Heart Bead is average in terms of brick-and-mortar stores. Online places offer larger selections and better prices, so brick-and-mortar places need something to make it worth my spending extra money with them. For me, this comes down to customer service. Great customer service can be hard to get at Heart Bead, depending on who is working. For the store itself, I give 3 stars. Service is more like 1 star lately.
Several times I just wanted to get out ASAP because employees on opposite sides of the store were having loud conversations about their personal lives and I was stuck in the middle, having them look past me and talk around my head.
Once I asked a woman who had been in the back room whether they had bulk packs of a certain kind of jump ring, she said no but that one of the counter folks could make me a packet at the bulk price. She called someone over and asked them to make me a bulk packet and when then the person rang it up at regular price -- a simple misunderstanding -- I mentioned that it was a bulk pack. She insisted it wasn't a bulk pack, I explained what had transpired, and she still didn't believe me. Instead of going to ask, she kept arguing about it and treating me like I was trying to get away with something. Finally she said "ok, I'll give it to you for that price *this* time." Yeah, ya think?
Numerous other times I've had people cop an attitude with me (rude faces and eye-rolling included) over something as silly as me filling up the "misc" slot in my muffin tin (bead shopping cart) so I had to start dropping them in other slots instead, slots that were marked with prices (what's a girl to do?). Not a huge deal, the prices are easy to look up (and i remembered them all), yet I've been given a lecture on proper muffin tin usage twice now. Excuse me for buying SO MUCH at your store that my tin overfloweth. Want me to shop somewhere else from now on? NO PROBLEM.
But the last straw for me was when I went in there and spent around $200, used my loyalty card for $40 off, and somewhere in the packing up of all the tiny beads, I didn't get my change. Not a huge deal. This means both me AND the cashier spaced it. My fiancee didn't remember seeing me get my change either. I called them as soon as I realized what happened. In every money-handling or cashier type job i've ever worked, they'd want to know where the extra dough came from in the register, so I figured this was as good for them as it was for me. The person on the phone was rude and unprofessional. She told me that there was "no way of knowing if I was telling the truth" so they couldn't give me my money back even though I explained that wasn't the point, I wasn't necessarily trying to get my money back so much as I was trying to keep them informed (I've had jobs where I had to balance everyone's drawer at the end of the day ... I would want to know why the drawers were over or under!!). She kept insisting that I might be lying, and she couldn't give me the money. The bottom line is this: If she didn't know how handle the situation or couldn't because she's not a manager, then the thing to do is go GET a manager. Instead she told me "well, like, not to be mean or anything, but your money is your responsibility not ours so, i mean..." and trailed off. Really? Is that the store's official policy?
I recognized her voice as the one who had helped me earlier, so either she was being defensive because she realized she made a mistake or she just wasn't very good at her job (or she was trying to get rid of me because she pocketed the "extra" money?). Frustrated, I argued with her a little more and asked if there was someone else I could talk to but she said, strangely, that she'd already talked to the manager about it and that the register wasn't over (which was weird of her to bring up after everything else she'd said). She asked if I wanted to leave my name and number, and I laughed and said I doubted that it would get passed on to the manager anyway. She responded with "ok, so are we cool then?" I think I let out an exasperated "ugh, whatever..." and just hung up.
I know that finding good employees in a college town can be difficult, but it's not impossible. Easy solution for me is to simply not shop there. read more
