Let’s face it. We’re going to have a bad cus­tomer expe­ri­ence from time to time and when it does hap­pen — it may leave you feel­ing a cer­tain way about the place where the sub-par ser­vice hap­pened, right?

I had the fol­low­ing hap­pen to me at a Dillard’s store in Atlanta and have yet to have the sit­u­a­tion addressed by any­one at the company.

On last Thurs­day, July 5, 2012 at approx­i­mately 2pm I vis­ited the above
store to attempt to return mer­chan­dise that I bought from another
Dillard’s store (Atlantic Sta­tion, Atlanta, GA.) The receipt is from
3/10/12 and has faded since then. Upon enter­ing the Perime­ter loca­tion I
was first greeted by a friendly cashier at a cus­tomer ser­vice desk who
asked if store credit would be fine since the return was over 30 days
old. The proof of pur­chase tag could not be found in the sys­tem and the
item was from BCBG so she informed me I’d have to return it in the BCBG
sec­tion and walked me over.

The young lady at the BCBG counter was not friendly at all. She takes
the receipt and sweater I was to return and says, “I can’t even read
this and this isn’t the right receipt any­way.” I informed her that it
absolutely was the right receipt to which she told me, “This item is
$148 and your receipt is for $111.83 and I know for a FACT that we have
not marked this sweater down until this week.” Not want­ing to argue with
her and being absolutely sure my receipt was cor­rect, I asked to speak
to a man­ager. As the asso­ciate brings over the man­ager, I hear her tell
“she doesn’t have the cor­rect receipt.”

The man­ager looks at the receipt and says I can­not return the item
any­way as it is passed the 30 days. As I thought this 30 day pol­icy
applied to returns and not exchanges, she explained that it per­tained to
both. I under­stand that a pol­icy is a pol­icy and so I was pre­pared to
leave, but then she asked the BCBG counter asso­ciate how much the
sweater was sell­ing for at the present time. $68 is what she cal­cu­lated
and that is what the man­ager then offered to give me as a mer­chan­dise
credit.

I have MANY issues with this visit. First, the first asso­ciate seemed to
think I could get a credit for the mer­chan­dise I was return­ing but the
man­ager and BCBG asso­ciate told me dif­fer­ent which was extrememly
frus­trat­ing. Sec­ond, I can’t help but feel as if I was being accused of
either steal­ing the sweater or try­ing to bring it back with the wrong
receipt. Nei­ther of these were the case. I have never seen an instance
where an asso­ciate will just flat out tell a cus­tomer they are wrong and
con­tinue to do so. I think this because (my last issue) if the pol­icy
was that there was no store credit being given after 30 days, why would
the man­ager offer me $68 when I have the receipt and orig­i­nal tags (with
POP) attached to the merchandise.

Of course I declined the offer as it didn’t make sense to me and left
with the merchandise. ”

Just awful! I can­not believe that no one has called or emailed back to apol­o­gize. Clearly, I won’t be going into another Dillard’s store for a long, long, long time EVER.

When’s the last time you had a bad expe­ri­ence at a store? Use Face­book to tell us about it below.

By JaNea @janeaNOTjane

JaNea @janeaNOTjane is Shoed-In Magazine’s found­ing edi­tor which means she loves and is well versed in shoes. A for­mer finan­cial adviser, she may occas­sion­ally offer you some unso­licited advice about your money management.