I normally love FYE. Hey, I'm a geek, I'm married to a geek, and our youngun is a budding geek. It's not often to find larger shops that offer items for geeks like us. We love music, movies, British television, obscure television, anime, you name it. Oh, and we collect Funko Pops! We almost never walk out of FYE empty handed.
While vacationing in Florida, we mapped the nearest FYE to do a little light geeky shopping and get some gifts for some geeky friends. It was about 45 minutes away one direction. That's fine; it was located in an inside mall so we figured we'd escape the sun for a bit and do some shopping.
The merchandise was about the same as any other FYE we've been to in other locations around the country, with a couple exclusive items that struck our fancy. We purchased a couple of t-shirts, a couple of Pops! and a couple of key chains.
While checking out, the cashier offered their rewards program to us, which we declined, as we do not live near the store. My husband made it a point to tell him that we drove almost an hour to get there.
So, we pay and leave and shop around the mall for a bit longer before making the 45 minute drive back to our resort. When we arrived "home", we realized that the cashier neglected to put all items in our bag. Frustrated, we call the store. A female "manager" answered and knew exactly what item was left before we explained. My husband explained to her that we are a bit of a distance from there and had a convention to attend and before he could say any more she jumps in, defensive and grumpy with "You're going to have to come get it!! There's just no way I can ship it to you." Baffled by her rudeness, he hung up. We were due to catch a flight coming up and had no idea how we'd get there. It ended up working out that we took a rental car the following day and made the hour and a half drive just to pick up the darn $8 keychain.
In the meantime, I'd emailed customer service. They promptly replied with questions about the details of the situation and wanted to make it right. However, after I responded, I never heard another word from them. What a sorry excuse for customer service!
We weren't even upset that the cashier forgot to put it in the bag; mistakes happen. It does suck that he knew we had to travel to get there and wasn't more careful. What made us made was the attitude of the "manager" when we called. She didn't even know what we were going to ask yet; we'd planned on seeing if we could just get it refunded since driving back out there was such a pain in the butt. But she jumped all over us instead of at least feigning interest in our issue. And, the fact that online customer service sucked.
So.... will we shop at FYE again? Oh, probably. Maybe. Geeky stores are popping up more and more so the need dwindles. However, we will always, and I mean always, make sure everything is done correctly before we leave because on the off chance that something does happen, we know they aren't going to own up and fix it. read more
