This Is the Most Hated Retail Store Chain in America

Hint: You've definitely shopped there before.

We all have our favorite go-to stores, where we know we can find items we love at a price we’re comfortable with—and then there are the retailers we avoid. A recent American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) report looked at more than 400 companies to see which ones were the most loved and which get a bad rap.

ACSI used data from interviews with roughly 500,000 customers to determine customer satisfaction. Based on the findings, one thing is clear: People aren’t crazy about Sears or Walmart.

Sears and Walmart were at a tie for the retail stores with the lowest customer satisfaction at 70 percent, followed by Dollar General (73 percent). Find out what ACSI ranked as the worst hotel chains in America.

Apparently, reputation speaks wonders: Sears declared bankruptcy in October 2018 after struggling to compete with online retailers and department stores with better reputations. Since that announcement, only 182 Sears and Kmart stores remain in the United States—not to mention the fact that 2,500 or so others had already been shut down since 2005. The ACSI report also revealed that shoppers aren’t excited to buy from Big Lots or Fred Meyer, which have the fourth and fifth-worst customer satisfaction ratings, respectively.

But for every hated store, there are ones with glowing reputations. Costco was the most beloved department store in the ACSI report, with a score of 83, followed by Sam’s Club (81) and All Others (79). Meanwhile, H-E-B, Trader Joe’s, and Wegmans were the food shopper’s favorites—they were rated the first, second, and third best supermarkets for customer satisfaction, respectively. Another thing that could knock a store down in customer satisfaction, not taking the necessary steps to keep their customers safe during the pandemic.

Sources:

  • ASCI: Retail and Consumer Shipping Report 2019-2020
Woman shopping protecting herself wearing protective maskLeoPatrizi/Getty Images

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Marissa Laliberte
Marissa Laliberte-Simonian is a London-based associate editor with the global promotions team at WebMD’s Medscape.com and was previously a staff writer for Reader's Digest. Her work has also appeared in Business Insider, Parents magazine, CreakyJoints, and the Baltimore Sun. You can find her on Instagram @marissasimonian.