Miguel Z.
New York,#2REBUTTAL Owner of company
Mon, May 21, 2012
The name of the author of this anonymously posted review is Corinne Vielle, also known as Corinne Martinez, owner of Vielle + Frances Furniture, a furniture store in Manhattan.
We received a call from someone asking if we could clean a jacket with vomit on it. We said yes and asked the caller to bring the item in.
Ms. Vielle came to our store and told us that she had thrown up all over herself on her birthday. She brought with her a small grocery bag tied up. She said there was a white jacket inside. We asked her not to open the bag as it was smelling putridly so she just left the bag and another dress she asked us to do an alteration on.
When our sorting department opened the bag utilizing the proper safety and hygiene gear and procedures they noted the vomit damage on the jacket and proceeded to clean the item. The person responsible for sorting this order confirms only one item was included in the bag.
Ms. Vielle mentions that she did not get a receipt. That is correct. We recently moved our office and she came in just as we had finished moving and had not had our system fully set up yet. We actually were not officially open; however, we've worked with BCBG for years and we like to bend over backwards to take care of the clients they are so kind to refer to us so we went ahead and took Ms. Vielle's order in.
Ms. Vielle called a few days later asking about the status of her jacket and a top. Our Operations Manager advised her that there was only a jacket in the bag she dropped off. She immediately proceeded to insult and harass him, emotionally abusing him. Thirty minutes later she appeared at our location. She proceeded to insult, embarrass and intimidate our Operations Manager who received her. She asked "what kind of incompetent f**king people do you have working here that can't f**king fix something when you are supposed to."
She also demanded that we should pay her, immediately, for a tank top that we allegedly stole. She even brought her store receipt with her. Her exact words were: "You stole my s**t and I want my mother-f**king s**t back today. We asked her to step out of our office but she refused to.
Our Operations Manager called 911 and the police arrived and removed her from our office. She continued to call our customer service line with degrading, insulting language. She threatened us with posting negative reviews online, with suing us, and with a number of other unpleasant actions.
Because we value our relationship with BCBG tremendously, we told Ms. Vielle that notwithstanding the fact that we did not receive that top, we would compensate her because we had not given her a receipt when she dropped her order off. While we were investigating with our contact at BCBG if there was another top available in her size (as she is XXL and there are a limited supply of this size items) we learned that she had posted reviews on Yelp and on multiple other websites.
Her reviews were as vicious as her personal attacks over the phone and in person, apparently in an effort to intimidate. She did not want an identical, new replacement; she only wanted to be compensated in cash.
We returned the jacket, clean as new, without charging her for it.
We have been advised by counsel that to the extent that Ms. Vielles reviews and public statements contain untrue statements, they are likely to be actionable. Therefore, we are currently assessing whether to take legal action against Ms. Vielle.
In the meantime, we have determined that we need to make the relevant facts public as we have gathered them based upon reliable eye-witness reports. First, we are concerned Ms. Vielles untruthful statements, if left unchallenged, may cause further irreparable harm to Slates reputation and good will established over many years of excellent service to its numerous customers.
Secondly, we have learned that many websites do not remove objectionable statements, and any legal process (whether litigation or arbitration) may take a long time to vindicate us. Therefore, we felt compelled to lay out the relevant facts in this manner and at this time.