My fiancee brought in some lockets to Things Remembered, for engraving. They were going to be gifts for the daughters of a friend who had recently passed away.
The employee asked her where the lockets were from. When she found out they had been ordered from Amazon, my fiancee was told that the engravings could not be done. It was apparently against company policy.
Since Amazon was not a "physical store", she was told that the store would be unable to replace the lockets if something went wrong.
If it was a family heirloom or even a very expensive piece, I could understand there might be some potential issues with that and not wanting to take on the liability. But these were just fairly inexpensive lockets...
It's a big chain, so I was sort of surprised that we were told they wouldn't take our business.
I later called and spoke with a manager, just to double-check that I understood things correctly. Yep...
Apparently, buying from Walmart is fine, since they have physical stores. But buying from Amazon had made it "irreplaceable". Not only that, when I asked how things would have played out if my fiancee had simply claimed to have purchased the lockets from Walmart instead, the manager said that she would've been required to show her receipt.
Since I still couldn't actually believe this was an actual policy, I called the Things Remembered main number. Their customer service department was great. I really wish the location here at Gulf View Square Mall was staffed with people even halfway as courteous and knowledgeable!
They confirmed that as long as the object will fit into the machine, there shouldn't be any issue with doing the engravings. They try not to do engravings of heirlooms or objects valued at $300 or more, since if something goes wrong, they can't really replace it, but that is to be expected. And though you might want to get clarification if your object falls into either category, I didn't get the impression it couldn't be done -- just that you'd be assuming any potential risk if the engraving process damaged the object.
I do hope some retraining happens at this location. If they ever wondered why the amount of engravings done are so much less at this location, I guess now they'll know why... I was told the District Manager would look into things, so hopefully things will get squared away.
We will likely make a second trip to Things Remembered for an engraving (they seemed the most cost-effective), but I think we'll be driving an hour or so out of our way to a different location instead -- in hopes of a better experience. read more
