Stores / Websites with the Worst Customer Service

[fika]

zara, ugh. it's a spanish company and they seem to favour hiring spanish speaking staff, some of them barely speak english here in london. they literally have no time for you, my friend asked for something in a different size and the SA just blew her off and told her there definitely weren't any different sizes... so my friend asked her to go look anyway, absolute deaaaaath looks from all the SAs haha. surprise surprise though they did have more sizes! so off putting when you want to shop there

 

[beduina]

Browns South Molton Street
They went on "shoes sale" last Tuesday so i thought i would have a look, as i was browsing i came across a pair of shoes i've looking for a long time, i couldn't belive my eyes! not only in my size but also on sale. Unfortunately i didn't have the whole amount to buy them there and then so i told one of the SA's my situation and asked if i could do a deposit towards it. She said no but, that she could put them by for me. I said i would't be able to get them till Friday(her face changed slightly but still agreed to do it even though they are not allowed, had my name, mobile number everything. How nice of her i thought). So i went to Browns on Friday to collect them and what do i find? not only my shoes were put out they were also been tried on by someone. I approached a SA who not only was very snotty but, also rude. Told her my situation, as she was getting the shoes for me from the Stockroom her collegue (who is serving the lady who is trying them on) comes along to get the other shoe for her (this lady heard the whole story btw) cos her customer wants to buy them! so the girl who o sple in the first place said to me: "Well we are not allowed to put shoes on sale on hold, xxxxx shouldn't have done it , there's a lady who wants to buy them now so i can't do it for you. Just so you know i'm the Shoe manager that's why i'm telling you all this" (You should have seen her co-worker's face who was also being quite rude to me as she wanted to make the sale there and then for the other girl) She even gave me attitude! such an uncomfortable position. At that point not getting the shoes wasn't the issue anymore, it was about how she spoke to me and the way she dealt with it.

 

[HeatherAnne]

AMAZON!

They have this new kick where they will sale books pre-order at a low price and then e-mail you when they come out and say they were unavailable due to a lack of supply.

Ugh. They did this to me with the Hedi Slimane Anthology of a Decade book this month, and to my sister a Malene Birger book.

 

[StoneSkipper]

I remember once at a perfume store I visited with my friend. There were some fragrance samples beside the SA's counter, so I went there to actually smell those perfumes. When I was ready to grab one and spray it on the paper, one of the staff went to me and said: "Do you work here?' I said no, and then he said "Then, please go."
That was the most rude treatment I have recieved of a salesperson in a store. I left almost immediately, and got very pissed off when I left. Never stepped foot in there again.

 

[wishbone666]

Scotties boutique in New Zealand (I'm sure new Zealanders would have heard of it) I had an awful experience there where I bought a very expensive scarf there only to find a hole two days later. I emailed to ask if I should return it, they said I should, so I did. Then it had to be posted to the Auckland store for the owner to have a look at to ***es if I should be given a refund. They didn't get back to me for 10 days and then when I phoned I was given a refund over the phone. The next day the SA who had given me a refund phoned me and basically yelled at me saying she thought the hole was my fault, she had got in trouble with the manager and should not have given me the refund etc. Basically she (and the manager) were completely rude and inappropriate because of a lack of communication between the two of them. I will never be shopping there again because of how rude they were. I would have even accepted store credit if it was offered nicely

 

[softgrey]

well-
i recently went into a certain store looking for leather pants...
-you would have thought i was speaking greek to these people......

one girl showed me a bunch of different pants...
all were waxed denim...
NOT leather...
when i pointed out to her that they were not leather...she showed me another style...
in waxed cotton...and said- 'these are leather'...
*uhmmm- no they're not!...
...

then she asked some other employees if they knew anything...
and they said they didn't know anything about anything on hold for me...
duh!---what i need to know is do you have any leather pants in the store?
*what is so hard about this question?!?...
...


fuhggetaboutit...
*i just decided to leave before i hit one of them......

 

[gwendolynnn]

Some of the cashiers at the Zara near my town are really rude, not just towards to me but also to a lot of other customers. Sometimes they ignore you when you want to pay, and if they do pay attention to you it's very little. The girls that work there haven't said a word to me, except for the amount of cash I had to pay. I really don't like buying things there anymore.

But, I have to say, when I visited Limerick this summer, I went to Brown Thomas and there was such a nice salesperson! She was very friendly, we talked a while, I had great fun shopping there! I also like the service at Nordstrom's!

 

[sundaymorning]

The staff at ANY H&M on princes st. Not once have I had good service from any of them, been living in Edinburgh for years now.

