No Deal

Following on from my first post, I will now describe the bad experience I encountered sale shopping. This is the closed fitting rooms of River Island. Having been given some Love2Shop vouchers as a Christmas present, I could see they were redeemable in River Island – a brand I quite often like to browse. So I went in to their huge sale and picked up a few items I was excited to try on – some dipped hem skirts – something I’d wanted for a while, but hadn’t found the right style and price for. However when I got to the fitting rooms there was a bored looking sales assistant lazily leaning on a naked mannequin with her other hand full. I asked to try on the pieces I had picked up, but was told changing rooms weren’t open during the sale. Annoyed I tried to hand her the stuff I had in my hands as the last thing I wanted to do was go to the effort of putting them back where I found them. Shrugging and looking at her ‘full’ hands she told me to just shove them on one of the rails next to me full of other merchandise. There was no way I’d be buying clothes without trying them on. With that I left disgruntled. Later I had heard Marks and Spencer were running the same policy, but telling customers they would be able to return items if they were no good. Some service but still lacking after the inconvenience of closed fitting rooms.

Closed changing rooms means empty changing rooms

Just as an example of contrast – New Look had queues snaking round past the tills into the merchandise stands. Evidently there efficient service of taking you to a free fitting room in the store (meaning no queue to try on!) was translating to successful sales. It should be said I only saw one purchase at the tills during my time browsing in River Island’s store…

I suppose one justification for River Island’s decision is that without having to manage fitting rooms, staff can manage tills and the shop floor more successfully. However, as I have pointed out, I was asked to dump my items anywhere by a member of staff, and the tills were hardly ringing. Perhaps the decision was more shrewd – by not allowing customers to try on pieces, they might still be tempted to buy at the lower price, and if it turned out the piece wasn’t right, customers would only be able to exchange for other items in-store or given a gift token for River Island instead of a money refund, hence keeping your money in their business.

Either way it bothers me that the service was so poor and businesses find it acceptable to close changing rooms. Quite simply – if you know you’re going to be busy, refine your service systems and have more staff serving that day, otherwise it might just damage your customer loyalty, as it has done for me and River Island.