My initial experience with this business was a good one. The owner was helpful to my ankle condition, provided me with good orthopaedic inserts, and recommended shoes that might be good for me. However, my experience with a member of staff was markedly different. One staff member (quite helpful herself) measured me for compression stockings while I was in the shop the first time and made a recommendation that required a special order. I ordered over $300 in product as a result of that recommendation. Unfortunately, the stockings didn't fit when they arrived. They were not knee-high as I had requested, and as a result, they were neither comfortable or wearable.
Six weeks later after a long trip abroad (I left right after the stockings came in and had no time to return them before departure), I presented the three unopened pairs at the store for a refund. (I ate the cost of the pair I had tried on, even though they fit poorly, and I ought to have been able to bring them back as well). A third member of staff, presumably a manager, said that because I had bought the stockings "over two months ago," it was "store policy" to only provide store credit for the return. I explained to her what I've written above, but it didn't matter, and she replied that "everyone everywhere" had the same return policy her shop did. I explained to her that the shop was small and specialized and had little else to offer for three hundred dollars, but that didn't matter, and she repeated her assertion that "everyone everywhere" did business exactly as she was. I disabused her of this notion, and she finally relented, but on the whole she was an insufferable employee who could not or would not show me the return policy she was quoting.
Meanwhile, the member of staff who had measured me for the stockings recommended a pair of vegan Birkenstocks to me, which I bought and then ordered a pair for my husband in order not to have wasted so much money at the shop. However, after we left, my husband found the receipt for the original purchase of stockings, and I decided to take it back to the manager in order to demonstrate that it had not been two months since I had made the purchase and to re-explain that I had taken the store's counsel in placing the order. I had hoped to reason with her not because I was looking for a refund any longer but because I liked the owner, I liked that he was stocking vegan shoes, and I hoped that my feedback might be constructive.
Sadly, the manager was even more insufferable than she had been the last time. She indicated that I should have known in advance that stockings I was unfamiliar with would not fit me before they arrived and asked the store to order custom-made stockings in the first place. She gave no indication that the store's window of return was different at six weeks than it was at two months, and in fact, she lied about the store policy as she had quoted it to me the first time, saying "I never said two months. I said 'going on two months'." She accused me of shouting at her when I had not raised my voice even once in either conversation. She admitted the order of stockings was in error, and she admitted the error was the store's, but then she shrugged her shoulders and said, "So? What else?" At one point she tried to back out of the conversation by saying that she hadn't ordered the stockings for me, even though she was representing the business in her conversation, and she kept saying "it's store policy," throughout even though the policy shifted to match her whim.
By the time I left, I was glad to have found something to buy so I didn't have to take the store to small claims court, which I was ready to do on the behaviour of the manager alone. She did a significant disservice to an otherwise great little store, and I'm concerned about the damage she might do to the store's reputation with other customers. I certainly won't buy anything there again.
Addendum:
First, it appears the difficult woman mentioned in my review above is the wife of the store owner, which makes her claim to be following store policy over which she had no control all the more repulsive.
Second, a member of staff (Samantha?) phoned us a couple of weeks after the incident to tell us that my husband's Birkenstocks would not be available until next year and to offer us a cash refund of the balance on our account with the shop. However, when my husband arrived to collect the refund, the same difficult woman/wife of the owner refused to give it to him. It was nothing short of bizarre.
TL;DR version? Don't spend any money whatsoever at this shop. You'll never get it back, even if the store makes a mistake. read more
