Walgreens in San Diego, California

When this location first opened I loved. Small enough to find what you need without wandering miles of aisles, yet a complete stock. Clean. Knowledgeable and service-oriented staff who were easy to find for help finding an item. Now, it is a uniformly bad experience. Skeleton staff means you can never find someone to help. It also means that the front doors facing University Avenue are locked much of the time. So one has to walk around a darkened sidewalk or a alley to the parking lot entrance often walking through groups of sketchy characters. I am an adult male, in good shape, but I would not choose to walk around there unless necessary. It is a potential safety issue. The decision to block the main pedestrian entrance reflects a complete misunderstanding by "management" of the character of this neighborhood; it is a dense, congested neighborhood in which people walk...not drive...for local shopping. The staff there now, although pleasant enough, clearly don't understand customer service and often appear new, under trained and clueless. One last point, concerning the Pharmacy---at some point in the recent past there seems to have been a change in software systems that is a nightmare. I used to regularly receive texts saying that a prescription was ready for refill or pickup. Now....nothing. I get a call from pharmacy staff saying I've had a prescription waiting that will be returned to stock unless I pick it up....when I never knew that a refill had been requested or filled. When I say this is the first I've heard of this, they seem perplexed... apparently assuming that I had been notified by their new system. When I ask that the prescription be held until day X for pickup, I am assured that it will be. On Day X, when I arrive to pick up the prescription, I am told that it was returned to stock and there was no record of my request to hold it for pick-up on day X, sometimes accompanied by a comment about how the new corporate system was having problems. This has happened now 3 times. Lack of reliability in pharmacy systems concerns me. Long story short.... ---Clearly a disastrous change in management between opening day and now. I have been a longtime Walgreen's customer for decades, filling numerous continuing prescriptions through Walgreens. I like continuity and dislike change, but time for a change. I had great hopes for this place when it opened as a possible right-scaled alternative for the neighborhood to the mega Rite-Aid 2 blocks away and the frankly depressing Sav-On 2 blocks on the other direction. Sadly I expect it will be closed in a year.

I give it a right in the middle rating cause my experiences here have been ok...only thing is last time I was there, I purchased two gallons of water cause was in a hurry and didn't want to go all the way to Ralph's (where I usually get it) and found these really nice bottles with cute navy blue handles which after I was already home (and had drank a good part of one of the bottles) I was curious to know where they came from (because they looked so different) and upon reading label found out they were bottled in MICHIGAN not far from FLINT!!!....What about their water problem ???!!!! Anyway, hope this water has nothing to do with it...but definitely wondering!!