the payment counters - it’s all pretty crushed.
A few months ago I ordered a new laptop computer from Tesco Direct (online), opting to collect the computer in this Tesco store. I did this easily. But the computer was not fully working and I wanted to exchange it. I was told in the Tesco Metro store that Tesco have a bizarre system of refunding the full cost of an item being exchanged, after first withdrawing a new full payment for the same amount paid for the broken model. I was told you have to pay twice and then you get back one payment. Anyway, I was told all of this when I first tried to leave back the broken model. Tesco Direct advised me on the phone to bring the broken computer to the store I collected it at. At the store I was told that the 2 payments of around 400 pounds might be avoided if I went back home with the computer and arranged for a free collection from home of the broken model. I was told the first computer would be collected by a Tesco courier at the same time that the new model was brought, both to my home. This turned out to be false - there was no home collection and delivery option for me. When I got home I was told the only thing I could do is return to the same Tesco store, at the time when they had sent out a new model to swap. I was told on the telephone that I didn’t have to pay a second time, as the man said in the Tesco Metro store I would have to if I went through that Tesco Metro store for the exchange.
When I got to the Tesco Metro store the 2nd time, bringing the broken model (again), hoping to collect the new item with no hassle, it was the same man. This man who had seemed strange the first time now seemed determined to stop me getting a working computer. He got very irate, saying I had to pay two times for an exchange. I assured this man that I had been assured on the phone by Tesco Direct that the process was not as he was claiming at all, and that there was no second payment to be made. I was told by phone that (of course) the original full payment (naturally, one expects) was recorded and no further payment was needed now because the original item didn’t fully work.
The lady I spoke to on the phone said I just needed to hand in the old item and I would be given the new item. However, the man at the Tesco Direct desk, which is also the Tesco Metro cigarette counter, refuted that I didn’t need to make a second payment. He told me I needed the card there and then which I paid with originally, in order to make the exchange.
I had asked on the phone before going if I needed the same payment card or any payment card and I was told no and that no further payment at all was relevant. I was told on the phone just to take the receipt which came with the original, broken model, to exchange.
The man in this Tesco Metro store wouldn’t accept this, he started muttering out loud something about “getting a free laptop”, when I paid weeks ago for a broken laptop and hadn’t got any refund, and was trying to pick up an exchanged item which was actually present, behind the counter.
This man started phoning people and talking to people (staff) in an extremely insulting way to me, very loudly so that it seemed even directed at me. I heard him shout in a high pitched voice down the phone, right in front of me as I waited, “is he getting a free laptop?”, repeating this a number of times, he seemed to be laughing at something slightly. It was quite frightening. He seemed to phone a few people and say this. I stopped looking at him or speaking to him as he was very worrying. So I didn’t do any complaining to him, he wasn’t worth it, he didn’t seem rational and I supposed either the people he was speaking to on the phone would help him act in the right way eventually, and come to his senses, or I would have to leave, concluding Tesco as a company are highly, highly dodgy.
Eventually it turned out that the problem was with this man, who seems to be in control of the Tesco Direct business in central Belfast, as well as the Tesco cigarette counter. He seemed eventually and reluctantly to be willing to follow instructions given to him over the phone which were the same as what I had been told on the phone. Finally he stopped talking loudly about his bizarre, wild idea of “getting a free laptop”. He never apologised, but anyone would have seen he was acting anyway so that anyone would know he was not in any mind to apologise for what seemed only like intentional humiliation and causing pain. After this he was hostile, rude and I found him quite frightening. No other staff intervened though he was acting very loudly and was noticed by staff and customers alike.
I didn’t look at him unless I had to to collect the new item which he finally handed over. He checked the original, broken item in front of me, as he had done the first time I visited when he had sent me home.
I won’t be visiting this store again for anything except emergency items, if ever I even do that. It’s very good to have good priced items available in cetnral Belfast, but stores are run by humans, and if humans treat other humans the way I was treated in that shop, the whole benefit of the idea just vanishes more or less completely. There are other Tesco stores to go to for collecting Tesco direct items, and also Spar mini markets and so on for hassle free, insult free, fright free provisions when in the city centre.
25 November 2008
This store is a nightmare for shopping! Typical City Shoppers bustle around, pushing you out of the way, staff are unhelpful and try to brush around your feet whilst you stand in the queue, which is very long! I would recommend this Tesco store if you were out shopping on Royal Avenue and needed a drink or snack, because it feels far too rushed if you plan on doing a weekly shop. Saying that, not a lot of people were walking around the store with trolleys, backing up my advice!
This store stocks an alcoholic beverages area, as well as a wide variety of other goods.
Results of Tesco Metro in Belfast
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