‘Call corporate. Call them and ask for the highest manager’: Nike store customer gets sweater taken away from her at clearance rack because ‘it belongs to another customer’
It's helpful when store associates go the extra mile for a customer, but what if that means doing wrong by another? That's what TikToker Christine (@cdawg7693) said happened in a video about her "terrible customer experience" at Nike.
"So I never thought that my first TikTok would be about this, but I need to talk about it," Christine began.
She then said that she was shopping at a Nike store in Factoria, Washington, when she came upon a Christmas sweater on the clearance rack. Christine said she was "browsing around" the store with the sweater in hand after her friend convinced her to buy it.
According to the TikToker, that's when a "young" store associate came to speak to her. "She goes along the lines of, 'Um, so, that sweater actually belongs to another customer, and I need to take it,'" Christine said.
"And I'm just like, 'Take it? Belongs to a customer? What do you mean? Like, I found it on the rack. Like, it was on the clearance rack,'" she continued. "And she just kept saying, like, 'Yeah, it belongs to [a] customer. I need to take it.'"
@cdawg7693 Terrible customer experience from one of your Washington locations @Nike. Who knows if this will even be seen but it just doesnt sit right with me & I had to talk about it. #nike #customerservice #terriblecustomerservice #dobetter ♬ original sound - Christine
Christine said she was "baffled" during the interaction. "I have never gone through something like that," she said.
"It's one thing if I grabbed this item from behind the counter, or it had someone's name on it or something," she continued. "That, I would be in the wrong for."
However, Christine said this was not the case. She also said she worked in retail and had seven years of customer service experience, which made her wonder why the associates didn't hold the sweater behind the cash register if it already belonged to someone. "That is what you normally do," she said.
"If somebody … wanted the sweater that bad, why wouldn't you hold it?" she questioned. "Why wouldn't you go up to the counter and have somebody hold it for you until you were ready to cash out, you know? Or have somebody hold it for you? I know that if I want something, I'm holding it. Why would I leave it back on the rack?"
Christine said she and her friend continued browsing the store and eventually saw the customer who wound up with the sweater, which sparked a theory. "We think that this associate knows this customer, that they're related," she said.
The TikToker said she was so taken aback by the encounter that she spoke to a manager at Nike. "I don't normally like to do that," she said. "But that was just not right, and it was not sitting right with either of us."
She said she explained the situation and told the manager that the "principle" of the matter was what bothered her.
"And you know, the manager was helpful," Christine said. "She did say there are better ways to go about things, … [but] there was still an underlying tone of the manager having the associate's back and not being super empathetic about it. Which I get, I mean, as a manager, you want to have your team's back. But that's just a terrible customer experience."
In the end, Christine said the manager found the sweater for her online and matched the clearance price. However, she said she missed out on an additional in-store promotion.
"I hope this is used as a learning experience," she continued. The associate did look pretty young, and maybe she's just not experienced in handling these things. But there are definitely better ways to go about it, and that was not it."
Christine and Nike didn't immediately respond to the Daily Dot's request for comment via TikTok comment and email, respectively.
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