 

[á la Balenciaga]

zara, ugh. it's a spanish company and they seem to favour hiring spanish speaking staff, some of them barely speak english here in london. they literally have no time for you, my friend asked for something in a different size and the SA just blew her off and told her there definitely weren't any different sizes... so my friend asked her to go look anyway, absolute deaaaaath looks from all the SAs haha. surprise surprise though they did have more sizes! so off putting when you want to shop there

the SA's from zara here in santa monica are the same way but theyre extremely polite and helpful. theyre all spanish speakers. also the MANGO store here, they only hire spanish speakers too.
Posted via Mobile Device

 

[beduina]

I agree with most of the Zara comments, most of the sales assistants are from Spain (at least in London) even though I speak Spanish I find it a bit rude when they speak between themselves in Spanish in front of customers, at the end of the day you're in England so they should be speaking English besides they customer service isn't wonderful at all sometimes it looks as if they can't be bothered .

 

[Laritournelle]

Definitely Zara. Just went to their store with a clear intention to buy a great pair of trousers. I tried on 4 pairs but none of them was a great fit. So I got myself one size smaller pants and the SA who hands out numbers said "Oh..It's you again" with a clear emphasis on the word "you". As if I was interupting her again.

 

[lucy92]

a few months ago i was in zara and i needed a sales assistant to help me find a mate of a shoe that was missing. it wasnt out on the salesfloor.

i asked a worker there for assistance, she said that because it was sales season she was not to assist customers.

i made her repeat herself. it sounded so ridiculous.

i said "um, i can go up to the sales desk and ask them for it, right?" she said yes grudgingly.

i think i need to go in there and secretly film some of the so called service i get.

 

[MyNameIs]

Haha, reading these responses is fun.

Am I the only person who finds best customer service to be left alone at a store? Nothing I find more annoying than seven different clerks asking me if I need help. I just like to browse the items and if I need someone I will find you. Sometimes I'm scared to walk into a store if there's nobody there, because I'm afraid to be ambushed by the salespeople, lol.

 

[Thefrenchy]

My boyfriend and I were at Selfridges last month and had to deal with a quite rude SA. My boyfriend was looking for a suit. He had first spotted a very nice Dries van Noten one which was unfortunately not available in his size anymore. The SA offered him to try on a McQueen one which really didn't fit him. My bf handed it back to the SA who grabbed it away very quickly and disappeared without even saying goodbye

 

[IsabelMarantBoy]

I had the worst experience shopping today at Odessa Boutique in Portland. There are only 2 stores in the state that carry IM pieces, and Marios hadn't recieved their winter stock yet (they were really nice, when my friend asked about a water fountain she brought us two glasses of water). So I decided to check out Odessa. When I walked in, the woman said one word to me and I tried being friendly, chatting about brands but she just stared at me. I found a nice Marant sweatshirt and kindly asked to try it on. She just looked me up and down and said "That doesn't look like it would fit you" Granted, I know I'm a guy but I've worn IM before and I was even wearing a Balenciaga womans vest. I said "Well I have one of her Etoile coats and that fits me fine" and she replied with "Well the mainline pieces run much much smaller" So I just put it back and left. Never going back there again.

 

[Thefrenchy]

^I really don't get that kind of attitude. Doesn't her damn job consist in SELLING the clothes. If your client wants to try it on, let him try it on for Christ's sake

 

[IsabelMarantBoy]

^ Haha i'm glad you're on my side. I know that Isabel Marant's sizing doesn't have the biggest range, but I was holding a size 3 shirt in my hands and she tried to tell me IM only designs for woman up to a size 6. Bullsh*t!

 

[lucy92]

so sales managers are only now realizing how annoying sales clerks can be due to the ease of online shopping? nytimes.com

