Walgreens Closures Continue in San Francisco

Alpha8472
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Re: Walgreens Closures Continue in San Francisco

Post by Alpha8472 »

Walgreens is terrible to its customers as the prices are so outrageously high. They also do not care about the safety of their customers as many homeless people invade their stores. It is very scary to shop at a Walgreens in San Francisco. You risk being attacked or robbed by the deranged drug addicts right in front of their stores.

Target is having troubles with shoplifters as California immediately releases shoplifters and drug dealers due to jail crowding. You will never get a conviction in San Francisco. The San Francisco District Attorney is letting criminals go free.

It is very difficult for Walgreens to run profitable stores with such huge levels of shoplifting.
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Re: Walgreens Closures Continue in San Francisco

Post by storewanderer »

Alpha8472 wrote: March 10th, 2021, 11:05 pm Walgreens is terrible to its customers as the prices are so outrageously high. They also do not care about the safety of their customers as many homeless people invade their stores. It is very scary to shop at a Walgreens in San Francisco. You risk being attacked or robbed by the deranged drug addicts right in front of their stores.

Target is having troubles with shoplifters as California immediately releases shoplifters and drug dealers due to jail crowding. You will never get a conviction in San Francisco. The San Francisco District Attorney is letting criminals go free.

It is very difficult for Walgreens to run profitable stores with such huge levels of shoplifting.
I have noticed the customer service at Walgreens is quite awful, but they have some great deals with coupons through their website. The store most convenient to me has terrible pricing (seems to be 10% higher than other locations I go to less often, a couple CVS nearby are the same way higher prices than any other CVS locations around the area) but the website pricing is much lower and they match those prices in the store if you ask or you can order through the website and pick up items in the store and get the website pricing. The staff in the location I frequent is miserable and hostile. The majority of the self serve staff seems to turn over every six or so weeks and they make up a lot of policies that do not exist. The store manager spends all day working in the pharmacy as a technician as the pharmacy is so understaffed so the self serve area is just left to whatever. The store is, still, despite this, clean and orderly. Fairly low self serve sales.

Don't quite a few of those San Francisco Walgreens not even have a pharmacy inside since they have so many locations so close together there? Or have they been closing the non-pharmacy stores more aggressively?
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Re: Walgreens Closures Continue in San Francisco

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Walgreens still has some of those non-pharmacy drugstores. Many people used to use Walgreens as a convenience store. Mostly tourists and rich tech workers spent money without caring about the price. Now that the tech workers have moved out of the city to cheaper places, Walgreens has lost a lot of business. The tourists who used to visit the city are gone too. Walgreens may close even more stores as the local residents do not want to pay outrageously high prices. Target has taken most of Walgreens' customers away in just the past few years. Target only entered the city around 2013? Before that Walgreens was the only place to shop. Many residents of San Francisco have no cars and they depended on local stores such as Walgreens for everyday items.
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Re: Walgreens Closures Continue in San Francisco

Post by klkla »

It's too bad Walgreens is so terrible in the Bay Area. Of the three major drug stores here in SoCal I have had the best experiences with Walgreens. Their stores here are bright, clean and well stocked. Their employees are proactive. They very seldom have long lines and they're friendly to customers.

RiteAid seems disorganized and poorly stocked.

CVS is better stocked but the employees are not customer service oriented at all.
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Re: Walgreens Closures Continue in San Francisco

Post by storewanderer »

Walgreens employees should be proactive and friendly as they pay higher wages to their employees than the competing drugstores do. Bring proactive is about the extent of their loss prevention program too. It seems they still care where you are in SoCal, but have just stopped caring in San Francisco.
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Re: Walgreens Closures Continue in San Francisco

Post by Super S »

Alpha8472 wrote: March 11th, 2021, 3:43 pm Walgreens still has some of those non-pharmacy drugstores. Many people used to use Walgreens as a convenience store. Mostly tourists and rich tech workers spent money without caring about the price. Now that the tech workers have moved out of the city to cheaper places, Walgreens has lost a lot of business. The tourists who used to visit the city are gone too. Walgreens may close even more stores as the local residents do not want to pay outrageously high prices. Target has taken most of Walgreens' customers away in just the past few years. Target only entered the city around 2013? Before that Walgreens was the only place to shop. Many residents of San Francisco have no cars and they depended on local stores such as Walgreens for everyday items.
To some extent, drugstores elsewhere in California also serve as more of a general merchandise store. In cities such as Fort Bragg, there is a Rite Aid and a CVS with no Walmart or Target close by. Going back to the days of Thrifty and Longs, (and before Walmart and others were in California) many of these older stores were much larger to accommodate more general merchandise. Today, the drugstore chains have a slight advantage in downtown areas due to their smaller store size, but as Target has been opening smaller stores, the drugstores will need to adjust pricing or there will be more closures.
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Re: Walgreens Closures Continue in San Francisco

Post by norcalriteaidclerk »

Though not mentioned in the original Chronicle article,I believe this location on the NWC Bush/Larkin streets was(according to Groceteria)originally a 1969-era rebuild/replacement Safeway on the site on a late 1930's location.It ceased to be a Safeway by the mid-1980's and later in the decade became a Thrifty Drug which obviously converted to Rite Aid circa 1998 during the integration of the ThriftyPayless acquisition.In 2009,Rite Aid cast off its remaining locations in the city proper to Walgreens including this location.Of those,a location on Ocean Avenue(itself a converted 1980's-era Safeway that lasted through 1995)wasn't kept as a going concern by Walgreens,while another converted Rite Aid at 776 Market Street was closed by Walgreens within the past 5 years.IIRC,among just the 7 locations acquired from Rite Aid in 2009(in SF only,I'm not counting the Eastern Idaho locations packaged in the deal which may or be not still be operated by Walgreens),this would be at least the third to be closed by Walgreens.I know that the Geary Rite Aid location did actually absorb the operations of a smaller existing Walgreens location a block or 2 away upon converting,but I'm not totally certain about the current status of the other 3 acquired locations(West Portal,Van Ness/Market,Alemany where a late-1960's Payless was replaced by a correct-sized Rite Aid when the property was redeveloped circa 2000).
For your life,Thrifty and Payless have got it.
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Re: Walgreens Closures Continue in San Francisco

Post by SamSpade »

norcalriteaidclerk wrote: March 12th, 2021, 2:01 pm,I'm not counting the Eastern Idaho locations packaged in the deal which may or be not still be operated by Walgreens
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Alpha8472
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Re: Walgreens Closures Continue in San Francisco

Post by Alpha8472 »

The Walgreens across the bay in Oakland, California at 82nd and International Boulevard is closing soon. The theft in Oakland is just as bad. The homeless encampments are even bigger in Oakland, but I believe that the shoplifting here is done not by homeless but by residents of the neighborhood.

Walgreens is abandoning stores in rough neighborhoods. The Walgreens had many items locked up, but there was still quite a bit of theft. The recording on the phone stated that customers could fill their prescriptions at any other Walgreens. At this rate they might as well close every store in Oakland. The theft is out of control. They closed another nearby store last year.

This store is surrounded by an iron fence with rolling gates. They can close the gates to seal off the parking lot at night. They even have sliding metal gates in front of the entrance. The Google maps street view has an image of a police car in the parking lot. This is a scary neighborhood.
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Re: Walgreens Closures Continue in San Francisco

Post by Alpha8472 »

Walgreens has announced that it is closing 5 more stores in San Francisco due to organized retail crime. The theft rate at these stores was 5 times that of an average Walgreens store. They invested 46 times the average amount of money on security for these stores. They even hired an off duty police officer for one store.
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