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| - This review is about treatment of customers, and not of the furniture itself.
After having a positive experience at the east-side A-1, I decided to stop by this one on the Beltline Sunday afternoon after visiting some other furniture stores. I walked up to the door at 5:21 pm, knowing that they would close at 5:30, and that I'd have just enough time to ask a quick question and glance at a couple of options, to determie whether to come back another day. I wasn't asking for anyone to stay late, or do me any favors. I wanted to look at furniture, ask a question or two, and walk out at closing time.
When I walked up to the door, a salesman (manager?) was blocking the doorway.
"Can I help you?"
"I'm shopping for a couch." (I was actually shopping for furniture sets for 2 rooms.)
"We close at 5:30 on Sundays. We're locking up." He pointed to the sign on the door.
"It's 5:21," I said. (My cell phone time was accurate.)
"Not by my clock," he rudely responded back.
I expressed surprise that he was not going to let me in, and he mentioned that they had already shut down the computers (I'm not sure what that has to do with not letting someone browse). He eventually said in a snarky way, "do you want to walk around?" as if to dare me to do so. Of course, at that point I informed him that I had wanted to walk around, but that now I don't want to do business with this store.
It's difficult to convey the rudeness of the employee in a story like this, but I walked away shocked at how he would treat a prospective customer. This isn't so much about the 9 minutes for me; it was about how I was treated. He got an extra 9 minutes of his evening, and lost the store potentially thousands of dollars in sales this week.
Businesses should work to turn customers into fans, not foes. There's a right way to handle a situation like this, and customer-focused places like Costco do it every day. ("Hi. Just so you know, we're closing in a few minutes.")
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