. . . Bath & Body Works! They really outdid themselves this year!
My displeasure began in October, when I attempted to visit one of their stores. I was not comfortable with the number of customers inside the store and the inability to navigate their display fixtures without bumping into other peeps. To make matters worse, their employees were on attack right when you walked in, asking what brought you in. Well, you only sell soap and candles, so what's the mystery? And then they kept approaching me, talking loudly/spraying germs through their masks. It was just a bad scene, so I left.
But I like foaming hand soap, which is currently impossible to find at any other retailer. I waited in hopes that B&BW would offer free shipping on Black Friday or Cyber Monday so I wouldn’t have to pay the extra $5.99, but I guess corporate decided to not encourage shoppers to stay home? Irresponsible on their part! Nonetheless, I placed an order of over $200 worth of merchandise (much of it gifts for my kids and their spouses). The next day, I received an email that some of my order was no longer available. Really? Their inventory control software must be from 1978. But that was only the beginning of my ride into their incompetency.
When the shipment arrived, this is what it looked like:
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| Pro Tip: When a package arrives like this, take pictures! |
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| Bottom of Box |
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| Packing protocol must be to pretend items are basketballs that you are shooting into boxes. Then throw a piece of bubble wrap on top, for good measure. |
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| This explains the stain on the bottom of the box. An almost emptied bottle of liquid soap that managed to coat the rest of the products. |
Hoping for a quick resolution, I spent two days calling their customer service 800 numbers. Per their automated system, I left my callback number multiple times, but never received a call. My next step was an online chat via their website. After giving 'Michael' all my information, he proceeded to argue with me that the Twisted Peppermint soap was not part of my order, even after I gave him the sku number from the packing slip. I was basically being called a liar. After 20 minutes of this, I disconnected and wrote a scathing email. However, do you think their website lists an email address? After wasting time googling 'Bath & Body Works email address,' I was finally able to pull up some sort of bubble window in which to email them. It said you'd receive a response within 4-6 hours.
. . . Crickets . . . .
After another couple of days, I decided to do what all Karens do: I took it to social media! Quelle surprise, but they do not have a twitter account, so I went on their facebook page to tell my story, along with photo illustrations. I quickly received about 100 replies from other angry B&BW customers. After another 24 hours, I finally got a response from a B&BW rep, who wanted me to private message my issue/email, etc. After doing so, I was finally told that they would ship me another bottle of soap. No apology or acknowledgement of any of the trouble it took for me to get a response from them. I decided to go back to my facebook post with a final post of what transpired. I ended it with, "The least they could do is refund my shipping."
After another day, I received a notice from my credit card of a B&BW credit of $5.99 (shipping). So, in the end, I at least got that. Then my single soap arrived:
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| I couldn't help but laugh at the stamp on the box. |
* * * *
And the Runner-Up for Worst Customer Service goes to . . . Kohl's
I will give out an award to Best Buy for the best customer service. I'd ordered a telescope for a birthday gift (for a birthday on the 21st). It arrived and I didn't really look closely at it. Then, when trying to figure it out, I noticed that it didn't have everything I thought this telescope came with. I was going to check my order, but things were busy. Then I received an email from them--they had sent me the wrong telescope, they did not have any more of the one I ordered, they were refunding my order and I could keep the telescope they mistakenly sent me!
ReplyDeleteWow! I’m rather shocked that they basically gave you a free telescope! I hope you enjoy it.
DeleteFirst, I've got to say, LOVED this post!
ReplyDelete"To make matters worse, their employees were on attack right when you walked in, asking what brought you in. "
OMG...YES! I sometimes purchase plug-in refills at the Bath & Body Works here in Philly and I experience the same damn thing. And the thing I don't like about B&B Works is that it's too overwhelming with all the stuff they have crammed in every single inch of the store, which is why I don't often go there. It's sensory overload!
And OMG #2....I cannot believe how their shipment arrived. That box looks like someone threw it off a speeding tuck and then was run over by a bus! And when I saw the photographs of INSIDE the box, my mouth dropped open. That is HORRENDOUS!
And BRAVO to you for not giving up and blasting them on social media!
Thank you for posting this because I will NEVER order anything from them. In fact, I may never shop there again.
I give my award to a Target that is about two blocks from my apartment. It always looks like a bomb exploded and the employees are always texting on their phones, totally unaware of customers in the store. I've written two Google reviews about them, and still...nothing changes.
Btw, I like foaming hand soap as well. I get mine from Trader Joe's. For the holiday season, they had peppermint, which I loved. I bought THREE so that I'd have them for a few months.
Have a great week, my friend. Great post!
I hope you love it, since I pretty much wrote it for you, Ron! 😂 Don’t you hate the way they harass you, right when you enter the store? And yes, sensory overload with the sight and smells. I do like their products, but they’ve raised the prices too high and it’s just unpleasant to go there.
