My experience at the Glenn Mills store and its Manager Tom, was extremely disappointing to say the least. For context, I purchased a Kitchen Aid $300 waffle baker a number of years ago. At that time the waffle baker came with a lifetime warranty.
Over the weekend our $300 waffle baker failed rather dramatically on Monday, 2/1/2020. I called the store and got Dana, who listened very politely to my story, and said that I should pack up the waffle baker, bring it in and they could let me know if they would be able to do anything to help me at that time.
My wife and I then traveled down to the Glen Mills store, 1 hour and 15 minutes total from our house to King of Prussia, and then down to Glen Mills. Upon our arrival in the store, we were greeted by an associate who gave us a place to put the baker and went to go get Dana.
What happened next defies explanation and just totally blew our minds. A guy came out and walked up aggressively to the counter and says "What's with the waffle maker?" There was no greeting, no real eye contact, no cordiality, he didn't give his name, nor did he say who he was. I looked over to my wife who had nothing short of a horrified look on her face.
I took a deep breath, and said "Hello, my name is Kelley xxxxxxx, and you are?" His response was "Tom" I then had to additionally query "and your position here is?" and his response was, "I am Dana's Manager". In reflecting with my wife later, with this opening exchange, we both knew that this wasn't going to go well.
I began explaining our predicament to Tom and when I reached the point of saying that "when we bought the waffle baker, it came with a lifetime warranty...," Tom cut me off and said "Williams-Sonoma never had a lifetime warranty". When I pushed back and reiterated that we had received a lifetime warranty, he replied with "well ever since I've been here we have not." Since I knew that we did receive a lifetime warranty, I simply asked him, "Were you here in 2004?" Of course Tom said "no". Tom then went in the back and returned with a printout from the Kitchen Aid website and told us that WS did not do lifetime warranties and that we would have to contact Kitchen Aid.
When asked who else we could speak with, Tom responded with saying we could check the website for a customer service phone number. He also eluded that we could write to the President of WS and would be told the same thing.
It's amazing that Tom, the store manager would respond to us in such a manner and lose both an immediate sale and long-term customers. From our prospective, it would have been so easy to have responded to us with a "Hello, how are you I'm Tom Last Name (he never gave us a last name), the store manager, how may I help you?" Then he could at least acknowledge our situation and frustration. And finally Tom missed the opportunity to look like a hero to us by saying, "well we no longer have a lifetime warranty, but how about I take this baker back, give you say $25 off any of my waffle bakers here in stock to help you out." Simple, he makes $200-$300 sale, and we walk out happy.
Man, that would have been great as we weren't looking for a free replacement for a waffle baker that we had for 16 years. We wanted to be able to make waffles this coming weekend. Instead, Tom has chosen to alienate us and force us to dig our heels in and make as big a fuss as possible. read more