Another wonderful retail experience in YK

At the YK Centre Mall, one particular store kinda rocks (or their merchandise does) and I like to pop in whenever I am there.

Now, I have a disorder inflicted from years of customer service based jobs where I “expect” other retail industry workers to be able to form coherent verbal structures in an effort to communicate with their customers. CRAZY, I know. That being said, this store offers very little in the whole domain of customer service, from my experience the workers are there to ring through sales and that is where their duties end. There are no friendly, “Hi, how are you today?” or “Let me know if I can give you a hand with anything!” in this store. However, they really do carry fun stuff, so my body keeps urging me back to this store for a browse.

Yesterday when I stopped in, I immediately noticed adorable horse themed pyjamas for little girls. My niece, MacKenzie lives on a horse farm and loves all things horses. I knew she would love them and the $31 price tag didn’t seem too horribly steep, so I thought I would purchase a pair for her. They did not come in her size, so my brain and common sense suggested that I ask the very young worker if she could order a pair in MacKenzie’s size for me. As I have myself worked in small boutique style shops, I am highly aware that this is common practice for small business owners, and is in fact a large part of their business as it can be quite costly to carry an overabundance of stock.

When I asked the young girl if it was possible to order in a different size, she stared at me blankly and squinted her eyes in confusion. After a minute or so of pondering she told me that they had just got in this order. And starred some more at me. As that did not answer my question I asked again if it was possible to order in a different size. She looked at me and repeated the same answer she originally told me. Realizing this conversation was futile, I gently suggested that perhaps she could find out for me and give me a call. As I said that, I flipped the pyjama package over in my hand and noted the company’s website. I told the young girl I would actually just check out the company’s website and thanked her for her help. She looked at me as if I was severely mentally incapacitated and said, “Well, you could TRY that...” indicating she did not think that a company’s website would ever sell their own goods.

Sigh.

Just then her “superior” returned to the store and the young girl said she would find out about getting in a different size. Here is the gist of this conversation:

YG: Hey, can we like order a different um, size in this pyjama set?

S: (Starring blankly)

YG: I think like, a special order or something.

S: (Sharply) No. We can’t do that.

YG: Oh. Ok.

From a customer service viewpoint the above conversation contains ALL KINDS OF WRONG. The Young Girl relayed this information to me since I must be mentally incapacitated and hearing impaired so I thanked her again for her help. I continued to browse and purchased a few items I had been eyeing before leaving anyway.

Later on, when I got home I popped onto the internet to see if I could order the pyjamas, guess what I discovered? They do sell their own products and at a CHEAPER price than the boutique in the mall. Ah ha! The same $31 pyjamas from the store were ON SALE on the website for $19.99. I kid you not. I also noted that most of the other pyjamas were a few dollars cheaper than the YK store as well. Shipping to Southern Canada was free on orders over $65, however to ship to the Northern territories there was a $9.99 charge. (I have no idea why?) Lucky for me the items were being shipped to NS and I did receive free shipping.

So the moral of the story today kids is that you should always expect crap service when in YK and then complain about it on your public blog! Just kiddin’ but seriously who doesn’t like to save some cash?

Just another wonderful shopping experience here in the North!