DeleteWhen the box first arrived and I saw the condition, I took the photos because I thought the box had been resealed and items stolen or fallen out. But it’s clear, just from reading everyone else’s experience online, that they have no clue how to pack liquid goods. Crazy, since that’s their main merchandise! I feel bad for the customers who wrote about broken candle jars. That would be awful to clean up!
I do like some aspects of Target, but agree that they don’t understand customer service. Every time I go, they seem to be having team meetings in whatever aisle or area I’m trying to shop!! It’s uncanny. A few weeks ago, I was looking for a sweater for my little granddaughter and they were having a meeting of 10 in the MIDDLE of the children’s dept! Who does that? It was hard for me to think with all that talking going on, plus they were in my way! BTW, I love to read google reviews for local places, just for fun! Some are hilarious!
I wish TJ wasn’t so far away for me. I’ve never tried any of their toiletries, but I will look next time I’m there. Happy New Year!
Vons food delivery has been the worst for me. So much so that I stopped using them because they always got my order wrong and then would take 6 months to refund my money.
ReplyDeleteThis place really did you wrong. Some places just don't know how to pack at all.
I’ve heard some nightmare stories about food delivery. It’s unreal to me that food can get delivered to the wrong person and they never say anything. Shady!
DeleteWorst customer service award ALWAYS goes to New York State and whoever the sitting governor is, though I have to admit that Andrew has far outdone any of his predecessors, including his corrupt poppa. There's not a store in the world even close to the same league!!
ReplyDeleteSorry for high-jacking your post!
Well, the difference is you’re a taxpayer without a choice. Glad I can just close my wallet as a customer!
DeleteDid I understand this correctly? You complained that the soap leaked all over your packages and they said you never ordered the soap? My vote goes to B+BW. The mess at Kohls is the fault of bad shoppers, I can't bad mouth Kohls, it seems like when we go there they practically give the clothes away...plus some Kohls cash. BTW, it turns out that Visa does not accept Kohls cash.
ReplyDeleteYes, you understood! Chat man told me I didn’t order that soap. Unfortunately, I was on my desktop and couldn’t send the photo that was on my phone of the empty soap bottle. I have no idea what his issue was. I typed in the correct order number along with my name and address twice.
DeleteMy issue with Kohl’s is that they have zero customer service. Two cashiers at opposite ends of store and no one taking care of the actual sales floor. I miss real department stores!
What a nightmare with that Bath and Body Works order. Really you would have thought they would have had pristine online ordering since ordering online was highly recommended to do this holiday season. Its a shame you had to do all that you did to try to resolve the issue too. Did you leave a review on their web site if that was available to do? I had another friend who placed an order with them and it took a long time to get the order; way longer than estimated. Finally got it but it was like 4 weeks time from when she placed it. I have a good customer service one; can't think of any bad ones but I didn't do any shopping this year for gifts. My good story is, I'll keep it short, we bought some jeans for some girl we had met through the dog park who didn't have a lot of clothes (she owned 2 corgis and they play together with Winslow and we have gotten to know her). Anyway, she wasn't sure of her size and of course you can't try on anything anymore so I gave her one of my jeans to see if that was too big or what so we had something to judge by. That was a size too big so now that I knew what size to get I ended to Target and started looking at jeans to get her. I'm clueless about skinny jeans, high rise, medium, etc. etc etc but the lady arranging the clothes helped me and spent time explaining things and recommending what to get. Very helpful. And to top it off I had put one of the jeans I was looking at but didn't buy back on the shelf messy and she immediately fixed it :)
DeleteHappy New Year!
betty
Shipping has been a real sh*tshow this entire year with people staying home. And then Trump messing with the USPS was the cherry on top. My daughter ordered a kitchen play set for her kids for Christmas from Bed, Bath & Beyond and she still hasn’t received it! She is beyond mad!!! I’m glad you ran into a nice employee at Target! Rare!
DeleteI actually have never had any issues with BBW but know A LOT of people who have said the same thing about their poor customer service. I do love their hand soaps, but it seemed like they took advantage of the pandemic and raised their rates, then never had a good sale on them all year long. I did get 6 though when they did the buy 3 get 3 free on everything at the store on Black Friday. My award goes to Dollar Tree. Placed an order for 4 cases of cutting boards in early October. 3 cases finally arrived for in store pick up at the end of November. They said the last case would probably come on the next truck. After hearing this twice, I asked if it was lost. I was tired of calling every week to get my last box. They admitted it was probably lost but couldn't refund at store level, I had to call the 800 number. After sitting on hold trying to get an operator in customer service for an hour, I was told she would start a refund ticket to get me my $24 back, but it would take 5-7 days. Well, it's now 3 weeks later and no refund still. Now I have to make another call to find out where tf my refund is. After that, I'll just dispute it with my credit card company. How hard is it to refund $24!?
