From the archives, this is one of my favorite interactions with a corporation (Williams and Sonoma) mainly because an employee decided to go rogue and write a sarcastic note back to me on Yelp!
My initial email:
To Whom It May Concern:
I recently purchased the Beaba Babycook Machine from your store at the Santa Anita Mall in Arcadia, California.
baby food, poppycock.
I paid over $180 for the machine. Upon opening the box, I noticed the cookbook was missing and the instruction manual was marked with dry-food stains, presumably indicating prior use.
When I called and spoke with the manager on duty, she notified me that it was IN FACT Williams and Sonoma policy to sell open-box items at full price (without disclosing such information) if the item in question was never used.
Is this in fact your policy?! If so, why not provide your customers the common courtesy of knowing they are purchasing previously opened goods?!
Many luxury stores like your own refuse selling open-box items. And those that do they offer full disclosure and a discount.
It’s a shame you don’t do similarly.
Sincerely,
CA
Then came their corporate response:
Thank you for contacting Williams-Sonoma.
We are disheartened to hear about your poor retail experience.
Please know we have contacted the store manager at the Santa Anita Mall in California. She has verified that you have exchanged your original Beaba Baby Cook for a new one. She indicated that she did check the replacement to be sure that it had not been used.
For future reference it is not our policy to resale used merchandise.We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience that this has caused. We thank you for your patronage. Your business is appreciated.
That was straight-forward enough even while side-stepping the fact they in fact sold an open-boxed item. But then came a response via Yelp where I posted my letter.
I work at that Williams-Sonoma and am sorry about your experience. Unfortunately we are low volume store with a small amount of associates. We often take the word of the customer when they return an item and ask if they “had a chance to try it out” a polite way of saying did you use it. Any item that comes back to the store is suppose to be checked for use. This particular one slipped under the radar. What you failed to mention is that we rectified the situation immediately.
Just an FYI. Most customers get extremely upset when we ask if they have used the item that they return. They take it as an insult. If more people where honest these types of mistakes would not be made. Also when items are retuned to our store it effects our bottom line therefore the more items returned the less money we have to operate efficiently, like adding more associates.
I hope you won’t allow this one incident to detour you from shopping with us in the future. Oh and by the way the Beaba is 149.00 not 180.00. Sorry for your inconvenience.
Oh, no, she didn’t! Pass the mic back over here!
I appreciate the response. And I empathize with the challenges of working with customers who aren’t always honest. But when you say you ‘rectified the situation immediately’ what that really means is I had to make the half hour drive to return the item, walk half a mile around the mall and into your store, explain the situation, walk the half mile back to my car and drive another half hour home. In all candor, you didn’t do much.
With regards to returned items effecting your bottom line, that seems to me precisely the reason your store doesn’t more thoroughly inspect returned items. You have a vested interest in selling as many as you can.
Lastly, I paid $180 total (tax included). If you’d like refund me the difference I paid then I’d be more than happy to collect.
Big. Brown. Dad for the win!