Quote:
Originally Posted by Simpseatles
BTW, is Westmount considered a dead mall yet, because it must be on it's last legs. Then we will have a massive empty shell of suburban exuberance to be proud of! 
I find it quite humerous that the only way it can sustain it's existance is by building stores outside the mall! (expanded movie theater, Shoeless Joe's) |
I was in Westmount Mall a couple weeks ago and I won't be going back anytime soon. I bought a gift at the Westmount Souvenir store, went into Sears and bought another gift, then drove home. When I got home I discovered the gift I had bought at the souvenir store was badly chipped with a crack. I had not dropped it or anything like that, I have no idea how it got chipped and cracked. Perhaps there was a hairline crack that I didn't see when I bought it.
I raced back to the mall and got there five minutes before closing. The guy at the souvenir store accused me of dropping the item and then trying to get a refund out of him. All I wanted to do was make an exchange, or even buy another gift. However the rudeness of this guy deterred me from giving him any more money. I ended up buying a similar gift somewhere else the next day. It was not an expensive gift, but it's the principle of the matter for me; having worked in retail for 5 years and being a marketing consultant-in-training, that is no way to ever treat a customer. In fact as far as any of my previous employers were concerned you can be sued for making that kind of false accusation of a customer.
I also spent over 15 minutes at Sears waiting for an employee, any employee, to help me, although that doesn't bother me to the extent the souvenir store incident did. I have never seen such a lack of staffing at Sears anywhere; in fact usually at the Masonville location there's salespeople all over asking if you need help. If it wasn't for the security cameras, one could easily have stolen a very large amount of merchandise and not gotten caught.
Over the summer, in addition, there was a letter to the editor in the Free Press from a customer at the Westmount Metro store complaining about poor service. In this case, the manager had started charging a dime for tiny jam packets or something like that at the little cafe at the side of the store.
Westmount's merchants need to shape up their attitudes towards their customers and improve service levels if they want to attract more customers. I don't go to malls often, but if that's the way it always is at Westmount, I can see why so few people shop there anymore. I for one won't be back to Westmount anytime soon. I'll take the longer drive to Masonville or White Oaks, or better yet, Birchwood Mall near Port Huron, Michigan.
If I'm going to complain about one bad mall, I will also take the time to say that Birchwood Mall is the best mall I have ever been to. I went there in August and found the staff at JC Penney and the other stores throughout the mall extremely abundant, friendly and helpful. There was no waiting, the staff were eager to help without being pushy, and I felt I got excellent value for what I paid. These Americans know how to treat people, and I was thoroughly impressed with the operation.
(The day I went to Port Huron, I also took a peek around Lambton Mall in Sarnia. It was dead, complete with an abandoned grocery store.)
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