1 Rachel Smith - 4 years ago
Great service on the floor, helpful, dealt with my broken German. My husband had traveled to the store a week prior and interacted with this gentleman and found him to be so helpful, we came back to work with him and buy things for our home. The gentleman was super nice and willing to assist. We are new to the country and still learning, but I take German classes and try to understand. It is still difficult for me, I speak English and Spanish.
Our good experience ended when the gentlemen handed us off to the cashier. When I went to pay, the woman was angry that we were Americans and that we had a tax-free form. She refused to take payment in the form I had, debit card from a German bank. Said I could only use cash. Muttered things about us under her breath, these were the only things I could understand she was saying. I had Google-Translate speak to her and she rolled her eyes and glared at me. Then she brought an English speaking manager who clearly understood us, saw our debit card and said you could pay with this. The woman still insisted it would not work. The manager took her behind a curtain where they had a conversation I could not hear. Then she returned and angrily stuffed my card into the machine and hit the wrong button so that the card would be denied (I've worked retail). Great store, lots of beautiful things at mostly reasonable prices. Not good if you get the xenophobic cashier. Everyone warned me Germany has a customer service problem...it's not a customer service problem. You can be as angry, rude, condescending as you want to me, as long as I can buy the furniture. But not letting me even purchase the furniture, that's not a customer service issue, that's just not doing your job. We were going to come back and buy a lot more items but this one person has singularly convinced us to never return to this store again, and we will encourage all of friends (German and American alike) to never shop here as well. Sadly, I think she will be happy to read that we will never enter her store again.
They do not take credit cards is what the woman told us...then why does your store have a credit card? Why did the floor salesman try to get me to start aacredit card with your store? Why did you refuse any method of payment except cash or easy card when your register clearly says PayPal? All of these things made it clear, she just did not want to sell to us.
