Why I Shop at Nordstrom: Part 2

As promised {and before I begin my rant} I have the winners of last week's contest!  Thank you so much to all who participated.  I had no idea when I started this contest how much all your comments were going to bless my week.  It was wonderful to hear all the accolades for my friends.

Now, the winners.

The blog/shop owner that got the most comments was

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Lisa from Jomestic Doi!

{You may be confused because it looks, by numbers, like Paige actually got more comments, but there were several commenters there that deleted their first comment and wrote another one, which made it look like there were more than there were.  It was a very close call though... Paige ended up with 25 comments, Lisa with 28.}

Congrats Lisa.  I can't wait to send you your new calendar!

And as for the commenters... Amy had our winning comment with:

I read Lisa's blog regularly and what I love about it is the wonderful mix of fashion and style posts, handy kitchen and cooking recipes and information, family life posts and real sharing from her heart. I am fortunate to be an IRL friend of Lisa's and I think she's fabulous :). And when I made her refried beans, I am a rock star here at home!!

Amy, please contact me so I can tell you how to claim your prize!

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Okay, now on to my regularly scheduled rant. 

A couple of weeks ago I was at the mall and I had parked outside of Macy's {which I rarely do anymore because I hate even walking through that store}.  On my way back to my car I was walking through the Men's Shoe department and I noticed that their Converse were on sale, and Nathan had been asking me to get him a new pair.  I decided to try something different and get him the lace-less kind {since it takes him an inordinate amount of time to tie his laces}.  Well, it turns out that lace-less shoes are really only cute on kids.  Which meant... ugh!... I had to go back to Macy's to exchange them.

I arrived at Macy's on Friday morning already in a pretty foul mood because I was having a rough week.  Of course, there were no sales people to be found.  Anywhere.  I stood at the register for about 5 minutes waiting for someone to show up, thinking maybe they had gone to grab some shoes for the gentleman that was perusing the sale rack.  But when I finally asked him if he had seen any sales people, he said that he had not.  So I walked over to the back room door and yelled back there...  hello??? 

Of course, a salesman came right out.  What the heck was he doing back there???  Who leaves a sales floor empty for several minutes without at least peaking out to see if anyone is waiting?  Rule #1 of customer service, dude!

Anyway, I told him that I wanted to exchange the lace-less shoes for the one with laces.  Of course, they didn't have the laced ones in Nathan's size, so he told me he would ship them to me.  He processed my return {which took a while}, and started ringing up the purchase to be shipped.  Immediately I noticed that a $9.95 charge came up on the screen for shipping.  $9.95 on $39.99 shoes???  I said, I'm not going to have to pay shipping, am I?  {Thinking in my head that I know that my beloved Nordstrom would not charge me for shipping.}  Oh no, he promised.  There would be no shipping charges.

The next 10 minutes {I had now been there about 20} were spent spelling and re-spelling my address.  Finally, he was ready to take my payment.  Only, once again, the $9.95 for shipping showed up on the screen.  I thought I didn't have to pay for shipping... it is still showing the shipping charge.  Oh... he says, the shipping is only free if your total is over $50. 

Are you kidding me???  At this point, that man needed me to get out of Macy's as fast as possible.  I was not full of Christ's love in that moment.  Nope.  Not even close.

He gave me my card back and I informed him that this is why I shop at Nordstrom and I stormed out of the store and over to Nordstrom.

Nordstrom had the same shoes, for $64.95.  I asked the salesman {who immediately asked if I needed any help} if they would price match.  Sure! was his response.  They also didn't have Nathan's size, but guess what???  They shipped them to me for free!  And the entire process, from arriving in the department to completing my transaction took three minutes.  Three.  And you know what else?  I ended up buying three more pairs of shoes there. 

Nordstrom knows what they're doing.  One more reason why I shop there.

If you own your own business, think about these things.  What can you do to offer the very best customer service?  I follow the Nordstrom philosophy, and know excellent customer service always pays off in the long run.  I strive for people to one day say, that is why I shop at Much Ado About You.