Asda

I love the One Stop Shopping Centre in Perry Barr and often pop into the Asda which is located on the very edge of the shopping centre. It’s a full sized Asda which has everything you would expect from one of these stores including a small selection of homewares and books, and a full section of George clothing.
I find this Asda really handy because I can do my other shopping in the One Stop, stash my bags in the car and walk along to the supermarket to pick up either what I want for that evenings tea or even do a full weeks shop without having to travel again.
This branch of Asda gets extremely busy and sometimes I’ll find myself literally having to fight my way up and down the aisles, this is especially a problem just before they close at 8pm but this is usually because they vastly mark down the fresh produce so the students from the nearby UCE tend to converge on the supermarket at around 7.30pm!
The layout is typical of any Asda supermarket with items being grouped together and different aisles well marked with the floating signs above the shelves. There is an excellent selection of goods to buy even though this is a relatively small supermarket, granted there isn’t as much choice in the meat or fish department but otherwise it’s customers are very well catered for.
The fruit and veg in this branch are particularly good, presumably because it is such a busy supermarket and there is a high turnover of these items so what is on offer is extremely fresh and full of flavour. I also think the booze is great in here, definitely cheaper than my usual haunt (Tesco) and there is a wide variety to choose from to fit in with any budget.
The George department in this section is excellent, but it would have to be as the One Stop is filled to bursting with clothes shops so Asda have obviously decided to compete. I think they do very well considering there is little floor space for the clothing department. Sometimes this means the clothes are very tightly packed in and it can be hard to get hold of the correct size without stretching and manhandling the clothes down, but they invariably have what I want so it’s worth having a bit of a rummage.
The childrens clothes in here are fairly good, I can always find something for my younger two but my 12 year old always thinks the clothes are too ‘hippified’ (her word, not mine!) for her — I tend to agree actually and would much rather see her dressed in trendier clothes than I can find here.
My main bugbear of this branch of Asda is the fact that the queues at the till are always so long, I have waited almost half an hour on one occasion and even when it’s busy like this they will never put people on the unused tills. It really bugs me when I’m waiting in a long queue only to look down the shop and see a dozen unused tills and a gaggle of staff standing around doing nothing!
All in all I’ll definitely continue to use this branch of Asda, even over larger stores in the area. It’s in such a convenient location that it would be silly for me to travel to another one further away just to get a bigger choice of baked beans!

This asda store is hetic, the stock is all over the place, people are always pushing and shoving you out of the way and ive even has items nicked out of my trolly on a few occaisions. We now drive 4 miles out the way just to go to another asda.
However there clothes are a good price and they reduce the kids clothes quite often.
There is also an electrical deparment just to the side of asda and they do some great prices on the dvd’s

Popular with students as the BCU is just across the road, this ASDA was once a nice place to do the shopping — especially as it is set within a mall full of other handy shops and markets.
However now it is rather overcrowded and not kept in the best condition to say the least. The clothes department regularly resembles a sort of jumble sale and the food aisles are not much better. This was once a nice ASDA but now it seems to have gone downhill drastically for some unknown reason.