Complaint Review: Marc's - Cleveland Ohio

As far as I know, Marc's has been in business since the early 1980s in the greater Cleveland area. I've been going since 1980 or 1981 and must have spent 10 billion dollars there. With many locations and a crazy-loyal customer base, this store has to be realizing astronomical profits. Yet, their policies are ridiculously hostile toward customers.

The store that I go to, in Lakewood, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio is densely populated and diverse beyond human perception. Many people, including myself, are without cars. I try to shop at stores that are nearby, including Marc's and I'm familiar with the floorplans, general merchandise, prices, etc. of stores I frequent. Sometimes, however, I want to call around to check stock on something and get a price quote because going from store to store without a car takes too long. I understand that even people with access to cars are doing this now to save on fuel. Almost no store that I know of refuses to quote prices over the phone. Marc's is the exception.

After I got home from shopping at Marc's today, I didn't buy that much but I couldn't believe what I had spent and I was examining my receipt to make sure I wasn't overcharged for anything. One item was pricier than it had been in the recent past but I hadn't noticed any signage indicating the cost had gone up, so I called the store, asked for the department associate and asked for the price of the item. If I had said "I paid this much", he could have said "Well, yeah, that's what it costs." I wanted them to tell me what the item cost so I could see if the price matched what was on my receipt. So, now, I have a grown man on the other end of the phone telling me he wasn't allowed to quote prices. So, of course, I had to talk with the manager, who had to make a big production of scanning the item and quoting me the cost. It turned out that the item had gone up a dime in price but I didn't know.

Another issue that I've bitterly protested to Marc's is that they won't accept an ATM card with a VISA logo for payment. Even Family Dollar, BigLots, and the most generic dollarstores accept ATM credit/debit cards, and these stores are practically the bottom of the barrel (although I love shopping at all of them!). They accept checks but using a check is the last resort for me. They accept Discover card, but I can't get a credit card. The other choices when I have no cash on me are Marc's sleazy, generic in-store ATM that charges a $1.50 foreign-bank fee and is out of order 99% of the time, or to walk down to my bank's ATM that's almost a mile down the road, one way. The other option is to go to another store, DrugMart, that's in direct competition with Marc's but is also directly across the street from my house--a choice that I make often because DrugMart accepts ATM credit/debit cards.

I've let Marc's know, on a couple of occasions, that I've spent $35 or $40 dollars at DrugMart that Marc's could have had if only they accepted ATM-VISAs for payment. Because there were a couple of rare good deals at Marc's today, I overspent and had to have my order "suspended." That means I left my goods in the cart, the cashier cleared the register and I went home to write a check. When I got back, no one could lift the suspension off my order so I could pay for it. I stood around for 20 minutes with a fully written and executed check while four people (including the cashier who gave me the suspension receipt) fumbled around trying to release my order. If the owner of Marc's, March GLASSMAN, wasn't such a *ahem* "miser", (let's just leave it at that so I can get this published), and would accept an ATM-VISA, I could have walked home and put my groceries away in the time I had to make a second round trip and languish for 20 minutes.

The other problem is Marc's plastic shopping-bags, which are so thin and brittle, I wouldn't even use them to clean up after a dog. Sometimes, the employees are embarrassed to put customers' groceries in these bags. For a while, Marc's was getting bags that were about the size of an 8-gallon wastebasket bag; if you put a loaf of bread d in these bags, there wouldn't be room for anything else. That's just awesome for someone who is walking home and has to 25 bags each containing one item.

Finally, Marc's is clearly taking advantage of the media's spin on rising costs of food and nonedible items. Marc's prices routinely skyrocket at the beginning of the month when people's Social Security and other benefits arrive, and I've seen some items that were reasonably priced for months or even years increase almost 100% just because word is out that costs are going up. Marc's clearly thinks that customers will just take their gouging in stride because that's the way it is now.

I hope Marc Glassman is someday at the mercy of some skinflint that regards him the way he regards his customers and prizes policy before people. (BTW: Last I knew, his employees only got a half-hour break for lunch and, if they wanted to buy something to eat from Marc's, they had to punch out and wait in line to pay for it while they were off the clock---just in case it's not bad enough that they make minimum wage and have to work like serfs to earn it!)

It'sOn

Lakewood, Ohio

U.S.A.