Matalan

Always a pleasant enough experience shopping here. Well stocked and laid out. I like the new self service counters, it has seemed to help with the queues at the tills, but I hope they don’t cause a loss of staff, as the staff are friendly and add to the shop, so it would be a shame to lose them.

A Matalan is a clothes and home shopper's haven,
Hard to locate and when seen the feeling is one of electrifying reaction.

Immersed in personified satisfaction.
For all household items,
Intensified gratification.
When a Matalan is spotted from a distance.

Kol-C, poet reviewer

Good choice of clothes and very reasonably priced. Friendly staff.

The only reason I didnt give this 3 was because the shopping experience in the Croydon store was not so calm and spacious. Easy to park. Mainly self checkout but help is readily available. The store is quite well laid out, especially the ladies wear, (which is why I shop there).

Negatives, clothing on the wrong size hanger. A shortage of the most sought after/average sizes and also those sizes in shorter lengths, which is especially frustrating when it's standard popular clothing, such as black work trousers. Time limited seasonal wear also seems to have a limited number of average sizes so there are soon only very large or very small are left. Due to the Sutton centre branch closing and the other stores being out-of town, visits now have to be carefully planned and fewer.

The men's section is a lot smaller than that in the now closed Sutton branch and I feel that size selection is especially limited.

I'm also not keen on the unisex changing room. It is quite small as well so that if you leave to go find different sizes etc, you then have to wait again. The parking is limited to 2 hours so if shopping at Aldi first and then popping into Matalan and trying clothes, and also maybe picking up some homeware and gifts; you can soon run out of time. I almost did. 3 hour parking would be better

The other issue today was that there seemed to be huge amounts of dust everywhere. Even clean items wheeled in my store basket had somehow gained large very dusty patches in transit. My guess is that this is dust that accumulates beneath displays and at some point wafts out. It was the same in the changing rooms where dust balls were nestling in and around discarded packing. I daresay the store will blame the cleaners however I would look at the manpower, time and tools being allocated.

Overall, however, Matalan is my favourite clothing store and I'm still sad that the excellent Sutton branch closed.

It feels like cost cutting has been taken to the max. Ridiculous queues for changing rooms on a Saturday as demand outweighs supply. Self service tills are empty (daft idea for a clothes shop) as everyone waits to be served by real person. And again insufficient staff. Its a shame. Shop feels shabby and understaffed.

Ignores parking problems, not worth the risk. My wife overstayed the allotted time and received a threatening letter from UKPC demanding £100.00. The day she was there she spent over £150 which obviously took time to pick/try on etc. Sent copy receipt to Matalan who have totally ignored it, now getting regular threats from UKPC who also ignore any communications. It's not as though this store is close to a hospital/train station/town centre etc so the space was not being abused. In future we will be taking our hard earned money elsewhere.

Cheap and you get what you pay for.
I hate the way paying for a purchase has been made so complicated, the old way was much easier to que and pay a cashier, I doubt I'll shop there again as I disliked it that much

Store quite big offering good range of fashion for all, as well as household/home items, seasonal goods, footwear. Free parking available in front of store. Self service booths on right hand side with device to detach security tags. Had to visit store after ordering online order, only to find one item had security tag which had not been removed, prior to delivering to me (photo included).