... it looks like we have another candidate for my boycott list, all courtesy of Brenda at the local Old Navy.
"The shorts are on the $12 rack!", we said, when charged twice that amount at checkout. "Oh NO!" Brenda replied, as if she was taught somewhere that quality customer service always led with a shouted "NO" at the paying patron. I proceeded to march over to said rack -- which was in clear view of the counter -- to pluck the sign from its place atop the circular presentation.
As it turns out, that was apparently a "trigger" for Brenda, who stormed off after me, protesting my dismantling of the display the entire way. Further attempts to point out that it wasn't the ONLY pair of shorts hanging there were only met with her explanations about how the pair we had chosen were clearly "linen", and that "linen" cargo shorts could never be sold at that discount price, which was reserved for some fabric less than linen. (She then proceed to grab a half dozen of "linen" items that were on the "non-linen" discount rack in order to re-home them.)
When further pressed to honor the advertised sale price, she insisted that would be IMPOSSIBLE, and, when informed that a complaint would be filed and that we needed her name, she spun around with a snarl, spittle forming at the corner of her mouth, pulling on her badge and yelling "it's Brenda -- do you want to take a picture?!?" with the kind of hatred normally reserved for family blow-ups over politics on the holidays.
So Brenda -- first of all, your customers shouldn't pay for the incompetence of your employees (again, it wasn't as if a single pair of shorts got "mis-filed", it was a whole swath of them [un?]intentionally placed in the wrong spot). Second of all, when alerted to the "bait-and-switch" approach to merchandising in your store, your attempt to justify the error by shifting analysis of the pricing paradigm for your products to the customer was severely ill-advised. Third of all, taking it personally when I attempted to use actual facts (i.e. showing you the sign) to disprove your fake-news attitude of "alternate facts" with regards to what-cost-what at your store would get points if you served in the current administration instead of the local branch of the Old Navy, but was the *opposite* of what should have been your training to de-escalate such interactions.
Which is all the long way to say that you may have "won the battle", but you for sure "lost the war", as I am now called to action to make sure that I inform friends and foes and strangers alike to steer clear of the Old Navy store at the Coral Ridge Mall due to Brenda's disregard for her customers. You. Have. Been. Boycotted.
DO *NOT* SHOP HERE:
https://www.oldnavy.com/products/fort-lauderdale-fl-store-5588.jsp
MY BOYCOTT LIST IS MORE OF A THING THAN I THOUGHT:
https://www.zendesk.com/resources/what-is-bad-customer-service/
OKAY FT LAUDERDALE OLD NAVY, YOU EARNED YOURSELF A DETRACTOR:
https://www.retently.com/blog/detractors-ruin-business/
