| rev:text
| - My fiance and I walked in to this Lamps Plus having had some positive interactions at other locations and online with the store. We had heard that this store's selection was better than the Henderson store, and it is!
Frank Morrison was quick to ask us if we needed help and walked us through their selection of chandeliers as we're looking for one for the entryway of our new home. He was tremendously helpful and he found a chandelier on their website that we fell in love with!
I did a quick search of the specific brand and name of the chandelier online and came across the same one that was priced better on a competitor's website. This is when things went south!
After seeing this better price on a competing website, I quickly looked up Lamps Plus' price match policy online. In a nutshell, it states it will match a competitor's pricing without coupons or promo codes, and take an additional 20% off the difference in price. I brought this online price to Frank's attention and he involved his manager, Tony? Marquez. He was able to see the discounted price at www.thelightingshop.com on my Galaxy S8 phone and I was able to send the link to my fiance's iPhone and it showed it as well. ($660 @ Lamps Plus versus $530 at competitor) However, when I emailed the link to his work email and it was pulled up on his work computer, the pricing did not match. I understand this is not his fault, he was even nice enough to let me try to find the price on his computer, which I was unable to do.
There is a part of me that thinks Lamps Plus has a firewall preventing certain search results of competing websites from appearing to avoid precarious situations with their price match policy, but that was only a part of the frustration.
The manager then stated that they are only able to discount up to 10% at the store level outside of this price matching verification that he was unable to pull up on his computer. He also asked at this point if the competitor had free shipping, as Lamps Plus has this incentive and it could negate the discount, but the competitor also offered free shipping.
He then shared with me that the Lamps Plus price matching policy is only a price match and no additional discount. I brought the 120% policy on their website to his attention and after rereading it, he stated that the policy states that the item must be purchased from Lamps Plus at full price and after the item is received by the customer, they can then request for the 120% price match guarantee and have it processed after the fact.
I shared with him how this is bewildering from a customer service standpoint, as if this is indeed the policy, the company is making the customer jump through so many unnecessary hoops and inconveniencing them to take advantage of this price matching policy. I also acknowledged that I understood this is not his personal policy and he was only enforcing the corporate policy. At this point, I then asked if there was a way that Corporate Customer Service might be able to bypass all of the unnecessary steps of purchasing the item at full price, waiting for it to be delivered, and then trying to price match-- assuming the discounted competitor price was even still available at that point!
He then told me I could call to inquire because he would not be able to bypass those steps. While my fiance was on the phone with Customer Service, he approached me and said he was going to make an exception and price match the item and offer the 20% discount on the difference in price. I told him I really appreciated him doing this and he then rudely explained that this is taking up a lot of his and Frank's time and they could be making money and helping other customers instead of working through my situation.
I moved forward with providing Frank the shipping and billing information and as I reviewed the pricing, I noticed that they all of a sudden threw in a $49 shipping charge!? I asked if shipping was included and Frank explained it was not, at which point I told them that it will be less expensive and more convenient for me to purchase my chandelier from their competitor and we left the store and did just that.
I work in customer service, I've worked for a host of luxury hotel companies in my life including Four Seasons Hotels, Mandarin Oriental Hotels, and Hilton Hotels among others. I understand management may not know every policy from memory, but there is no excuse for rude comments that I mentioned above or quite frankly, the bait and switch of throwing in a previously unmentioned shipping charge to negate a discount. There is nothing wrong with saying I don't know, let me find that out for you.
I'm happy to see that my experience seems to have been an isolated incident at this store, as they have generally very good reviews. I can also see how my experience would have been exemplary if I had walked in and simply purchased their chandelier at their listed price. But I will never step foot in a Lamps Plus again.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)