Hy-Vee: Where There's a Helpful Credit Card Skimmer in Every Point of Sale Terminal

[Urbandale2013]

In my opinion, HyVee went away from what made them a great store. Their customer service has went to **** and when they rolled out the Market Grills, they bastardized their delis and that drove a lot of their older clientele away. Honestly, its hard to go into a HyVee and point out anything that they do well. The "new" store in Urbandale is their standard large market concept and that store absolutely sucks to shop.

Urbandale is better than some others. Waukee is horrendous. Urbandales biggest problem was the store manager that recently left. He was really good at getting better numbers but he was an awful manager. You saw a ton of turnover in the management roles. That turnover has led to turnover in the lower roles too. You are right that the customer service has gone downhill. I think part of the problem was when they went to official uniforms. As small of a change that was it removed the little bit of flexibility that employees had. I think before they had employees who felt they were part of the company who now feel like corporate drones.

The problem is what are your options. I won’t shop at Fareway because of their insistence on bringing the cart out. There are a couple of other things too. Price Chopper is worse than HyVee. Aldi is cheap and basic but doesn’t have the options I want. Target is probably ok but nothing great. I won’t shop at Wal Mart for various reasons.

 

[cyclonespiker33]

I know a place in Des Moines where you take your bags of cans and all you have to do is drop them off and they give you $12 a bag, and a new bag for every bag of cans you drop off. It takes a matter of minutes, and I never have to touch a can. I've already said too much...

Oh, you mean K & B Redemption Center on NE Broadway Ave in Des Moines?

 

[wxman1]

I know a place in Des Moines where you take your bags of cans and all you have to do is drop them off and they give you $12 a bag, and a new bag for every bag of cans you drop off. It takes a matter of minutes, and I never have to touch a can. I've already said too much...

Blink twice if you are being held against your will.

 

[BillBrasky4Cy]

Urbandale is better than some others. Waukee is horrendous. Urbandales biggest problem was the store manager that recently left. He was really good at getting better numbers but he was an awful manager. You saw a ton of turnover in the management roles. That turnover has led to turnover in the lower roles too. You are right that the customer service has gone downhill. I think part of the problem was when they went to official uniforms. As small of a change that was it removed the little bit of flexibility that employees had. I think before they had employees who felt they were part of the company who now feel like corporate drones.

The problem is what are your options. I won’t shop at Fareway because of their insistence on bringing the cart out. There are a couple of other things too. Price Chopper is worse than HyVee. Aldi is cheap and basic but doesn’t have the options I want. Target is probably ok but nothing great. I won’t shop at Wal Mart for various reasons.

I always said that i would NEVER shop Wal-Mart for groceries but I just can't ignore the savings. The beautiful part is that we place our order online and just go and do their curbside pickup. I never have to step foot in the store and I'm saving a lot of cash.

 

[flynnhicks03]

Oh, you mean K & B Redemption Center on NE Broadway Ave in Des Moines?

 

[Remo Gaggi]

Seriously considering paying with cash from now on.

 

[cyclonespiker33]

I always said that i would NEVER shop Wal-Mart for groceries but I just can't ignore the savings. The beautiful part is that we place our order online and just go and do their curbside pickup. I never have to step foot in the store and I'm saving a lot of cash.

How much produce do you buy, and what are your thoughts on the quality?

 

[Waukee100]

Target > everything else, especially if you have little ones.

 

[BillBrasky4Cy]

How much produce do you buy, and what are your thoughts on the quality?

We try to buy most of our produce at Costco but WalMart is actually really solid. They turn their inventory really quick so for your main things nothing sits on the shelf too long. We gave up on HyVee produce years a few years ago... it's bad.

 

[BillBrasky4Cy]

Target > everything else, especially if you have little ones.

and expensive as ****.

 

[Waukee100]

and expensive as ****.

Target is expensive?? What?

Cheaper than HyVee when you factor in the five percent off too, sure it’s not as cheap as Wal-Mart but I don’t mind spending 10 more dollars on groceries to avoid Wal-Mart

 

[IcSyU]

Self-checkouts at HyVee were about the last straw.

This is the best thing HyVee has ever done as far as I'm concerned. When it's 7am and I just need to grab paper towels and Kleenex for the office and there's only 1 check out line open with 3 people in it it's a no brainer.

 

[wxman1]

Target is expensive?? What?

Cheaper than HyVee when you factor in the five percent off too, sure it’s not as cheap as Wal-Mart but I don’t mind spending 10 more dollars on groceries to avoid Wal-Mart

Target is closer to us than both Hy-Vee and Wal-Mart so they get a good amount of our purchases. Why anyone shops there without a RedCard is beyond me. As much as possible for non-grocery purchases I use EBates there as well. That gets me up to 6% off so all but 1% of the original sales tax.

 

[dmclone]

I still know a few people at Hy-Vee, they do constant price comparisons and here is what they tell me. This is comparing like grocery products: Most expensive from top to bottom.

Target even with 5% discount
Price Chopper-Pricing is all over the map
Hy-Vee
Fareway
Wal-Mart
Aldi-They can't compare to Aldi because they carry very few of the same brands. They did mention that Aldi is the best place to go if you just want to get the most bang for your buck and not worried about selection or quality.

He did mention that if you truly want to save money, it's all about coupons and sales regardless of store.

 

[cyclonpediaJoe]

Hy Chi is awesome. Best Hy Vee out there? Grand and Railroad.

