I am writing this review in absolute shock that a loyal and honest customer could be regarded with such a complete and total lack of respect by the employees of Well Heeled of Stowe, Vermont. Allow me to elaborate:
My mother recently purchased a pair of shoes from the above-mentioned store and had an extremely negative experience due to the careless and hostile customer service that she received. Upon bringing these shoes home (which were, by the way, upwards of $400), she tried them on with the specific outfit she bought them for and regretfully realized that they were not the right height. The conscientious person that she is, she carefully and meticulously rewrapped the shoes in their tissue paper ensuring that they were just as she found them, returned them to their box, and put them in the shopping bag to return to the store. The next day she got her receipt and set out to do just that. First, the saleswoman informed her that they only give store credit. My mother was okay with this, as she could use the credit to buy something else. The saleswoman then accepted the shoes in their perfect condition but was having trouble finding my mother's name in the system to complete the store credit transfer. My mother could not wait any longer so she left the shoes and planned to stop by later that day. After this is when the problems ensued.
The saleswoman left a troubling voicemail on my mother's phone, telling her to come back to the store right away and to pick up her shoes because they were actually NOT eligible to return for store credit after all! Confused, my mother called back for clarification. Yet it was not the $400 shoes which were damaged in any way... Oh no! It was something far more horrible! Apparently, yet unbeknownst to my mother, the top of the cardboard box of the shoes was not the correct shoebox top and therefore the shoes could not be returned, EVEN for store credit. Clearly there must have been a misunderstanding, right? Not to Well Heeled. While my mother, recognizing the potential for human error, very logically recounted that she has no other shoebox tops lying around her house and that her husband was even witness to her opening, rewrapping, and closing that very box with that very top. Surely Well Heeled could have made a mistake with their many boxes and tops lying around, couldn't that have? Wrong again. The saleswoman insinuated that my mother was a liar and that the great employees of Well Heeled were, in fact, infallible and incapable of making mistakes ESPECIALLY putting the wrong top on the shoebox. This seems rather curious to me, for the very fact that the saleswoman overlooked this shoebox top to begin with when my mother was returning the shoes in person (and called later after she realized this atrocity). Couldn't another employee have overlooked the incorrect shoebox top the day before when selling them?
This is a "boutique" that, mind you, stores their half their shoes in a barn out back and is flanked by a corn field that for a quarter of the year reeks of pungent cow manure. Perhaps that is where they got all of this bullshit from to begin with! Who knows? But after calmly and succinctly trying to reason with this saleswoman my mother felt disrespected, mistreated, and attacked. She finally asked to speak with the owner, who was out of state. She later received a call from the owner, not however asking her the quintessential "What seems to be the problem?", but instead sternly and unforgivingly relaying the store return policy, unwilling to even entertain the possibility of error. At that point, feeling beaten down and unappreciated, my mother was fed up with the entire situation and elected to file a dispute with American Express to let them handle it.
Let this serve as a message to the management and salespeople of Well Heeled and all other retail store operations. In the state of this economy, the customer will have increasingly less tolerance for blatant rudeness and loss of integrity. You must treat your customers with the utmost respect and understanding because they ARE your business. It is far more difficult and costly to seek a new customer than to retain a current one, and you just lost AT LEAST TWO. I am graduating in one month from the University of Miami with my degree in Economics and let me tell you, Henry Ford said it best: "It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages."
Keep your shoes AND your mismatched shoebox Well Heeled! When my family comes down to Miami in a month I am taking my mom to The Webster in South Beach. The Pierre Hardy pumps there beat the hell out of your last-season Frye boots any day! ;) read more
