Mom & Pop Convenience Store - Montgomery, Alabama

Marty Proett

5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ for the character of the owner!
While on vacation I left my phone in the bathroom of this Mom & Pop Convenience Store east of Montgomery, Alabama. Didn’t realize the phone was missing until we’d driven 2 hours, but it was getting too late in the evening to go back. We had a few hours yet to go to get to our next hotel we had reserved & couldn’t turn back to get it. The following morning we called the station & left a message about our dilemma. A few hours later the owner of the store, Sanjay Patel, called my husband’s phone, as my phone was set up to give a number to call should it be lost. We had a very difficult time understanding his English due to his thick accent & he seemed to have just as much difficulty understanding us. Further complicating things, my husband’s phone kept cutting out on us as we drove which made understanding the conversation worse. At one point the call dropped & for a brief moment we were concerned that he had just given up on the conversation, but that was not the case. He immediately called us back & the tortuous efforts to understand each other resumed. He told us he would hold the phone for us until we could find time to come back - “…tomorrow, a week from now. A month. Whenever you can, I will hold it for you,” he said, but we told him we likely wouldn’t be back that way for a long time…maybe years, or maybe never. It took awhile but we were able to convey to him our intent to send a $50 money order to cover expenses to ship the phone back & whatever cash was left over he could keep for the inconvenience we caused him. He agreed to that but he wanted the money order to arrive before he sent the phone (understandable?) & we acquiesced to this honor system with the realization that we could lose both money & phone. But we trusted him because he seemed trustworthy. So we mailed the money order through the U.S.Postal Service, as Sanjay requested, after we got home. It was over a weekend so it took awhile to get to him but he sent my phone right away through UPS after he got the money order. A couple days after my phone arrived he called us & asked if we’d gotten the phone. (How thoughtful!) Then he told us he was going to send the extra money back & we told him no, that’s for you to keep for your inconvenience. He insisted he send back the unused money & we insisted he keep it & he kept insisting otherwise, saying that it had been NO inconvenience to him at all. We prevailed because we felt it WAS an inconvenience for him & he had been so patient dealing with our difficult communication issues & patient when the phone was constantly cutting out on us. We appreciated how much effort he gave trying to enunciate his English & was equally patient with us when we couldn’t understand him. So we give him 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ for his character. We were just so happy to get my phone & the Apple magnetic battery I keep on it to extend its charge. So, thank you, Sanjay! We appreciate all you did for us.

And for the brief moment I had been in Sanjay’s convenience store I have to say the restroom was not a disgusting issue by any means. And I always notice those things if they are. Had no complaints about the state of the restroom - although, were the convenience store mine, I would paint the restroom a very, very soft, light peachy-pink to brighten it up a bit?.

Venessa Young

It's a gas station with a subway. The worse part is they charge you extra PER GALLON of gas if you use a card to buy it. Why not just charge a small fee to swipe the card if your business is that slow you can't afford to pay the fee yourself? Instead you're making like $0.35 per gallon which adds up quick when you get 11 gallons of gas

Sabrina Janow

The bathrooms are disgusting. Mold growing all around the bowl as if it’s not been cleaned in months.