Today visited JPO, this for the second time.
Some observations :
- open concept shops and carpark : on a baking hot day like today, it was really bad.
Although the fans and shelter shades reduced the heat somewhat, I shudder to think if it were in middle of the year, when the weather is hottest and you dont have the wind like now.
The carparks were pretty far away too and no shelter whatsoever, so on hot days like today, the car is an oven, aircond working overtime.
On rainy days, I can imagine it will be a logistical nightmare if all the cars congregate at the kerb to pick up passengers and can be dangerous.
- quality of goods : at best, is inconsistent. Some garments, for example, looked soiled and obviously are old stock. A few times we tried to ask for certain sizes in clothes and especially for shoes, no sizes left.
- food court, we found was too small and the variety of food quite wanting. It does not make sense to have lunch or dinner here at all. Maybe for a quick bite or snacks perhaps.
- Coach : well, just wanted to mention this as we thought it was strange that a persistent queue formed outside since 10am and when we left at 1230pm, after circling the store a few times, we still could not enter (we didnt want to queue as we wanted to finish within 3 hours!).
I mentioned "strange" because whenever we peered into the shop, it was half-empty! The right-hand side of the shop was glaringly under-patronised and hardly any customers, while all the main action was at the ladies bags section.
They really should do something on their product mix and crowd management as they surely lost our biz today. It would probably have been better if they do not stop people from entering as some shops were equally busy as well but there wasnt any "no entry" policy there...
OK, my wife said that it was probably to ensure the patrons had a nice "buying experience"; well, it surely didnt happen to us as we did not even manage to enter. Besides, Coach is not exactly a high-end luxury brand, so what "experience" to speak about... OK, I'm just pissed as we couldnt enter, hehehe...
- Smokers : for us who are non-smokers, it wasn't a nice experience as smokers were walking along and especially where they put the benches and dustbins, people were lighting up and puffing away. JPO should really designate separate areas for smokers (away from crowds) and not allow them to smoke along the corridors outside the shops. For us, this was a real bad experience, on a hot and humid day. Talk about 2nd hand smoke on all the kids and older folks too...
- Parking : having driven almost an hour to reach a Mall situated in the middle of nowhere, the very least one expected would be free parking!
... Well, the 1st time I was there, it was free. Today its M$3 per entry. It was not exactly the money (well, every cent counts these days!) but more the searching for ticket and the damn queue. Amazing that there was a person stationed at the ticket machine (I think its one single ticketing machine per end next to Maybank and the ATMs), helping each person to put in the ticket and the money. Hopefully the machines dont break down one of these days!...
Overall, apart from a few decent buys, we did not enjoy the shopping experience at all.
We spent less than 3 hours there and by the time we were ready to leave, it was already quite "enough".
In contrast, we spent the next 4 hours in Jusco Bukit Indah and had a much, much more pleasant experience.
I dont think we will be back to JPO for a long time, sorry to say (ok, maybe just one more time, for the Coach bag my niece wanted but anyway...).
Hopefully, things will improve - fast and drastically! :*:
Cheers!
