Giant Gas Station

Store #152 located near the corner of New Hampshire Ave and Randolph Rd in Silver Spring, MD. This is an observation about customer service at this store. Normally, the store employees are very nice, treat their customers with respect and kindness. I was at the store on March 22, 2015 in the self check line waiting for my turn to check out. There was an older lady (over 60) scanning her groceries and noticed that the Coca Cola was scanning incorrectly. She motioned the store customer service desk attendant and it took almost five minutes for her to come over to help. The customer told the store employee that the Coke was scanning improperly because the sign in the store said the cost was 99 cents. The store attendant rudely said, «you have to buy 4!!» The customer said that she did not see the sign stating that the minimum purchase quantity was 4. The Giant employee kept rudely saying very loudly «you have to buy 4! It’s marked!!» She could have been polite and stated the policy. The customer was obviously hurt because of the way she was being treated. The Giant employee then asked her if she wanted the items. The customer refused so the employee took them off her bill.
When I checked myself out, the scanner jammed and I called the same Giant employee over. she was polite to me. But she did not have to be rude to the other customer. Customer service means treat customers as though they matter and you care that they are spending money in your store. I then went over to the Coke display to see if they were clearly marked. THEY WERE NOT! There was a very tiny sign at the bottom close to the floor stating that you must buy 4. You almost had to get on your knees to see the sign.
A better way to handle the situation was to treat the lady with kindness and help her understand why there was a discrepancy. Bad customer service looks bad for everyone!

That discount though!
My family does most all of our grocery shopping at the Giant right across the street, and boy is this station convenient. We’ve gotten up to 80 cents off per gallon! For that price, I’ll take the «no-​name» brand gas.
You can tell it’s a great service because the station is jumping, every now and then you have to wait for a pump to open up. I usually pay in cash at the counter and the staff is very friendly.
Only con is that they aren’t open late hours, so if you’re in a pinch late at night you might need to go elsewhere. Luckily, for those moments there’s an Exon right down the street.

The sole virtue of this store is that it’s close to my home. Nothing about it rises above the local competition and much pulls it down.
The checkouts here are a disaster. There are never enough lanes open and they rely heavily on self check. That would be fine, but those crash or have scanning errors for almost every customer and nobody is nearby to assist. The scan as you go guns work well but frequently freeze at the checkout. There are no lanes dedicated to their use, so you wait with everyone else.
The store is dingy and aisles are tight. It is in serious need of a facelift.
The employees in the bakery have been helpful and seem polite and friendly.
Overall it fits the need for a grocery store, but I’ll go out of my way for a better experience if I have time.

The customer service here is excellent. So nice and helpful

Wife and I were insulted at this store. Long story but I’ll try to keep it brief. We liked shopping here because it was close to home and they offer a self scan as you go check out system, with the bag tax in Montgomery County we brought our own bags, scanned and bagged as we shopped.
On the last visit the plain-​clothed security woman followed us through the store very obvious, in fact it creeped my wife out. There were two items we couldn’t scan a special on oranges 10 pounds for 10 dollars (there was no barcode to scan for the sale price) and some face cream that was in a security package (the kind they remove at the register) that was 20 dollars.
When we got to the check out where they download your hand scanner and you pay we pointed out the two items that hadn’t been scanned. The security woman went and got the assistant manager who spoke with our cashier who then informed us they needed to do a spot check on your purchase. This involved checking random items just to check that we scanned them all. So they (the cashier and assistant manger) pulled about 8 items from our bags and checked them against what we scanned, not surprisingly they had all been scanned. I thought we were good to go and were about to pay when the security woman and assistant manager returned saying they needed to scan everything in our cart again. Well this was a real pain since it had all been bagged and totaled up. Frankly if we hadn’t already spent so much time shopping and needed the items I would have walked out at that point. This was our weekly shopping trip and it totals about $ 250 dollars. Waited as they unloaded scanned and reloaded everything, quite pissed at this point, went through our coupons and paid. The cashier handed back several coupons saying they had expired, was so pissed at this point I just took them, paid and went out to the car.
Once in the car I handed the coupons to my wife and told her these were expired. She double checked and in fact they weren’t expired not even close. Really pissed off at this point I took the coupons and the receipt back into the store and up to customer service. I calmly explained to the woman behind the counter that we purchased our groceries and presented the coupons to the cashier who wrongfully told us they had expired. She politely looked over the coupons and receipt and said she would give us the refund in cash. Meanwhile the security woman who had followed us through the store walked over an asked if there was a problem? Keeping my composer I said no, just a mistake involving some coupons. I then asked if it were common practice to re-​ring entire orders like we just went through. She responded with, «No, but it was a good thing we did in your case. There was a $ 30 difference between what was on your scanner and in your cart.» To which I pointed out that would be the face cream and oranges we had set aside and told the cashier she needed to ring up in addition to what was in the cart. At that time she turned and walked away saying just loud enough for me to hear «Yeah, right.» I asked to speak with the manager who wasn’t there. I was told she was on vacation. So I spoke with the assistant manager who wasn’t helpful at all but did tell me that he would pass this on to the manager when she returned the following weekend. Three weeks passed without any contact from the manager.
It wasn’t until I filed a complaint with the district manager that she contacted me, apologized and promised to mail out a gift card for $ 25 for my troubles. Card never arrived. I’m not surprised. Needless to say we don’t shop at Giant any more. I’ve give them zero stars if that were an option.

