Complaint Review: Tiffany's Bal Harbour Shops

Tiffany & Co. is supposedly a well regarded retailer of jewelry and other fancy baubles. However, my experience there was less than satisfactory as of late. This began when my husband purchased a watch for me for a present. We had shopped at Tiffany & Co. for other trinkets, gifts and jewelry in the past as well.

I had returned the watch as I was coming home from a day at the beach because it was just across the bridge from the beach that I was at and more convenient. Needless to say, I was dressed in a t-shirt, bikini, shorts and flip flops. Not exactly the business casual that is usually seen while shopping. All the other staff members were very polite but the manager said that my "lifestyle" was what had made the watch defective. She had made a judgement based on no prior evidence and told me that I should not be wearing "a fine Tiffany timepiece in the shower, or at the beach for any reason". In fact, I was was the reason the time piece failed. I was not, by the way, wearing the watch at the beach.

Is Tiffany & Co. customers to be dictated by the attending managers on staff? Is she telling me that I am not "qualified" to own their products? I have always loved Tiffany & Co. but I feel confident this individual was a poor consideration for a management position, training other associates in unwarranted, unappreciated condensation, especially if making a considered purchase. In the end, she wrote a report, would not give her name, misspelled mine, (reading is fundamental, especially when reading off a computer screen) told me I could wait two to three weeks for it to be returned.

At best, she was clearly lacking customer service skills, at worst, suffering from misdirected entitlement issues. Michael Kowalski, if there is any stewardship at all within the upper echelon of Tiffany & Co., and life in the ivory tower just isn't as far as we think it might be, they may want to take a few moments pause at just who is the target demographic they are marketing to in this economy and future ones.

Cpetchey
Hollywood, Florida
U.S.A.