Marks & Spencer

This place reminds me of The Hudson’s Bay centre in downtown Calgary. It’s a large department store with five (or six?) floors. I just did mostly browsing and window shopping since things are expensive in London. The Grocery department is quite excellent; there is a wide variety of fresh meats, ready-​made sandwiches, fresh fruit (including figs and dragon fruit), biscuits, English toffees, and local jams and condiments.

Another rather smug, ‘if you don’t like it, buzz off’ Marks and Spencer. Spend £50 and these judgmental fellows will condemn your lack of environmental credentials by surcharging for bags. Never mind that I walk my shopping home and the person in front using the ‘bag for life’ puts it in the boot of a Range Rover. Marks and Spencers is happy to make you feel guilty, so they don’t have to.

Has everything one would ever need! Not only does it sell clothes for men, women and children; there is also a exchange for money (zero commission), a café on the 1^st floor and a (usually very clean) set of toilets. Also a cash point is located on the ground floor, that can be used to withdraw Pounds Stirling, Euros & US Dollars.
Yet most of all it has a food store (which is paradise) — located at the back of the store (near the stores entrance to Pembroke Street) on the ground floor. The staff are always friendly and helpful, and the location and size is perfect.

This is basically a department store that sells a wide variety of clothes. Actually, I don’t pay close attention to what they sell other than clothes because I always head upstairs to change money. They usually have a decent rate with no commission. But I did buy a shirt and some socks or something a few years back when I forgot mine. Some of the bigger stores in this chain also sell food (Bath), but this location in Oxford does not.

I’m not at all impressed by this store. From the moment you enter, the smell of food hits you in the face. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t want restaurant-​type smells while browsing through the clothes. The food shop is at the back of the ground floor, and the café too I assume, so it can’t be helped. Still, it’s unpleasant.
When it comes to clothes, all the M&S brands are stocked here — Per Una, Autograph, Classic, etc. This is not the biggest Marks and Spencer store you will come across, so the amount and variety of stock is limited. Many items you might have seen online simply aren’t stocked here, which can be annoying.
While I was shopping on the first floor, I noticed the water dripping through the ceiling. After alerting the assistant, the buckets were promptly brought out. The water was dripping right through the electric wiring. I too was prompt to leave. I have no desire to be electrocuted while shopping, thankyouverymuch.

This is a reasonably sized store, large enough to have a good range of stock and small enough to find your way round. staff are generally friendly and efficient, though last time I tried the bra fitting service (a couple of years back) the assistant got my size wrong and spoke too little english to give advice. I buy trousers from M & S, as they fit me better than trousers from many other shops, but no longer get pants or cotton tops from there because I find the quality poor now that M & S are competing with ‘Primark prices’. Pants have gone into holes more quickly, cotton tops have gone baggy and shapeless after a couple of washes. To their credit, M & S do refunds on unsatisfactory goods, but I’d rather have a quality product in the first place.

This is a pretty big branch of Marks and Spencers– well stocked over three floors. It has a good range of clothes on offer, although they are really aimed at the older customer, the limited collection does have some good peices, and it is a good place to stock up on plain clothes for work. Upstairs is the women’s underwear department, which is a great place to shop, along with shoes, childrens clothes, homewares and a nice café. There is also a foreign exchange counter which usually has good rates. The basement floor has a wide range of mens clothes. The best bit really is the food hall– at the back of the ground floor, which has really lovely food. It can be quite expensive but it makes a really good treat.

This is a super branch of Marks and Spencers. It has 3 large floors, and so ample room to stock the vast majority of it’s range.
The ground floor houses women’s wear, including the stylish per una range, along with a large food hall. Greetings cards, wrapping paper, fresh flowers and plants are also sold here. Downstairs is the men’s section, which is great value and well stocked.
Upstairs is the home section, which has great value kitchen items as well as beautiful bed spreads, towels, sofas and cushions. There is a children’s section upstairs, as well as their classic womenswear section.
The staff are always very friendly and helpful indeed.
They sell a lovely range of Christmas gifts and decorations, all of which are on 3 for the price of 2, which makes it even better value.
Their food is expensive, but the quality is so good that it is worth it!
This is a lovely department store and definitely worth a look– you are bound to find something you like!

The Marks and Spencer store In Oxford is quite small compared to some other stores, but is nicely set out and carries quite a good selection of their ranges.
The ground floor has some womenswear, per una and the food section, the basement is menswear and the first floor is more womenswear, lingerie, nightwear, children’s clothesand home. The first floor is also where the toilets, customer services, bureau de change and the café are situated.
The front entrance to the shop is located in the middle of Queen street, where the majority of popular shops are, but you can also enter the shop through the back entrance, which takes you straight into the food part of the shop.

Marks & Spencer Oxford food department is heavenly. I only really use this shop for the food.
I find Per Una a bit dated, like most of the clothes.
The café is lovely, although quite expensive, its really nice to sit and have a chat over a cup of tea and a sandwich or cake. I highly recommend the yummy biscuits which come with the tea and coffee. I think you can buy them too.
The underwear department is great too. They have a really good range and good quality as always.
Back to the food I can highly recommend the Beef Wellington it’s the best I have found anywhere. The food at M&S is just lovely

The best thing about Marks and Spencer’s Café Revive is that it’s found right within the shop, so if you’re like me and can’t stand hours spent wandering around huge department stores in search of one little thing, it’s a welcome sit-​down. The other great thing is its chocolate sticks, which you dip into hot drinks for a yummy, gooey treat. However, that’s about it. The food is quite tasty, but there’s not a great range. It’s mainly sandwiches and cakes, and when I went with a vegetarian friend, there was only one vegetarian option, which was egg salad sandwich. Not much for vegans then. There’s often a tempting couple of cakes advertised on a board each day, but a lot of the time there’s no sign of the promised goods, so you’re resigned to prepackaged biscuits or cake bars. The crisps are good quality but expensive and this rip-​off theme is unfortunately a recurring one. The cheapest sandwich is £2.80 and no amount of gooey cheese can really compensate for that (especially when they burn it, like they did mine!) and although the smallest hot drinks are about £1.15, the bigger ones dramatically go up in price to rival Starbucks prices but without the quality. Last time I went for the deluxe hot chocolate, but they’d run out of marshmallows and sprinkles, so instead I just got lots and lots of squirty cream, so I ended up with nearly £3 worth of squirty cream which I had to battle through to get to my chocolate. A sandwich, hot chocolate and millionaire’s shortbread came to over £7 — definitely not something to do every day. The service is friendly, but very slow. I think this is a place to go for a good natter with friends every now and again, but not when you’re trying to grab a quick lunch and move onto other things.