Our Frustrating Experience with Carrefour Kenya

A few weeks ago, we wrote about our concerns regarding quality control in Kenya and how we’ve felt scammed by various shops. Since moving to Nairobi, Carrefour has been our go-to supermarket, mainly because it’s conveniently close to where we live, and we know the brand from France. Despite being a global brand, we’ve often encountered issues like food with short shelf life or poorly made products, such as the previously mentioned water dispenser.

We usually do a major shopping trip once a month at our local Mega Carrefour and then top up weekly using their app. Recently, we’ve been ordering more frequently through Carrefour’s app, MAF Carrefour, as well as occasionally through Glovo mainly because the queues and waiting times at the stores can be frustrating sometimes.

Unfortunately, the quality of items we’ve received has been disappointing, to say the least—expired milk, moldy juice, rotten fruits, and cracked eggs. We’ve been just disposing of these items without complaint, but it’s been happening too often, so we decided to address it with customer service and see what they are going to do about it. Oh boy, we felt like we were preparing a business plan or a court case 🙂

We contacted Carrefour’s customer service by phone, as there was no support through the app. I spoke with a polite representative who promised to take the issue seriously and said she would follow up with us. That was on a Thursday. After four days of silence, I received a call on Monday from someone who wanted more details about our complaint. I informed him that we had already spoken to someone who assured us the problem would be resolved. He requested photographic evidence and said someone would replace the items. By then, the items had already been disposed of. I told him that after waiting so long, it was a waste of time to provide photos for a refund or replacement of such a small amount—200 KES (about $1.40 USD); if the evidence is needed, the agent should have asked on the first day we have a complaint.

This experience confirms the lack of quality control and customer service we have mentioned previously, especially from a major retailer like Carrefour, which is disappointing. It’s clear that customer satisfaction isn’t a priority; it feels like the agents are probably not trained, and perhaps there is no control or oversight. Another time, we complained through Glovo because of missing items, and the agent just rushed us through the phone call and, in the end, hung up without a solution.

Ok, back to Carrefour. To top it off, after I told them I’d moved on and didn’t want to waste any more time, I received a message from Carrefour saying I’d be refunded 11 KES (about 6p). Yes, you read that right—11 KES for items that cost 155 KES for milk and 200-300 KES for oranges.

We just wanted to share our frustrating experience with Carrefour. If you get used to supermarkets such as Sainsbury’s or Waitrose or delivery apps like Deliveroo, then you will only shake your head at the standards here in Kenya, but I guess welcome to Africa.

We were so frustrated that we switched to Foodplus and Artcaffe Market for now.

Thanks for reading 🙂