Review on New Big Bazaar Store at Pondy Bazaar in Chennai

Just to move away slightly from posting offers, I just thought to review the new Big Bazaar Store which recently opened its new branch in Chennai that I visited recently. This is just to break the monotony I have been going through all these months and hope to more such reviews on new or existing stores and/or online stores or shopping portals every now and then, probably something else useful related to shopping and offers in India in the future.

This Sunday I visited the newly opened and much advertised and publicized Big Bazaar which recently opened its new branch at Pondy Bazaar which is located at T. Nagar which is one of the busiest shopping place in Chennai and much crowded too. This is just the second store in Chennai after their previous store at Saligramam near Vadapalani which I felt was one of the bigger store in Chennai. I also heard that they are also planning to open nearly 10 more stores in Chennai.

Big Bazar was actually opened in Pondy Bazaar on August 6, 2008. But as said above I visited the store on August 10, 2008, Sunday. As usual as, one would expect with Big Bazaar, the store inside was crowded for a Sunday morning visit.

The store actually has five floors including the basement. The basement consists of all the groceries, vegetables and fruits, commonly referred to as Food Bazaar. The beauty products and mobile phones (MBazaar) is located at the ground floor. The first floor has the menswear and men’s accessories, shoes, etc. The second floor has womenswear and kidswear as well as books and toys for kids. The third floor is dedicated to crockery and other kitchenware. The fourth floor has the electronics shops and the furniture shops.

This is an entirely different setup than their previous store here in Chennai which actually has just one floor (i.e., the ground floor) and all the sections mentioned above are displayed in that whole floor. This new setup at this new store looks easier to look for products that you want, although not all of them are arranged in proper manner (probably because they are just trying to fit in all the stuffs only now).

I did not try their parking lot, as I managed to park outside their store at Pondy Bazaar and hence could not comment on it, but I felt there were enough space for exclusive parking for them. I also found it extremely hard to enter the store due to many confusing entry points (most of them are closed or either guarded and entry and exit were restricted!). Finally, I was guided through a staircase for entry which led to the first floor directly to the store instead of ground floor or basement which both had entry points but was restricted to enter, although there were pointers showing them as the entry points to the store!

I guess they have opened the shop very urgently, at least from the outset on how the shop looks and managed and arranged gave me this impression. Almost most of the pathways leading to various sections were blocked with carton boxes and stuffs like that. This was also was evident on the entry point which was rather confusing for anyone who first visits their store (in this case almost all). Probably they are just setting it right and will hopefully be clear in the near future. I also saw almost all the lifts (elevators) inside the store are not fitted at all and saw scores of men working on them to get it fitted inside the store among the shoppers.

I don’t know why there were so much hurry in opening this shop without getting it ready full before opening it for the general public!!

Otherwise of the products were displayed in a neat and efficient manner in the whole store. The staffs were courteous mostly and ready to help, although tough to find the crowd. But I too saw some staff themselves finding it hard to locate stuff that was being inquired!

I could not find the staff when I needed them at many places and had to wade through sections to find the staff to get help! Eventually I managed to finish up my shopping after visiting all the sections of the store. And surprisingly billing was done in a jiffy because each section had its own billing counters unlike their other store in Chennai where all the billings have to be done at a single point although with many cash tills.

I also had a feeling that they had stuffed up almost everything that you would need to run your home. Although most of them in very small quantities. I even saw books being displayed in just a single shelf and nowhere else in the store! I also noticed that most of the products being sold at Future Bazaar being sold at Big Bazaar at the same rates mentioned at Future Bazaar(minus shipping charges).

As usual there were way too many offers as one would associate with Big Bazaar these days, like buy one and take one free, buy two and take two free and so on. The special offer for the weekend to mention was that if you buy stuff from Big Bazaar for Rs. 1999 and above you would be getting 5 kg of rice and 2 kg of Sugar! I inquired about Big Bazaar's famous Independence Day offer but got a reply that it will be known only on that day or a day before and most offers would be very similar to the existing offers on Independence Day.

Overall I felt neither too impressed nor too bad about this new Big Bazaar Store which I will be frequenting in the days to come for sure for regular shopping or at least for the window shopping ;-).

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