First of all, as someone who studied retail and consumer behavior at Wharton, the top business school in the country, I learned that negative consumer experiences can turn a person off from a company for life! They will tell more people about a negative shopping experience than a positive. And it is more expensive to get a new customer than to keep an existing one. As someone who has worked in retail, in both beauty and fashion, I have been trained to NEVER yell at a customer, no matter what the situation is.
So, today, my mother and I went to Ulta to do some shopping. I was looking to pick up some Smashbox primer and a nude nail polish and she was looking for a Bare Esentuals kit she saw in our Ulta flyer. After one sales associate helped us find the kit my mother was looking for, we went to look for nail polishes. I thought I found the perfect one by Essie so I tried it. That's when this little blonde comes up to me and instead of politely informing me of their "do not try" policy, berates me! She yelled: MA'AM YOU CAN NOT TRY OUR NAIL POLISHES BECAUSE OF HYGIENE NOW YOU HAVE TO BUY IT! I replied, Excuse me, that is not posted anywhere. I was completely taken aback by how absolutely rude she was to me and the fact that she was not yelling at the other woman looking at the OPI nail-polishes a yard and a half away. She continues to accost me by saying: I CAN'T POST SIGNS YOU HAVE TO TEST COLORS ON THE PAPER. I replied, What papers? There were not any papers in sight. She proceeds to go into the cash-wrap and aggressively hand me a paper to test it on but says YOU HAVE TO BUY IT! My mom, fed up, said: You can not just talk to my daughter like that. I want to talk to your manager. She says: I AM THE MANAGER! That's when my mom starts to get into it with her and I just think, oh who is this bitch?!
I don't know if it's in Ulta's training manual to just automatically accost customers when they make a mistake. The matter of the fact is, if she had pointed out the policy to me in a polite manner I would have been fine. I would have even purchased said nail polish. But no, this bitchy manager decided that she would try and bully the ethnic girl. I never cry racism but I did not see her go after anyone else in that nail section and I know they weren't trying polish on any paper either.
We did not buy anything today from Ulta. Instead we went to Sephora in FairOaks where the customer service was excellent and there were testers to use. After years and hundreds of dollars, we will never return to that Ulta store again! Whether we will boycott the entire company, is yet to be determined. But I would never treat a customer the way I was treated and will not shop at an establishment that treats me with such disregard.
oh hell no,ULTA
