Reminds me of the KFC type colonel challenging Homer Simpson to a duel episode. You can challenge all you want but I have the privilege of whom I choose to tangle with and maintain my standards. I don't see why you have to impose a uniformity of opinion on thread subjects you partake in. There are as many views as human beings and flaming helps no one. I've spent several hundred pounds in the last 6 months in their shops and in a few cases of changing faulty items within a few days (faulty bag zip unseen at purchase, dented item in packaging, leakage) I have seen that the management and their immediate underlings are down right nasty.
I give you an example which made me decide not to shop there any more. There was a lady in the information desk queue in front of me. She was really upset as they had kept her waiting for 45 minutes as she claimed, not wanting to replace a faulty item she bought the day before! She was finally joined by her boyfriend and dealt with and left. Next my turn. I was returning a mat that I had left inflated in the room over night without even sleeping on it. It had deflated to a major degree, no just a little, in the morning. I asked them to change it. They said where is it leaking? Did you try to submerge it? They usually don't leak? We are not prepared to change it unless the store manager OKs it? This seems suspicious? At this point people in the queue mainly due to the lady who had just left after a long time were getting restless and actully shouting at them in my support. So I said to the two deputy managers not only your questions are stupid but the way you think is too and I explain to you why. I can change the item within 28 days with a gift card of the same value according to your own rules. Then I can buy anything or just keep it or just buy the same mat again. Now I am just trying to change it with another hoping it works. Why in the world would I waste time and money coming down here and change it if it works? I am not going to take the kind of language you were dishing out to the lady before me. Either change it now or make more work for yourselves and give me the gift card. Either of which case shows up your stupid questioning and thinking as well as unnecessary waste of my and other people's time. With people laughing at them they did not say anything more and the new mat I got is just fine. As I said their gear shop in Covent Garden is OK and their floor staff in London branches, mainly students from here & East Europe and the Indian subcontinent, are nice working people working if a little hurried due to a lot of work and probably little pay.
They don't make or design anything and are just box-shifters and as typical asset strippers of 'producing/designing companies' we already see what they have done to F&T and Karrimor which will not get any better in time IMHO. It is not just me or the people in the queue who each had a story but in London they have a bad reputation amongst high street chains and it is obviously due to the culture created by store managers that their board and HQ managers employ. There is always a few who want the rest of the world to have identical opinions as them which makes one think what's the use in replying to their harsh tones. It seems a waste of time to me. Goodbye.
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