The Clackamas Loft customer experience have certainly gone downhill in the past months due to their new and poorly trained young associates. Unfriendly service was uncalled for. Instead of a carefree, happy shopping experience, my visit to the Loft after New Year turned into one of the most embarrassing and worst store visits in my 30 years' experience of brand name shopping. I am writing this review to save other customers from having the same profiling experience that I had and also to give the district and store managers a chance to look into educating their staff on products and how to create customer loyalty and provide exceptional service. If this type of sells behavior continues, Loft will lose loyal customers. In the world that we live in today, word of mouth and social media is a very powerful marketing tool. Every customer, no matter their skin color, age, or the way they are dress should be treated the same as they walk in and out of the store.
For the past 7 years, I have been a regular at the Clackamas Loft. The old SA will recognize me and know that I like to take my time to browse, open a dressing room, ask for a size lookup, and easily purchase a couple of hundred dollars' worth of clothing in a single day. I am a project manager for a corporation. I use to wear heals and power play outfits and sales can easily spot me when I walk into the store. As I get older, I exchange my power play outfits for a more comfortable, conservative, but stylish clothing.
As I walk into the store that evening, I was not greeted. There was 3 SA in the store, 2 SA was helping a customer with a return. I was carrying 5 outfits for about five minutes, but no SA offered to start me up a dressing room. As the five piece of clothing was getting heavy, I spotted all 3 SA now helping the same lady with her after Christmas returns. I made eye contact with one of the SA at the counter and nicely ask for a dressing room. I continue to browse and the same SA that open my dressing room continue to follow me around the store. As she monitors me, she did not talk to me, acknowledge me, made eye contact with me, as she adjusted hangers. I walked into the dressing room to try on my clothing and noticed the SA place me in the far left dressing room, which was meant for tall customers. I am about 4'10" I could not reach the hook to hang up my purse or bags, and put everything down on the bench work. I can hear the SA in the empty dressing room next to me. The SA not once acknowledge me in the dressing room or ask if I needed anything. In my mind, I am thinking, this young girl is profiling me, monitoring me. I did not feel good at this moment and wanted to be out of Loft as soon as possible. I was able to fit 2 out of the 5 outfits. I quickly took the clothing to the counter while passing the SA. The SA is now at the counter and continues to talk to the other SA and not once ask how everything fit. Another SA ask if I found everything okay, I ask her if she can look up a size M in pant for me and she immediately said "they have no more." I remember a time when SA would look up items online, call up other stores, and help me with an online purchase so I can get everything shipped to my house. Those where all exceptional services I remember from Loft.
The service that I got that evening was worst then shopping at Walmart for cold medicine. The SA that has been profiling me, fiddled with her hand held device and said she can check me out. I waited patiently to pay but the SA is having login issues. The SA doesn't tell me what is going on, but I continue to stand there awkwardly, waiting for my turn. Meanwhile, the SA on the far left had helped two other customers that came after me. There was no apology or explanation of what is going on or a solution to say "thank you for waiting patiently but I'm having technical difficulties, so I'll have my associate help you." I took matters in my own hands, as soon as the available SA was done. I let the young SA know that I'll just have the available SA on the left help check me out since I don't know what is going on. I was given the "odd" look from the three SA and they were talking about me as I left the store. This is by far the worst experience I have ever gotten from any store in my 30 years of shopping. I understand sales talk about their customer behind their backs but I did not deserve this behavior or have done anything that looks remotely suspicious. Thinking back on the situation, the only thing I can think of was me bringing my own medium size reusable bags for shopping and me wearing a black color faded Loft work pants, hence why I was shopping for new pants. Oregon had just pass the ban single-bag law, so you will get more customers coming in with their own reusable bags. read more
