My email to Pandora Jewelry

Recently, I had an extremely unpleasant experience at a Pandora Jewelry outlet. I had sent an email to them but there’s no response so I have decided to post it on my blog to remind myself never to go back there and to warn other people about their bad customer service.

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Dear Anne,

I came across your email on Pandora’s website when I was looking for an avenue to feedback my recent experience at one of Pandora’s outlets (the one at Ion Orchard).

Before I start, I must say that I have always liked Pandora because its charms are lovely and provides some form of customization, yet it does not look tacky. I enjoyed wearing my bracelet everyday and get compliments often. And because I wear it often, I do try to get it polished at the shop every few months. I am happy that Pandora has more outlets as compared to the past but I go to Ion Orchard more often as it is close to where I stay.

On 26 December (just this past Wednesday), I went to Ion for dinner with friends and I made a point to deposit my bracelet first as I know it will take more than one hour before they can polish my bracelet and hand it back to me (is it even normal to take more than one hour?!).

I reached the store with my friend around 650pm and all the store’s assistants were busy with customers. I stood near the counter and Shida (on her tag, and it says store manager) acknowledged me and asked me to wait while she served other customers. I didn’t even get a chance to tell her that I just want to drop off my bracelet for polishing. So I waited while she served 2 customers. Meanwhile, she did not even ask me what my intention was but she did manage to juggle 2 separate customers showing both of them charms and what not.

After 20 minutes, the second customer finally made her purchase and left. I suspect that she wants to keep me waiting and hopefully my patience runs out and she won’t have to deal with me as I already took off my bracelet and was patiently waiting for her to attend to me while chatting with my friend.

Anyway, she actually asked me to continue waiting as she wanted to serve another customer that her colleague was juggling! At that time, as I mentioned, I already had my bracelet off and I would think that my intention was quite obvious (to have it polished!).

I couldn’t wait any longer as we were meeting other friends for dinner so I told her that I just want to leave it for cleaning and told her that she can take her time as I am going off for dinner. She grudgingly said ok, BUT I would have to come back tomorrow to collect it. At the moment, I was shocked and repeated that it was ok for me to come back late and collect at the end of the day. Her explanation was that there were a lot of customers so she won’t have the time to polish today.

Again is it even normal practice to ask customers to come back tomorrow? Why not ask the current customers to come back tomorrow to browse?

So Anne, my question to you, is serving a new customer (who may not even give you a sale) more important than serving an existing customer who has already purchased and more likely to purchase more charms in future?

I tried to maintain my stand that I wanted it to be polished by tonight and do you know what your store manager told me? “If you really want, I can ask my intern to polish but it will not be as clean”. First, if she has to spare someone, is it necessary for her to emphasize that I can only get an intern to clean it? Secondly, is she threatening me by saying that my bracelet won’t be as clean but because I insisted on it so she has no choice but to do a hasty job?

Same question again, so new customers deserve a fully qualified person to serve them but an existing customer can’t even manage to secure someone to sit down for ten minutes to polish her bracelet? In addition, serving a new customer will most definitely take more than ten minutes! Surely you can understand my disappointment and frustration.

In the end, I gave up arguing with her as I am very upset and do not want to spoil my mood for dinner with friends later on.

Usually, I would let unpleasant experiences pass and not hold a grudge but this is not the first time I have experienced such bad attitude from this outlet’s staff. I cannot remember when the other times were but this is the most recent one. The other times were also not as extreme (but still a bad experience!).

This has left a bad taste and I would most definitely not be heading back to this particular outlet, or even in Singapore since I can get Pandora elsewhere too. I will also not recommend my friends to get anything from Pandora if I had known that the after-service would be so sub-standard (although I don’t seem to have any issues with other outlets)

Maybe it’s time to focus some of the marketing efforts on training your service staff instead.

I sincerely hope that you will take my feedback into serious consideration and do something about it.

Thank you for your attention.

Regards
Ashlyne

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If you have made it to the end, kudos to you! Say no to bad customer service, we should speak up more often 🙂