ReplyDeleteOmg, that is terrible. It’s unacceptable that businesses force us to spend so much time correcting THEIR mistakes! And it’s just BS when they won’t take care of issues at a local level. If they can send it to a local store,they can refund at a local store. It’s nonsense the way you have to jump through hoops.
DeleteYes, I feel as though BBW took advantage of the pandemic to raise their prices. I think the hand soap is around $8.50 now. Outrageous for something that’s mostly water.
For real on the mostly water bit! If you save the bottle, you can make your own foaming soap for pennies. However, I do love their scents and stupidly get sucked into paying out the nose for them.
DeleteCoconut mint snowdrop is hard to resist!😂
DeleteThat sounds like a horrendous experience, but unfortunately one that's all too common in these days of extremely variable customer service. I haven't had any bad experiences with online orders and deliveries myself, but I know plenty of people who have - battered parcels, parcels left on the doorstep in the rain, faulty products etc. Many businesses seem to assume they're so fashionable that people will keep ordering from them even if their customer service is crap.
ReplyDeleteThe customer is never right these days. I guess our only weapon is our wallet, so I won’t be giving them my business anymore. I need to look into making my own foaming hand soap.
DeleteI don't think we have either of these stores in the UK but I constantly receive parcels from a company called "Wilkinsons" where the parcels are badly damaged with items missing, damaged etc. The problem is no one knows how to pack a parcel properly. So frustrating.
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year to you!
It’s amazing to me that with all the e-commerce, proper packaging has become a lost art. Here’s to a normal new year!
DeleteYour experience was awful, Bijoux, both in terms of the delivery and then all the hoops you had to jump through (metaphorically speaking) to get some sort of satisfaction. Thankfully, I do not have any similar tale to share. The few Christmas gifts ordered were sent to the recipients directly from Amazon. My gripe would be with the slow delivery service of the USPS, but then our local office was shorthanded because of illnesses and not sure what else. I am still receiving holiday cards mailed in mid-December, later than expected but still nice to receive. BTW after reading your experience with B&BW, I know there's a reason I have never shopped there.
ReplyDeleteOh, the USPS has been terrible here since summer, coinciding with Trump dismantling it through DeJoy. It often takes 10 days now for us to receive mail from 10 miles away. My daughter mailed her Christmas family photo cards on Dec. 17 and when I finally received it yesterday, it was postmarked Dec. 29. Someone is sitting on the mail.
DeleteFor Christmas, I received 9 bottles of lotion from B&BW because I love their lotions especially holiday scents - Twisted Peppermint, Gingerbread Latte and Christmas Cookies. I got 2 of each of those. :) - As far as I know there were no delivery problems and I haven't be in a B&BW since the beginning of the pandemic. You would think that they and EVERY store would have some type of quality control in place for shipping and EVERY employee should have to take customer service training but it's a different world now. The fact that all of these stores jack their prices whenever there's a national or state emergency of any kind is enough to make me not want to shop at any of them. - My award would go to Walmart. I haven't been *in* a Walmart store in forever but getting their groceries delivered... Ugh. Whoever does my shopping for me doesn't know how to pick out produce EVER, especially the fruit. I so cannot wait for the world to be set aright again...
ReplyDeleteI’m a sucker for the holiday scents, as well. I will miss them, now that I won’t shop there anymore! 😂 My oldest daughter and son-in-law gave up on Walmart grocery over the summer when they could no longer get a time slot for pickup. I can’t even imagine having someone else pick out my produce for me. That would just not work for my picky ass!
DeleteGirl, I FEEL YOU!!! Half my order was out of stock after I purchased it leaving me scrounging for teacher gifts (well, actually, I just had to dig into my personal stash but that’s not the point). At least your box was shut. I went out early to take Luciana to the bus stop to find the box on my stoop WIDE OPENED!! I thought for sure someone opened it and stole contents.. nope. All there. It was just poor shipping. They know they’re a hit whether or not their customer service is on par so why should they care?!! Ughhhh
ReplyDeleteOmg, the box was open? That is insane! I just don’t understand how a company can’t do better than that. It’s not rocket science. I’m shocked that nothing was missing from your order or damaged, but glad you didn’t have to go through what I did!
DeleteIm shocked too, but I bet if I didn’t have to leave to take baby girl to the bus, stuff would have magically walked away. If I was a delivery driver, I’d be embarrassed. I mean, do they not have tape in the truck just in case?
DeleteI agree, the least a delivery person could do is fold the flaps over one another. Lol, they are overworked this year, so no extra service.
