Canadian Tire as a brand has ultimately been sliding down my rating scale. As a frequent shopper at many of the locations this location I find to be among the very worst due to their lack of organization, slow restocking and poor customer service.
My Father has always been an avid shopper at Canadian Tire so it has forever been embedded in my mind as a household name and Canadian company, But after years of making a variety of purchases I have gradually lost my respect for the company as a whole. I have had several instances were the company changes or even creates new policies without giving consumers the right to know in turn setting up certain "consumer traps" I call them.
The last situation being one I just experienced were I purchased a $200 tent (10person Outbound) which I was not allowed to open or inspect before buying. So I took it on my bday camping trip this weekend only to find that the zipper was defective and snagged irreversibly the very first time I tried to unzip it to enter the tent SO the tent had a gaping hole we could not close that got larger and larger letting every flesh eating insect in. Not only this but the tent itself was completely see thru.... Not even during the night and with any lamp on inside the tent you could literally see every detail on an outfit, freaky!!! Needless to say we ended up using it for mostly storage as that hole was pouring in the Mosquitos, my body is still riddled with terribly itchy red bumps.
I know from experience that my cousin returned a tent after something similar happened with the zipper and received a full refund however this time it was not the case. I attempted to return the tent with all pieces undamaged, minus the zipper of course, however I was told by the customer service rep at the returns counter (because they don't seem to wear name tags anymore I asked to find out her name was Chanice) that they no longer accept any returns or even exchanges for tents. I was shocked as I was never informed of this and my receipt also mentioned nothing about it however she insisted this was the case. Any other retail outlet at least stamps or verbally notifies the customer upon purchase that the sale is final. But she claimed she empathized with us however there was apparently nothing she could do and was not very accommodating once we asked for management who took a very long time to even turn up only to avoid the issue like the plague.
This confused me further as I had just been to another location who told me they could offer me store credit but that was all as they did not have that particular product on their shelves. Leaving me to wonder how their policies are implemented on a store level?... Can 16yr old cashiers use personal discretion to decide how this business runs?
Kind of ridiculous to be frank that they are selling products you can't even see before buying then not informing the customer that the sale is final and implementing different store policies based solely on the discretion of the individual dealing with the matter.
Not good business in my opinion so to be safe I would suggest avoiding all larger purchases here as it seems the company can not only change policy without warning but you will likely be dealing with different company policies and even standards depending on which staff member and location you visit.