Customer service, what's that?

On Saturday night, before we went to the Chinese Lantern Festival, we went out for dinner, walked through the Eaton Centre and went into Sears . I just happened to walk past the watch display (cue hubby's terminally thrilled expression) and saw one that caught my eye. I tried it on, it looked good on me, and I bought it.

When I looked at it again when we got home, I noticed that there was a deep scratch on the buckle of the watch. Granted, nobody would ever see it, but I knew it was there, and it bothered me, so I decided I would take it back the following day.

When I got to the watch counter at Sears, the saleslady looked at the watch and said 'you can't return it.' I asked why and she said 'well, how are we going to turn around and sell it?' so I told her in no uncertain terms that this was not *my* problem and again, she said I couldn't return it. I had to remind her about their guarantee which states quite explicitly that if you're not happy with the merchandise you can return it within 30 days.

She rolled her eyes, god forbid someone actually takes them up on their guarantee, and said that she couldn't reverse the charge since I paid for it with my debit card, so she would have to pay me back in cash (like this is some sort of catastrophe). She said she had to go get the money because she didn't have it in her till.

About 20 minutes later, she came back with a wad of $20s, apparently they don't keep anything bigger in the store!?! Anyways, she counted up the money and said she was $6 short, she didn't have a five, and asked me if she could give me the rest in twoonies (our $2 coin). Umm, if you're giving me a wad of $20s, would I really care if I got $6 in coins?

We left the store in a most annoyed state (I was annoyed at the saleslady and my hubby was getting annoyed with me), and you know the only cure for that is retail therapy. ;)

So I went into Mappins and saw this watch . I saw it previously and really liked it, so I waited for a saleslady to come over. (It was on sale, but still at a fairly hefty price.) Anyways I noticed a tiny surface scratch on the band, the saleslady took a cloth, rubbed it out and it was fine. I ended up trying it on and bought it.

Ironically, before I left, she gave me a slip of paper to take the watch over to Sears to get a link taken out and get a new battery (free of charge). Apparently they don't service their own watches. It was VERY tempting to walk over to the Sears saleslady with the bag in my hand and flaunt it, but I decided not to.