[Blindtlk] Shopping Assistance

[Peter Donahue]

Hello everyone,

    I've always been under the understanding that stores of any kind are not 
obligated to provide shopping assistance for disabled buyers but most of 
them do it volunterrilly. Some will assign you someone to help yu throughout 
the entire store while others may hand you off to another courtesy person in 
each department in which you shop.

    H.E.B. is a very large supermarket chain in Texas and parts of northern 
Mexico. They pride themselves on assisting disabled shoppers. The vast 
majorrity of courtesy clerks that have assisted us have been friendly, 
knowledgeable, and will do much to make the in-store shopping experience a 
fruitful one for a disabled shopper. Some H.E.B. stores have courtesy staff 
designated as "Shopping Assistants." Since the Lincoln Heights store has 
such persons on staff we often do our grocery shopping at this location.

    Outfits like Wallmart would do well to learn from H.E.B.'S example. They 
seem to be the worst when it comes to getting shopping assistance. We've 
also had very good experiences with Sears, Best-Buy, Dillards, Guitar 
Center, Barnes&Noble,and others.

        We recently ventured in to the unknown when we ordered our new 
washing machine from Sears. Since Kenmore Appliances tend to be 
blind-friendly we bought a Kenmore front-loading washing machine online! 
Mary's copyholder helped us Braille the buttons all of which can be felt by 
a blind person and activated. We also had the appliance's owner's manual and 
quick reference guide Brailled. Anyone who owns a front loading washer knows 
that they sound like a jet  engine revving up when the spin cycle starts. 
Since Sears is a network partner we really bought the washing machine from 
ourselves!

    The beauty of shopping today is that we now can choose how we will buy 
things when we need them. Some items such as appliances may require a trip 
to the store to check accessibility while others such as items bought 
regularly could be perchased online saving one needless trips to the store 
and having to get assistance the store may or may not provide. We also have 
a service called Burpy that will pick up groceries and other items from 
local supermarkets and other stores and deliver them to the customer's home. 
The one issue we have with them is that their service can only be used with 
Google Chrome. I have discussed this matter with them and have urged them to 
moddify their shopping platform so it works in all Web browsers and mobile 
platforms. Check them out at: http://www.burpy.com

 Hope this helps.

Peter Donahue



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