It amazes me in this crazy economy that a company would be willing to give their managers such little authority, as I was told by Eric Ross the Von's Grocery Store Manager, in San Juan Capistrano that he would lose his job if he was to give me a small container of a chipolte sauce that they use on their sandwiches in thier deli as they do not sell that sauce in their store. REALLY, FIRED FOR GIVING A CUSTOMER SOMETHING THEY WANTED TO BUY??? I have NEVER seen such poor customer service. THe attitude of several of the employees was that we were bothering them for even asking. The funny thing is that several people had already sold it to us before. We had shopped there for almost 30 years and will not be going back, there is a Ralphs right up the street and with such POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE we will take our dollars elsewhere.

I have been shopping at the Von's Northridge Store (Reseda and Nordhoff) for 24 years. I am a regular customer. On November 25, 2007 I conducted my weekly grocery shopping. I spent a total of $253.53. I noticed that the two Breyers Ice Cream Bar Boxes were icy. Upon opening the boxes, I saw that the ice cream bars were cracked, melted and refrozen. This was not the first time the ice cream bars were unacceptable. Previously, I had just thrown them away. This time I was so dissatisfied that I wanted to bring it to the attention of the store manager. Additionally, I had picked up the wrong type of beans (black beans instead of kidney beans and the wrong flavor of gum).

I decided to take care of the matter. I went back to the store. I took my purchases along with my receipt.

Joel B. (Supervisor) was handling customer service. I presented the boxes of ice cream, the gum and can of beans. I told him about what happened. He said that no one has ever complained about the ice cream before. He told me to go through the line and take care of my exchange. I did not want to wait in line (again). I asked if he could just take care of me there. He said then started questioning my purchases. He was RUDE and very DISRESPECTFUL. I asked and he open another box of ice cream to show him about the cracked bars. Again, the bars in the new box were cracked. He insisted that there was nothing wrong with it. I was evident that the bars had thawed and had been refrozen.

I decided I just wanted my money back for everything, rather than exchange it. I had my receipt and I thought it would be a very straightforward transaction. He asked if I had coupons for my purchases. I said no. He went to the check stand that I had originally purchased my groceries and went through all the coupons in the checkers drawer. When he found none for the items I bought, he went to get my money. Prior to doing so, he asked if I purchased all the items from Vons. I again referred him to the receipt. He said that he was merely asking a question. I asked him not to be rude. He repeated what I had said in a very sarcastic manner. I said please just take care of this so I can leave. He then made an excuse that he had no change. It was obvious he wanted to make me wait. I was very angry at his poor attitude.

I told him that I am a regular customer and no one should be treated the way he was treating me. I said I was going to contact corporate. He said go ahead and call or email... I'll even give you the numbers! I will NEVER step foot in VONS. I will TELL everyone I know of the NEGITIVE service I received. DISPLEASED only skims the surface of how I feel.