Dylan T.
Yelp
Plummeting Customer Service -
After a few incidences I feel compelled to leave my first ever review.
The quality of customer service at the San Antonio REI is shockingly abysmal. I am a former REI employee and a long term customer, I am well acquainted with the policies, and understand the culture of the company so after being treated so poorly on multiple occasions I am left feeling angry and a little bit surprised/confused.
On one occasion I was attempting to purchase a dress, size - 'medium,' for my partner and noticed that a 'small' of the same dress (same sku) was a lower price, it hadn't been discounted, or marked down, just simply a lower price - this was confirmed by an employee. When the manager (I think his name is Ryan) was brought in to rectify the situation he made comments suggesting that if my partner was smaller then perhaps she would get a better price but because she required the larger size would be required to pay the higher price. Never, have I ever, been more appalled at how blatantly disrespectful this man was. Commenting on someone's weight shouldn't be tolerated by anyone but specially not someone managing a retail business.
The second incident, again involving my partner, and this guy. We were attempting to return some shoes, if you're familiar with REI, you know they offer a great return policy, or so they say. We had the shoes for about a month before taking a long trip out of the country for another three months - so my partner was only able to use them for about a month but owned them for four. Upon our return, she stated using them again and noticed they were hurting her feet a lot, we tried inserts, different lacing techniques, ran the whole gamut - no luck. So we went to return them. Same manager gets brought in. He fought us for 30 minutes on the return. suggesting I was lying about working at rei in the past and that I was unfamiliar with the policy, and ultimately saying the shoes weren't within 'his' standards of a return. Which confused me, because anyone can look up the very forgiving return policy online. Additionally, I myself, a former footwear specialist can recall receiving many a dirty, dusty, worn in shoe that ended up on the garage sale rack or even was damaged out during my time at rei. Which the shoes we were returning were not by any standard, weathered. The biggest issue is how time and time again this particular employee continues to handle situations with a lack of respect and empathy.
As someone who spends a lot of money investing in outdoor equipment, I will be taking my business elsewhere from here on out - and I suggest you do as well. I'd be happy to even leave some suggestion for businesses in SA where one might go instead of REI.
thanks for reading.