Ever heard of the saying 'The customer is always right?'. Well
it seems that Adi of Adi Va on Ashley Road in Hale has not, even when,
ironically, the customer is right!
Let me paint the scene for you. Picture it, last Thursday, an
elderly couple taking their daily stroll through Hale village when the lady
points out a fur gilet to her husband before going home. The husband, wanting
to surprise his wife, returns to the shop later on to purchase the gilet. He is
told upon purchase that the clothes in store are all one size only. Now
this is meant to be an upscale boutique in a relatively wealthy area, we all
know that 'one size only' garments are meant to fit sizes 8-12 only. The
husband therefore thinks nothing of it, especially since the sales assistant
had seen his wife earlier, and goes on to purchase the gilet much to the
appreciation of his wife. That's what we all want in later life right; simple
things like this to bring pleasure to us like it did to this couple.
Imagine their surprise then, when the wife tries on the gilet to
find it is infact a size 'XL' and the size had simply been inked over on the
Kimble. Now the store, Adi Va, are very clear on their returns policy, it
states clearly on the receipt as well as a notice on the till, that refunds are
not given and that exchanges can only be made within 7 days. This is fair
enough you might think, but taking into account that the product was in fact
miss sold, the elderly couples daughter in law decided to appeal to the sales
assistant instead of going through trading standards as the couple initially
had decided.
Now, everyone knows that with a boutique such as Adi Va, as with
any luxury or high end store, you are not just paying the higher price tag for
the better quality of the garment, but you are paying it for everything
associated with an upscale store/boutique. This includes the wrapping of the
garment, the ease of access to a store and, by far most importantly, the
excellent standard of customer service you should receive. Sadly however, Adi
appears to be missing the customer service skills sorely needed for the running
of a contemporary boutique.
Back to the story, the daughter in law tried to appeal to Adi's
better nature regarding the miss sell of the product; you simply can't say that
a product is one size when it clearly has a size label on it. Adi's argument
was that 'this is how they do it in Europe' and 'all of the clothes have this
size sewn on the label'. Firstly, as someone who works for a large European
fashion brand as well as studies fashion, I knew that this was a lie, but then
Adi proceeded to try and demonstrate her point by showing different garments
which supposedly all had the same size label. You can of course imagine the
daughter in law's amusement when some of the garments in fact had a 'M/L' size
label.
Adi however, belligerently tried to defend her actions, stating
that they were still all one size but that 'if for your own psychological mind
you need to see an M/L, I will call the supplier'. As you can imagine, the
customer had stayed calm up to this point and was perfectly happy to exchange
the gilet for a smaller size, but after this rudeness, she decided she would
let trading standards handle the issue. This appeared to make Adi come to her
senses; she took the customers details and said she would contact her once she
had spoken to her supplier. The customer agreed, but said that Adi should not
order in the gilet until she had spoken to her mother in law about the
situation.
An hour later, the customer received a voicemail from Adi
stating that after a conversation with the supplier she could confirm that the
garments did in fact come in different sizes (admitting liability), apologising
and saying that she had ordered a smaller size for the elderly lady to swap but
it could take 3-4 days for delivery. Now, bearing in mind the returns policy,
both the lady and her daughter in law felt it best to obtain a refund before
the initial 7 days had lapsed, leaving the lady free to purchase the smaller
size should it fit.
The daughter in law called Adi to explain this, now in a
situation as precarious and the fact that Hale is a very small village leaving
a store like Adi Va to rely heavily on word of mouth as the best form of
promotion, one would think that Adi would simply agree (considering she knew
herself to be wrong) to the refund for the sake of keeping her customers happy.
Sadly this was not the case.
Adi decided to agree to tell the daughter in law she could have
the refund but 'as a local business women, I've not had to pay for the cost of
delivery for the new gilet and that makes you wrong'. Hold on, wasn't she told not
to order the new size until contacted? The conversation went this way, with Adi
telling the customer she was wrong and out of order until the customer ended
the call.
The story ends with a full refund being secured, a distraught
elderly couple, an angry daughter in law and an out of pocket boutique owner.
However had Adi of handled the situation professionally she would of ended up
with the lady buying back the smaller gilet and the reputation of her store
remaining intact. Now however, Adi had single handedly tainted the reputation
of her store.
I wrote a post a while ago regarding mass consumerism and my
distaste for large chains putting independent stores out of business, but this
has illustrated that perhaps it isn't just down to chains. If owners like Adi
handled their customers better, perhaps we wouldn't all be going to conglomerates;
it says a lot though, that this kind of event just wouldn't happen in
Selfridges.