 

[kcdc4isu]

I spent 32 years with Hy-Vee here are some comments:

Customer service-problem today is many people they hire do not want to interact with customers maybe to much non verbal cell phone use

Store size- when I started we were less than 15,000 s/f but people wanted more so we grew, IMO we are too big now but some people want one stop shopping

Market Grille again IMO was a mistake as it is hard to get the help needed but trends showed people today eat out more

Can redemption- Hy-Vee hated and still does having to get into the service I know because I had to put redemption ares in all the DM area stores and it was a B****

Drive up we found as we got into larger markets many people did not like not being able to see their bagged order and labor for a large store for drive-up has become an issue

Self check, we tried it years ago and people did not like it now go to Lowes, Home Depot, Target, etc and it is everywhere

Salads-early on they were all store made but there was no consistency from store and say potato salad would vary and then someone would write corporate and complain that what they bought at store A was not the same as store B so we bought a salad company to make all the salads the same

Lastly the company is always looking at what people want and what the trends are and the trying to give them that. Like clothing, bath soaps etc. For everyone who says they hate this you can find someone who loves it.

Everyone has a choice to make where they want to shop and I can tell you that at this time this company is still doing OK

 

[CYdTracked]

I always said that i would NEVER shop Wal-Mart for groceries but I just can't ignore the savings. The beautiful part is that we place our order online and just go and do their curbside pickup. I never have to step foot in the store and I'm saving a lot of cash.

I won't do our main grocery shopping there no buy anything like fresh produce or meats there but there are some things they just flat out have the best prices on like frozen or canned/dry goods that Fareway and Hy-Vee can't touch.

 

[BillBrasky4Cy]

I won't do our main grocery shopping there no buy anything like fresh produce or meats there but there are some things they just flat out have the best prices on like frozen or canned/dry goods that Fareway and Hy-Vee can't touch.

I don't buy my meat there other than their Tyson Chicken. Honestly, I prefer WalMarts produce over Hyvee... Like I said, I swore I would never do it but when you see $25 come off of your grocery bill per week it's pretty easy to make the switch.

 

[CYdTracked]

I spent 32 years with Hy-Vee here are some comments:

Customer service-problem today is many people they hire do not want to interact with customers maybe to much non verbal cell phone use

Store size- when I started we were less than 15,000 s/f but people wanted more so we grew, IMO we are too big now but some people want one stop shopping

Market Grille again IMO was a mistake as it is hard to get the help needed but trends showed people today eat out more

Can redemption- Hy-Vee hated and still does having to get into the service I know because I had to put redemption ares in all the DM area stores and it was a B****

Drive up we found as we got into larger markets many people did not like not being able to see their bagged order and labor for a large store for drive-up has become an issue

Self check, we tried it years ago and people did not like it now go to Lowes, Home Depot, Target, etc and it is everywhere

Salads-early on they were all store made but there was no consistency from store and say potato salad would vary and then someone would write corporate and complain that what they bought at store A was not the same as store B so we bought a salad company to make all the salads the same

Lastly the company is always looking at what people want and what the trends are and the trying to give them that. Like clothing, bath soaps etc. For everyone who says they hate this you can find someone who loves it.

Everyone has a choice to make where they want to shop and I can tell you that at this time this company is still doing OK

You are dead on about a lot of these things. I still shop at the Hy-Vee I worked at in HS/College and the meat manager I worked for is still there. Saw him working at 5pm one Friday which he never did when I was working there. He says it's just hard to find good help that wants to work the hours lately so he has to work some Friday evenings once in awhile so he doesn't run his full time guys off that have to supervise the part time staff at night. I think a lot of retail and food places are really hurting for good help these days. Hy-Vee even pays a pretty competitive part time wage too.

The product consistency thing has always been an issue. We used to make a specialty items in the meat dept by hand then eventually it all started coming pre-made because people would avoid certain stores if the things they buy regularly weren't as good as another store. I will say though that is tough to implement with the Chinese dept because there are some stores that have much better Chinese than others because of who is making it. At one time this store was buying these really good egg rolls from some place and corporate told them to stop because they needed to keep their product comparable to the rest of the stores in town. I get why they are that way but I do think when you have a large metro area like Des Moines having some small differences is not a bad thing. I can tell you that there are items that are supposed to be the same that are not because they are still hand made at the store such as some of their cheese spreads/dips and salsas.

I do know that at the corporate office they have a test kitchen that they are constantly bringing in samples of things they are considering for their Hy-Vee brands. They do some analysis on them as well as bring in random employees at the office to do blind taste tests so they do put some effort into picking out suppliers that for example make the best tasting soup or something that Hy-Vee offers as a cheaper generic brand.

I am not a big fan of places like Wal-Mart going to mostly self checkouts now. I saw a meme the other day where someone had something like "ma'am there is not waiting in line for the self checkout" me: "sorry but I don't get paid to work here" Also because they do that they now almost treat you like a criminal when you try to leave the store as they have the greeters stop you and scan your receipt and check to make sure the items match."

 

[GrappleCy]

I've frozen mine as well. For most, if not all, of the credit bureaus all it takes is a quick online form with your PIN to unfreeze/refreeze your credit when someone needs to access it. That hasn't happened to me yet but it seems like only a minor inconvenience, if they don't eff it up (which is asking a lot).

This seems like they got credit card numbers, not personal data. Freezing your credit stops people from opening up new lines of credit in your name. It doesn't do anything about somebody using your card number to make purchases. For that you'd have to cancel your card and get a new one.