There are two things I like about this Giant: 1) It is close to my home; 2) It sells beer and wine.
There are many things I dislike:
1) At times there are no shopping carts available. When I have complained about this, the store told me that they limit the number of carts because they get stolen.
2) The carts have an electronic system that autolocks the wheels if the cart is too far from the store. However, there are no signs in the store or the parking lot indicating the limit for how far the carts can be pushed. As a result, I have had my cart stranded some distance from my car and once in the middle of the main road through the shopping center. The latter happened when my car was parked in the last space away from, but directly in front of the car. There was no room to push the cart between my car and the one adjacent so I went around the car such that it was pushed slightly into the main driveway. The cart locked up and I was stuck leaving the cart in the driveway.
Management has repeatedly told me that they feel they have no choice regarding the issues above, but that speaks volumes about their hostile attitude toward customers.
The checkouts are structure around self-​checkout — they have very few live cashiers relative to the number of customers. The problem is that the self-​scan stations frequently malfunction in various ways and then it can take several minutes for a manager to come and resolve the problem. Another issue is that one time after using self-​scan on a large order they «randomly» audited my cart to make sure I hadn’t cheated and failed to scan some items. This involved having them put my entire order through a conventional checkout. When I complained that this made the use of self-​checkout unappealing and that I felt as thought there was a presumption that I was a thief, I was told the usual refrain — «We have lots of security problems at this store so you have to accept this sort of treatment» — the same basic tact they took regarding carts.
Overall, the store is convenient, but expect to be treated as thought the store does not trust you and that they are doing you a favor by existing. Note that I have no particular bias against Giant in general — my family and I often drive several miles extra to go to a different Giant where customers are treated with more respect.

average low price, but this one close at midnight, sucks

I was a little ascared to try an «off-​brand» gas station but finally took the plunge today. Seems fine to me. The pump interface is a little cumbersome, a little WTF but the gas comes out just the same… eventually, when you figure out where the «Yes» button is (go pump there and you will see what I mean).
This is the first time I have ever scanned my Giant card at the pump (as opposed to typing in my phone number like I have done at the Shell). Boy does that make life easier.
Today I paid $ 3.38 a gallon thanks to my 30 cents a gallon bonus discount. Not too shabby a bonus for shopping someplace I would have shopped anyway.
This little station is a comfy addition to the neighborhood. I think having it here keeps the gas prices lower at the nearby Exxon.

You buy food lots of it and you get discount on gas not too shabby. All you need to do is go on over to any Giant supermarket and get yourself a Giant card so when you buy food get comp on the card then go to get gas swipe card and like magic 10 cents is knocked off the posted prices. This station is located across the street from the Colesville Giant it used to be a Excel gas station here along with a Hertz truck rental all crammed up in a tight small hard to maneuver around space. Now it’s open up and easy peezy to get in and out of. It feels like a large space now.
This is the first Giant gas station to open in Montgomery County MD yes they have been in cahoots with Shell stations for years now with the discount cards and all, but this is the first one like it here. Only a couple other stations with the name Giant exist in the state of Maryland those are way way out in places I never even heard of. This station is brand spanking new, it even smells new. Clean as a whistle and have a attentive staff who keeps the place spotless so far. Yeah I know just give it a few months and it’ll be torn up just like any other greasy, smelly, nasty, filthy gas station. You will find here only gas and air and windshield wash squeegees. They have no convenience store, no repair mechanics, no coffee, no snacks, no nothing but discounted gas if and ONLY if you have a Giant card and have been purchasing food with it. I just paid $ 3.47 a gallon for example whereas normally it would have been $ 3.57 so it pays to save. Get there while it’s fresh and new for some cheap gas but go across the street first to stock up on groceries and discount card points first.

Newly renovated with the following features:
— Red Box $ 1 DVD rental thing
— Awesome salad bar, though the soups are located in a separate location near the registers
— Self check-​out