Cheats for your eats: is the selection worth the hassle?

I've lived in the Lido area for almost two years now. I frequently stop at Jenny Wang's (formerly Lou's) for most of my import needs without much of a hitch, often shamelessly stopping in just to oggle the varieties of cheese and wine while trying desperately to close my wallet before the tempting variety and selection overwhelms my sense of self control. I secretly gloated that I was lucky enough to so live close to such a huge treasure trove of cereals, canned goods, and alcohol.

Not after tonight. Despite how faithful and well stocked this store as been in the past, I refuse to ever step foot in there again. I stopped by tonight to pick up a package of brownie mix because despite how high and mighty you want to pretend your "made from scratch" recipes are, nothing can compete with red, cardboard boxed, minimal-amount-of-effort brownie mix. I very distinctly remember looking at the price differences between the Double Fudge and Triple Fudge varieties v.s. how much it would cost to get the regular mix and a sack of chocolate chips. Bear in mind, this is very complicated and difficult math to calculate given that it's just a box of brownies so I was very careful and number-conscious to ensure that I picked the cheapest box with the most chocolate bang for buck.

Check out time came around and the price was much higher than that on the shelf. I told the cashier how much the shelf price was and she sent someone to take a look. A few minutes later the other staff member came down to inform us that there was no price for that box. Knowing how much time I spent staring at that particular price tag, I offered to go upstairs with the other employee to show him exactly where I found the box. Once upstairs, I found that another customer was there with a similar problem with his pancake mix. Our prices had magically disappeared from the shelf! HOW CONVENIENTLY STRANGE! Four other staff members were standing around, shrugging their shoulders and refusing to listen to us explain in Chinese while alternating between, "Bukeneng, bukeneng...No....no"s, and pointing me towards the more expensive mixes while simultaneously pretending like I could neither speak Chinese nor English competently.

Look. This wouldn't be such a big deal if I wasn't hungry for some goddamn brownies. I've been cheated before, "This is China," blah blah blah. Fine. But there are loads of other places in this neighborhood where I will be shopping from now on because it's not worth the hassle. You should shop at those places too! Take a look at April Gourmet's listing on the Beijinger, just one block away from the Lido Jenny's location, and you'll find that there isn't a single review slamming their customer service, price discrepancies, or fapiaos. There's also smaller, CHEAPER, stores like Wendy's Shop (next to METRO bar on Jiangtai Lu) or the two small groceries in the Piao (飘)Home apartment complex which have much cheaper wine and cereal. They all have everything Jenny's has and more and guess what, you won't feel like a jackass afterwards! You may even work off some of that brownie mix walking back and forth between a couple of them.

2 stars because, sure, they have name recognition and a lot of shit. But no more than that because it's not worth the trouble to sift between shit and chocolate fudge brownies.