Fwiw, Evo/Innova were bought by P&G a couple of years ago. If it hasn't already, I'd expect the quality of the ingredients to go downhill, even if they don't change the ingredients themselves.
Petco is responsible for more people failing in this hobby than anything else!
Eventually their poor quality management, employees, customer service and highest prices will get their doors closed!
If you love Petco then you really need to get out more!!
There's a fine line between customer service vs.telling people what they want to hear, good vs poor managers, and teaching employees a decent amount of needed info vs. realising they won't last long and not caring, which unfortunately most of the corporate places don't seem to have found(and then again, a lot of LFS don't seem to know where it is either)
A lot of the time, the management of the store in question definitely tells how good of service a customer will receive. I heard a story on a non-pet forum I used to belong to once where an employee was fired with no warning for telling a customer she couldn't buy a 10 gallon tank set it up that day with a half dozen various species of large growing and non-compatible fish into it without them dying. The customer complained to the manager, the girl lost her job. On the other hand, I've also read stories from people who have managers at chain stores that will allow them to refuse sales to people flat out if they weren't discouraged from buying poor equipment choices because it is cruel. The petco in the town in CO I used to live in went from being more or less decent(the lady who ran the fish department had 3-4 tanks of her own, all well maintained, so she could actually give customers good advice most of the time) to being awful when the manager left. As in they had multiple complaints to the health department and various other government agencies because of how poorly they were taking care of their animals. . .
I will say that it is unfortunate, but it seems that most of the people I run into working at the big chain stores are teens working at a minimum wage job and letting it show. A few know their animals, but a lot of them got the job because the store was hiring, or because it seemed cool at the time. The corporate offices realise that, and a lot of the time figure that spending a large amount of time/money to train an employee who might stay with them for a couple of years at max(or until they see the amount of things they would need to learn to work there!) would be a waste of time and effort. Instead they give them a brief training "course" and tell them to refer to the caresheets, which are not always very well made.
I would definitely agree, though, with the sentiment that locally owned stores can be just as bad. While I still lived in CO, I was thinking of setting up a 14 gallon biocube(so glad I got my 29 instead!) and asked one of the stores which had been in town for longer than I lived there what I could stock it with. Just looking for ideas. Tangs were one of the fish mentioned, and at one of the LFS here in Tampa, while I was looking into my 29, I again, went fishing for ideas(pun intended :spin2: ) and was told again that tangs would be great as a "small" colourful addition(a yellow, apparently, would be fine for its whole life in there, whereas a hippo would eventually outgrow it if I keep up on my maintenance. In about a decade. . . ). When I mentioned that I was only looking for 1-2 fish for the tank, he also said that I could use a shoehorn to stock it(my wording, not his) and if it were his tank he would put 5-6 "medium" sized fish in there. Needless to say, I'm not exactly thinking about taking their advice on the matter of what to put into it.
I really do think that stores in general and the hobby overall would be better if the stores would send customers home with a list of sites to browse through to find out info instead of trying to educate them there. "Oh, hey Mr. Employee, I want to buy an XYZ. What do I need?" Instead of giving them a caresheet that says an "appropriate sized" enclosure, with a few shelved products that say "for XYZs!" on the label, hand them a list of hobbyist made care sheets that can be found online and tell them to read through those(assuming that most people either have internet access at home, or have access to a public library, since all of the ones I've been to since the internet started getting bigger have had free internet access with a free library card.) and a comment to read it all over, then to not necessarily mix and match advice, but to look at the average care requirements of said animal, and use a median of all of that info. Hobbyist made sheet being better because as I see it harped on forums a lot, we generally are more interested in the animal itself instead of trying to sell them something, not to mention that one of the stores in my hometown(which doesn't exist anymore, thankfully!) was famous for selling people a "complete setup" for whatever animal, and then in the case of fish, selling dozens of add ons when the fish kept dying, or in the case of birds/reptiles/small animals which weren't quite as likely to die, upgrades to what he didn't mention was "starter" equipment when the customers bought it. Honestly, if the person is going to be deterred from buying a pet because she's asked to go home and look up care info rather than being spoon fed "this is a fish. You need a fish tank for it. And a fish filter for it. And some fish food." they are likely not going to be someone who stays in the hobby/actually cares for the stuff in their care.
As for Tanked? I've never seen it!