The wife went shopping last night at the Carrefour (Er Chong) branch. Brought back some shrimp (prawn) and chicken. She started cooking the shrimp and despite the smell of the garbage I was posting on the flob, I was overwhelmed by the stench.
I told her to ditch it IMMEDIATELY. It stank like the corpse of a life-long fisherman.
Tonight I attempted a stir-fry with the chicken. As soon as I opened the package (tomb), I was overwhelmed by an even viler stink. That stuff got interred, too.
What’s my recourse here? The big chains in Taiwan don’t seem to give a shit about customer satisfaction. My wife has whined and screamed at them before and they just shrug and throw their hands up. A mere NT$300 for the lot, but NT$300 for excrement that I had to throw in the garbage, nonetheless.
Call 1999 to complain. They’ll get the Health dept. to send out a surprise inspection, most likely, and Carrefour will likely be given a fixed time period to clean up their act. If people do this often enough, stores like this may get fined, or may learn to stay on their toes.
In the meantime, consider buying fresh and live at the wet market (seriously). When I bring shrimp home, they are still moving.
Never ever bought shrimps in Carrefour, they never look really fresh.
I’ll admit that I buy them frozen from Costco, but at least they’re fresh when I want to eat them (well, you know what I mean) as I rarely eat what I buy the same day.
Still, gone of meat is not like gone of veggies, as bad meat can kill you. I would seriously go there and shout at the people and ask to talk to the store manager. If they don’t listen, then get the health inspectors in, as I’m fairly certain that it’s criminal to sell lethal food even in Taiwan.
Wow! It’s crazy that you mentioned this. My wife and I went shopping at the Carrefour at Ming-Te this past Sunday. We purchased tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, garlic, and Australian steak so that I could make my special spaghetti sauce. When we got home, we were extremely disappointed in the quality of all the vegetables and especially the beef. Seemed like everything was just about to spoil. We ended up throwing everything out and going out to dinner instead. I was pissed, but thought it was probably just an isolated incident. I’ve never had issues with Carrefour food in all the years I’ve shopped there. However, I’ve always gone to the Danshui branch and since they’ve closed it for remodeling, we decided to go to the Ming-Te one instead. Won’t be doing that again. :fume:
I hear you guys, it’s not just carrefour, all supermarkets go through it. I think sth. or the other goes wrong during transportation/storage and yet management goes ahead and sells them to customers. Once I bought a sack of potatoes from Costco , had to dump them all coz they were all gooey the very next day (my kitchen is not air conditioned).
Carrefour is good for imported - dry- food and their offers. In 5 year, never bought vegies, fruits, icecream or anything which is temperature influenced. I had once the chance to see processing at the back side. You would not believe how short it takes to see fresh / frozen things fading away as the staff has no clue how to prioritize handling…
I’ve always found the quality of the “fresh” food at Carrefour to suck. I only go there for cheese, wine, coffee, sauces etc. Their yank or aussie steaks are ok most of the time. But their produce and meats are second rate. The shih changs are much better.
That’s the truth. I like it for certain things, especially the bread. But the veggies and fruit are shite. I often buy their salmon fillets, though, and haven’t had a problem so far. I did get some rotten clams one time, though. I just took them back and got my money back.
Gosh, Carrefour Mingde used to be the crown jewel. If they are messing up, too…
Happened to me a lot in Wellcome. The chicken would not look or stink rotten, but when you opened it, the smell was like something chemical mixed inside, maybe a big gooish.
Carrefour’s meat looks ugly. Downright awful. Lots of TV news have presented the same case: spoiled meat, bad veggies -especially when packed, so you cannot see teh down side- and “future” items -changing the expiration date.
Mrs cfi and I were at Carrefour Mingde for the first time on Sunday. Except for a couple of potatoes that were a bit green, the food was okay, but what a godawful layout of a store. Too much stuff in too small a space, and that product demo staff made it even worse by dumping their extra boxes in the aisles. Even their import section was lousy - when I used to live in Changhua that Carrefour had a much better range of import goods. We’ll be avoiding the Mingde branch in the future.
I’ve regularly gotten similarly low quality veggies and meats from Carrefour in Taichung so when Jason’s opened a branch here I thought at last salvation was at hand, albeit at a price. Within weeks of their opening, their standards went straight to hell and the “fresh produce” was anything but, in particular the imported bagged salad packs, lettuces, fruits and veggies were simply left on display way past expiry. As is the norm in the central wastelands of Taiwan the proprietors were of the opinion that they were doing their customers a favour by operating the store and that expecting them to take the hit on tossing out past sell by items was “unreasonable” to quote their manager and that “some customers can accept past sell by products”. The bloody peasant clearly has no business running a premium supermarket.
On several occasions my wife had to take back products that we accidentally bought that were either already spoiled or past sell by, after going over the head of the Taichung branch manager hack and contacting the head office, the Taipei manager promised to address the issue. All that has changed is that they no longer carry the vast majority of imported or niche market items and only have the second rate low quality local produce of the typical “f*ck you if you don’t wake up at 6am and go to the wet market” low standard. In addition the Taichung manager just lies and says the importer/distributer no longer offers that product in Taiwan even though a trip to Jason’s Taipei proves they do. As usual it’s the super saturated chabuduoist mentality of the central wastelands in effect.
I haven’t had any trouble with any of the meats or anything else I’ve bought at Carrefour (San-Min branch and Civic Blvd branch in Taipei) to this point in my time in Taiwan. Wellcome is a bit dodgier in my opinion. I don’t mind Matsusei, but meats there are quite overpriced considering they are selling much the same thing Carrefour is.
I’ll forgive the posters who mentioned meat or swore, but as for the others, it’s time to Man Up. I’m sending you to Bubba Two Guns’ Weekend Workshop for Wussies. Yes, the WWW but not as you know it.
There’s an er-chong?