‘Can I Help You?’ Irks the Web-Savvy Customer

By TAFFY BRODESSER-AKNER

ON a Friday morning last autumn, a reporter walked into a Gap store at the Grove, a shopping mall in Los Angeles. A young, bright-eyed woman in jeggings and a side ponytail bounded over with a warm greeting.
“How are you?” she asked. “Can I help you with anything?”
Over the next 15 minutes, four other similarly young, beaming and bejegginged women approached with the same question. The first two circled back and asked again how they could help.
Less than 10 minutes later, the second one said, “Still doing good?”
And this was at a store where all the clothing is on display, with plentiful colors and sizes.
Roxanna Booth Miller, a fund-raiser who lives in Hartford, said she has had negative reactions to solicitous salespeople at Nordstrom, a store famous for customer service.
“They’re more subtle at Nordstrom, but the message is the same: Buy this!” said Ms. Miller, 43. “I try to be empathetic. They’re trying to make a living, I understand, but as I get older, I just can’t keep feeling bad about it. I was at a Victoria’s Secret, trying something on in a dressing room, and a salesclerk stood outside my door with 10 more items that she thought I’d like.”
Some shoppers may like that kind of hands-on service, but not Ms. Miller. “I really prefer a more solitary shopping experience,” she said.
So does Robin Walker, a children’s clothing designer in Los Angeles. She used to shop at J. Crew and Abercrombie & Fitch in malls, but began to find the salespeople too aggressive.
“Whenever someone sees you, it’s their job to say, ‘Do you need anything?’ ” said Ms. Walker, 32. “They don’t really care how you are. I’m pretty frank. I’d say, ‘I’m good for right now.’ And I’d say, over and over, ‘If I need something, I’ll ask you.’ ”
Eventually, Ms. Walker said, she began doing most of her shopping on the Internet, buying clothing from Gilt.com and ShopBop.com, as well as the online portals of her favorite stores.
Intolerance of salespeople’s traditional swarm-and-greet approach is increasingly common, said Mark G. Pingol, a vice president at Envirosell, an international consumer behavior research and consulting firm in New York.
“Sales associates have always been aggressive, but it is our exposure to new types of self-shop retail models that have made us more attuned to their pushiness,” Mr. Pingol wrote in an e-mail. “At the department store, the beauty associate is on top of shoppers from the moment they walk into the section. In our studies, women often described them as ‘sharks’ or ‘vultures.’ ”
A customer’s attempt to get to an intended counter “becomes as planned and calculated as a military airstrike,” he added.
Self-service has long infiltrated the consumer experience, most recently with self-checkout at grocery stores. But the biggest factor affecting attitudes toward salespeople may be the amount of time people spend shopping online, which tends to be a solitary experience. In 2011, online shopping on Cyber Monday was up 22 percent over the previous year, according to comScore, which tracks Internet traffic.
“The element of control, by contrast to the salesperson service experience, is attractive,” said Ravi Dhar, a professor of marketing and psychology at Yale. “You feel like you’re in control of the entire experience, and people like that. There is this notion for the millennial generation that they don’t quite like the style of salesmanship that was going on, since they were raised on online shopping. But it might be becoming true for a larger group of people.”
Mr. Dhar and Mr. Pingol mentioned the practice adopted by Sephora, the cosmetics chain, which asks its sales staff to hover in the background until a customer signals for help, as an antidote for those turned off by aggressive salespeople. Mr. Pingol said that women describe Sephora and the Apple chain, which also prefers the soft sell, as “playgrounds.”
A New York company, Shanker Inc., has been helping train salespeople to narrow what its president, Martin Shanker, called the “distancing of the customer from salespeople.”
“This distancing is so serious today that some customers walk into stores and hold their hand up and say, ‘Just looking,’ ” said Mr. Shanker, who said he has trained the employees of luxury stores like Ralph Lauren, Burberry and Van Cleef & Arpels. Mr. Shanker, who has worked in retail and who calls himself a behaviorist, said he believes that customers have been turned off by years of what he calls “greeting clichés.”
“The customer walks into a store, and they need time to adjust their eyes to the light,” he said. “They maybe never were in the store before. They want to feel the lay of the land even if they know what they want. So if you go up to them before they’re ready and say, ‘Can I help you?’ which is a cliché, you hear, ‘No, thank you.’ That’s a silent derailer because, as subtle as that is, the salesperson unintentionally actually pushed the customer to say no. You don’t ever ask or pose any question that would get you a no.”
The key, Mr. Shanker said, is to get salespeople comfortable with silence after their initial approach, which runs counter to the traditional model of following a customer around and offering information about a product the minute the customer looks at or touches it.
As for the high level of attention at the Gap store, Nick Costino, a district manager in Southern California, said the company was aware of customers’ varying attitudes and was adjusting accordingly.
“We see the customer with their earbuds in” who does not want to be approached by a sales representative, Mr. Costino said. “Some shoppers don’t want that kind of service, especially the ones we see who have done their pre-shopping online. But some do. That’s why we have personal stylists in some stores. People ask for that level of interaction.”
In the end, he said, “We are working on being able to deliver on both ends of that service spectrum.”

 

[pen6693]

I'm surprised by the Zara comments.
The SA's here in Chicago were very friendly. I could see that they were busy, but they still managed to ask questions.
I was trying on a jacket, not my size, I asked for another one, and the SA came back within 2 minutes with the coat.

 

[reese06]

Interesting article. However, I work at Nordstrom and it's commission so if i don't talk to you someone else will. i would also like to say that sometimes I'm just making my presence known so that when the customer does have a question there is a recognizable face there to help. I wouldn't doubt that some of these people are the same people who when they do need help say, "no one greeted me, asked me if i needed help, etc".

I don't think recognizing the customer is so bad.