Value Village / Savers review: Customer service representative

Good day,

I had a little bit of a problem with my experience shopping at the value village location in Mississauga, ON.

I usually come in every so often here to look around and make a few purchases and never have any issues, the staff is normally polite, with great customer support. HOWEVER, this time around, as i was scanning my items, one of the employees was less than enthusiastic and made quite an error, and made it seem like i was the one making all the errors.

Basically, as I was scanning my items, I scanned 4 pairs of socks (as she's looking over my shoulder, standing behind me, to the right of me). I scanned them, 4 beeps, 4 scanning codes on the screen and proceeded to place them in the bag. She then said "wait, you have 4 items there, right?" (which is fine i guess, I understand that value village probably has had a few times where people try to get away without scanning items, so it's understandable and part of her job description to do quality), and I told her "yes", and pulled apart all of the tags in front of her. I went back to scanning my items, and she was still standing over my shoulder, glaring at me (I'm not the only one in the checkout area at this time, the check out area was full and to be completely honest, it's a little creepy to have someone do that to you). As i was still scanning, she blurted out loud "wait wait, that didn't go through". Confused, I said ok, i'll scan it again, and rescanned it (i probably should of looked at the screen to confirm what she said). After i scanned the next item, she just told me "i'll scan for you" and took the scanner from me. I said "ok no problem, you scan and i'll be the bagger" (as a little joke). She then scanned all my items, I said thank you, she said nothing. No problem there, i guess she doesn’t have to respond, smile or say have a nice day or anything. However when I got home and inspected all the items, I noticed duplicate scans on my receipt.

My issue is the fact that she treated me with such disrespect in her attitude, tone, and demeanor, practically harassing and creeping me out by standing so close to my right side directly behind me and basically accusing me, out loud, multiple times in front of the various shoppers around me, of "stealing", as not scanning items and placing them in your bag would constitute theft.

The next issue is that when she took the reins over from me and scanned all the items for me (very rudely, value village may as well just bring back the checkout counters with cashiers at this point) made several errors herself. She didn't pay the difference, Value Village didn't pay the difference. I paid the difference.

I wouldn't even take the time to make this complaint and just chalk it up to some silly mistake, if she wasn't so rude, unprofessional, and just an unpleasant person to me, not to mention the other shopper directly to my right side was asking for help and had to wait for another associate which she waved to help her with her checkout machine.

The employee in question was a shorter, older, and bigger lady, (i did manage to verify the clerk id# as 002128). Before she took over the scanning reins, one of the other associates (looked like her supervisor) came over and said something to her, and she immediately said out loud (i heard loud and clear, since she was standing right behind me), "what, you sending me home now?", which was not what the other associate said. I'm not sure if she was having a bad day or something, but I really do not, in the strongest terms, appreciate the disrespectful accusations and demeaning attitude she displayed that day.

I think some sort of re-training on scanning procedures, people skills, among other vital skills that are crucial for working in the customer service field would probably be in value village's best interests with this employee moving forward, as I can probably tell (being in management myself) that this isn't the first time somebody brought her attitude to the attention of management. I do not wish anyone to lose their job over having a bad day, however this issue should be rectified, and possible retraining would be my recommendation, if it hasn’t already been done).

Its very unsettling to experience this and i will not be experiencing that again, as i don't feel very comfortable returning to value village again as a result of this experience, and to be quite honest, if this is the way that associates are trained to treat customers, i will be contacting the Better Business Bureau (BBB), as i feel violated during this shopping trip to this location.

Please rectify this before it continues to happen to other shoppers.

Sincerely,

Jay