On May 27, 2026, I purchased from the Seller, Hunter Gather, at its shop located at 4270 Kilauea…read moreRd, Ste I-1, Kauai, HI 96754, four items including small crystal sculpture of a turtle approximately 6" x 4" in size. The price of the crystal turtle sculpture was $218. I wasn't watching over the shoulder of the store clerk, a very young looking woman or late teenager, when she rang me up and put my items in a small brown paper bag with handles. I should have been watching. I assumed that she would wrap the turtle sculpture appropriately.
When we left Kauai on May 30, 2026 to fly back home, my wife packed the bag containing the items I purchased in your store in my suitcase. When we got home and unpacked the suitcase, I took out the brown paper bag. I did not realize that somehow the brown paper bag had developed a tear in one of the side creases in the bag. I lifted up the bag from the suitcase laying open on the bed and moved it literally a foot away when the turtle sculpture slipped from the tear in the bag and landed on our tile floor. To our surprise and shock, we saw that the crystal sculpture had been wrapped only in a few sheets of extremely thin, colored wrapping paper and that, when I unwrapped the paper, the head and the rear flippers had broken off!
Remembering the transaction, I recalled that the clerk had barely said anything. She did not ask if we wanted her to wrap the crystal turtle securely. Usually, when we have bought fragile items from an arts and crafts shop, the clerk either asks if we want the item packaged securely or voluntarily does it without us asking. As I said, the clerk looked young and acted as if she were new on the job. If not, she was not trained properly to either ask the customer if he or she wanted the fragile object packed securely or hadn't been trained well enough to know that it should be packed securely. Then she placed my items in a flimsy, defective paper bag that tore easlly at its seam, allowing the object to slip out.
The principal causes of the breakage of the turtle were: 1) the negligence of the young, inexperienced or poorly trained clerk to package the object securely or to even ask me if wanted it packed securely, and 2) placing the object together with two heavier, bulkier items in the flimsy, defective, easily tearable paper bag that was provided
I requested the owner of the shop to refund the purchase price of the turtle but he has refused, adopting a "Once it's out the door, it ain't my problem anymore" stand.