DeleteWell, I'm glad you got the soap shipped unbroken and a refund on the shipping! My bad customer service award goes to the Chevy dealer by my house for what I had to deal with today! But I guess that's for 2021! I guess for 2020 it would be to my former employer who I had to make many many phone calls to to get my retirement benefits straightened out!
ReplyDeleteCar dealerships seem to be notoriously lousy. I once waited a few hours for one new tire that I had ordered ahead of time. Turns out they ordered the wrong one. How they don’t know their own cars is beyond me! Glad you got your retirement straightened out.
DeleteWow, Bijoux, what a nightmare! It looks like your package was put together by one of the company's rivals. Good thing you took photos of this atrocity.
ReplyDeleteThis kind of incompetence is beyond belief. I'm glad you went full-on Karen and trashed them on social media.
Sorry you went through all that grief!
My shopping experiences have been limited and--knock wood--relatively painless. Let's hope that continues...
I’ve had fairly good luck overall with online shopping, but this was the pits! Happy New Year. Hope you are feeling better!
DeleteThat is ridiculous!!!! I haven’t been inside a B&BW since well before the pandemic started. I like their products, but I hate their stores. They’re always crowded and way too aggressive. I don’t like having things sprayed at me or shoved in my face, and I don’t like crowds, so it has never been my favorite shopping experience.
ReplyDeleteI guess they were hoping you’d give up? That’s way too much effort on your part for them to just take off the shipping.
I’ve never thought of posting on social media as a Karen move. It’s my go-to when they won’t do what they’re supposed to through the usual channels. I’ve written some scathing posts on various companies’ Facebook walls, but it works. AT&T ignored our calls and emails for two weeks, argued with my husband about our address, and sent a router to the wrong address. They resolved everything within three hours of my Facebook post.
My sister never fights her own customer service battles and always makes me or her best friend do it for her because we’ll both take the time to actually do it.
It doesn’t always work, though. Banfield and Amazon don’t seem to care.
I do write glowing reviews on Facebook when a company goes above and beyond, so hopefully that makes taking to social media to air my grievances less of a Karen move.
Currently, I give the worst customer service award to Amazon. Nick’s mom sent him things for his birthday. One of them was an air filter that he didn’t want (not sure why she decided to send that), so we returned it with the gift receipt. I initiated the return, and it said that the sender would not be notified, and that our account would have the credit within 2 – 4 hours of them receiving it. UPS picked it up on 12/23. By 12/31, we had no credit on our account, and the UPS tracking number showed that Amazon had received it on 12/29. It took me four different chats and phone calls with them to finally be told that they had accidentally credited the giver’s account instead of ours, and that they’d “look into it”. Every time I talked to them, they told me something different, and telling me to “have a little trust”. That really annoyed me! I finally told the fourth person that any trust had was used up the first three times I contacted them. Our account was finally credited today.
The plus side to all of this is that I haven’t bought anything from Amazon in the week it took to deal with this. I’m still really irritated with them. We returned a replacement filter for the big filter yesterday, so I’m waiting to see how they do with crediting that one.
You’d think with the economy being so bad, that companies would be providing better customer service, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
They’ve lost me as a customer. Isn’t it sad that it takes a rant on social media to get any action? I’ve used a Twitter a few times with Spectrum just to complain. Their app sucks, making it difficult to use my Roku. AT&T lost me as a customer 10 years ago after giving me the runaround.
DeleteUgh on the Amazon return issues! I had a situation where I accidentally ordered 2 of the same shirt for my daughter. I noticed right away and sent a message, but it was through a third party seller. They just responded with a “no problem” so I thought it was taken care of. A few days later, package arrives with 2 shirts! So, I had to message again, through amazon, since there wasn’t a direct way. Received a USPS tracking label to return it. Took it to post office and saw that it was delivered on 11/23. Kept waiting, but my credit card was never credited. After a month, I did the amazon messaging again and then I was finally credited. It’s exhausting and it feels as though they just want you to give up. You and I are the exceptions!
That's awful! Customer service is definitely a deal breaker for me.
ReplyDeleteIt infuriates me, probably because I worked in retail.
DeleteWell that was a giant pain in the backside. To think you have to go through all this nonsense. They were probably hoping that you'd give up and go away. Good to stick it to em and get something out of them. Even if they never admitted to their fault. Pfffft. Gotta love crummy customer service.
ReplyDeleteYup, they definitely want you to give up. Too bad for them that we now have social media to harass them!
DeleteWhat a bummer that you had to deal with this, Bijoux. Definitely not a way to get into the Christmas spirit. I am currently in loathe with AT&T. We added a new line last month and our bill went up $300. So looking forward to that call.
ReplyDeleteI had so many issues with AT&T back around 2010 that I dropped them. Good luck with that call.
Delete