Big Lots

Having two Big Lots locations in such close proximity to one another (East Hartford/​Silver Lane and Manchester/​Buckland Hills) is a huge blessing for the penny-​pinching shopper, and this location in particular offers a very large selection of goods. Granted, by the very nature of Big Lots, one can never guess which location actually has the products you want at any given time; still the larger store size has usually meant, for me, more to look through and choose from.
I would definitely recommend stocking up on goods when the 20% Off Friends and Family sale commences, usually every couple of months. If you join their Buzz Rewards loyalty program (free), you will also get emails with coupons/​discounts more often.
Final Note: My friend and fellow Unilocaler Biota H. has had issues with this Big Lots location before (see her review), but I haven’t. If you want to be on the safe side, follow Biota’s advice, and go to the East Hartford location, which I can confirm has a very nice staff, albeit a smaller selection of goods.

I don’t know why people are stressing about this place. It’s a cheap retail store to get everything when you’re on a budget. when you walk inside the store you get greeted immediately and I think that’s pretty welcoming and I got everything I needed there. I usually go there to get make up remover because usually at any other retail store it’s five dollars to eight dollars and it’s pretty expensive because you can come here and get it for a dollar. I wouldn’t trust the snacks here though they look pretty fattening and cheap. But hey that’s every snack in the world nowadays. I got all my school supplies here and The price only came up to 20 bucks which I thought was amazing so I am definitely going to come back here again especially when I’m going to college I’m going to need the cheap stuff haha

Sucks out of stock horrible service keeps changing stress on employees to do a lot and service suffers. Seems to forgot about main purpose of retail the customer. Expensive go somewhere else.

On my last visit, I tried to point out that my two bags of Lay’s BBQ chips were ringing up incorrectly.
First the cashier told me they weren’t on sale. Then I pointed at the sign on the display behind her, where it clearly advertised 2 for $ 5. She then said my chips don’t qualify because they’re for «Fritos and Cheetos.» I explained that Lay’s are owned by a company called Frito Lay, and that maybe the sign wasn’t clear, but I had seen the paper circular for the deal. She then changed tactics and said the item text was in blue, meaning that it was on sale. I tried to explain that it didn’t matter to me that it was marked «on sale» if the correct price wasn’t showing up. After this back and forth continued, one of the customers waiting in the growing line even spoke up in agreement on my behalf.
Finally, another employee had to come over and explain that the discount was actually being taken off. It seemed like she was slightly more knowledgeable than the first employee, but our conversation started off argumentative on her end.
Turns out that it’s just very unclear in their computer system when there are store discounts in addition to coupon discounts, but thankfully this was clearly denoted on the receipt. If only the first employee had simply explained to me how the store discounts worked on the computer, rather than trying to argue contradicting sides that the chips both were and weren’t on sale.
I was disappointed that both employees were argumentative, stoic in their facial expressions, and offered no apology for the mixed messages that were sent; I would have expected much better from employees who deal with customers every day.
I’ll continue to shop at Big Lots, but I’ll most likely take my business to the East Hartford location.