Pets At Home Durham | A Review by Gemini Pet Care

Pets At Home Durham – Products & Services

The Pets At Home chain is well known to pet owners in the UK. In this review I’m looking at the Mercia Retail Park branch in the Arnison Retail Centre. It’s basically the branch close to the village of Pity Me, a name that’s always puzzled me. The postcode for this store is DH1 5GF. Pets At Home Durham is a large store which means they are able to stock a very good range of products. So whether it’s food, toys, bedding, medication, collars etc you are well catered for. I’ve always found that Pets At Home stock the more well known brands. With food for example you will find many different types of kibble from cheap and basic to more premium brands. They also do a small selection of raw food but if your pet is raw fed you probably buy from a specialist or online. Prices for most products are reasonable but I’m sure in many cases you could find things cheaper online. as is often the way.

The Pets At Home Durham branch we are reviewing does have an in store groomer, known as the Groom Room. Unlike some other branches though, it does not have an in store vet.

Opening Hours

Another advantage of a huge chain like Pets At Home is that they will typically have longer opening hours compared to a smaller, family run pet store. The opening hours for this Pets At Home Durham store are as follows:

Monday – Friday 09:00 – 20:00
Saturday 09:00 – 19:00
Sunday 10:00 – 16:00

So you can see the store is open 7 days a week and even during the week it is likely to still be open when full time workers are leaving work. I should point out that at the time of writing their opening hours on Google maps states weekday closing time as 18:00. Apparently their hours were limited slightly during Covid but nobody has since updated them again on Google.

Pets At Home Durham – The Staff

Often the quality and politeness of staff can make all the difference to a retail outlet. I’ve never had any complaints regarding the staff and it seems looking at reviews of Pets At Home Durham, most people agree with me.

The vast majority of their online reviews are positive and many of them mention the staff. I did notice that most of the negative reviews revolved around either the grooming treatments or the health of fish that they sell. Often this can be the case with huge retailers. They are setup to cater to the average pet owner and sometimes a specialist is better suited to some customers.

In summary, Pets At Home Durham is a good option for local pet owners. With its huge buying power it’s probably more resistant the the online competition than the average small family run pet store, though Covid19 probably hasn’t helped their 2020 sales figures!