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Review content:
As Indians, when we moved to Burbank some months back, it was amusing to hear such a variety of quality complaints about the nearest Indian grocery-India Sweets & Spices, Los Feliz, from our fellow Indian friends/ colleagues. We were advised to always travel to Artesia(30 miles away!)for our Indian ration! Still, from October, 2011- March, 2012, we made 3 trips to this grocery..guess we were destined to learn the hard way! Our 1st visit was near Diwali and focussed mainly on a mixture of festival sweets. While most of these turned out okay, some turned out stony hard from the middle. I didn't buy some Diwali decorations that I really liked coz I thought them unreasonably overpriced. However, the real nightmares were related to subsequent visits when we bought a large amount of Indian food supplies. The stuff that turned out right doesn't matter in this case-Our chickpeas, and black Bengal gram were worm infected (yes!), so I'd to throw away entire packs! Unshelled pistachios some of which our kid and us consumed as soon as we came home turned out to have fungus on closer inspection later that day! I actually consoled us by the fact people stayed fine on daredevil TV shows even after consuming much worse stuff! My husband and I had an exhausting time on each visit. Imagine having to scan EVERY single item you intend to buy to ensure its date is still valid! Many items here don't have any relevant dating information one wud like to know before a buying desicion,like our pistachios. Many items in the Indian namkeens and snacks section are past their expiry or best before dates;stale and soggy; and we saw some with their dating info.blackened out!! That's why we couldn't buy many items in the quantity we intended to despite so many lying around. In fact, on our 2nd visit, a lady arranging namkeen packs tried to motivate us to buy more since they'd a discount. When my husband saw that the pack he picked up was past its expiry date and pointed out the purposelessness of a discount at the cost of one's health, she seemed embarrassed and tried to point out fresher stuff. Twice we also politely expressed similar concerns about the freshness of products to the elderly gentleman, who seems to be the main owner. He too merely tried to smilingly avoid the issue by immediately offering to bring out fresher stock or pointing out alternate stuff, and trying to engage one in over familiar chatter( which wud be tolerable if the quality of their products also was!) Finally, the receipt we get for our purchases is the most absurd I've ever seen! No item names! It is a printout of different prices against a single code repeating itself(ex: 'DEPT 19' repeating 25 times if one buys 25 items!), perhaps only meant to be comprehended by the sellers,not by the poor guys emptying their pockets on whatever it stands for! Anyway, it has taken us 3 visits and over $350 to conclude we NEVER WANNA GO BACK there because we now have zero trust in their quality practices or in their concern for their customer's wellbeing. I feel so cheated and angry at having spent time & hard earned money to buy things only to throw them into the trash! I know that the owners have been made aware of such overwhelming quality concerns by people like us yet it doesn't seem like they really care, as long as they can go on(thanks perhaps to so many people who will complain bitterly but never make an effort to write down their experiences!) Perhaps the owners are happy sticking to profits with the very ordinary fare at their restaurant section, where the prices are cheap, but coming straight from India I know how much better the taste shud be.(I liked only the mango lassi).I admit I terribly wanted India Sweets & Spices to've worked out right for me. But,when a business cares so little for its responsibility towards its customers and seems so determined not to gain the goodwill of those who give it a chance, one really has no choice!
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