On a recent visit to the Bluewater shopping center, went into the Claire's Accessories branch as they had a dozen '50% off absolutely everything in store' posters displayed. Knowing how horrendously over priced they normally are, I took my 10 and 7 year old inside with our litany of shopping bags.7 year old picked up a white bag labelled 'Surprise bag.'. With a price of £10 marked. However this would surely have been 50% off but yet got to a busy till and was told no it's not included despite no POS to advise of this.Daughter hesitating as £10 was all of her pocket money she had saved up and agreed to continue with the purchase. We paid her £10 and walked out the store. The 'surprise' bag was sealed so you could not see what you were buying until you opened it.She opened the bag to find a handful of earrings and end of line stock items and was disappointed as she does not have her ears pierced. How you can put piercings in a bag with an unknown audience is very strange.So we went back in queued up again to the only till open despite the busiest shopping days of the year to then ask very politely if we could just simply swap for another bag and explained she was disappointed,At this point another young girl comes out the back area tells us 'nope, cannot be refunded.' I said you did not tell us at point of sale these items were not returnable or exchangeable. She didn't have an answer. Meanwhile another staff member is spying on us kept staring at my daughter as she looked in the wheelie bin of other surprise bags as if she was going to steal something despite holding hundreds of pounds worth of shopping from other stores. Staff member maintained that if we want a different bag we pay for another. I politely declined wished them a merry Christmas and we exited the store as my child of 7 years bursts into tears. This was the worst retail experience I have had, such a lack of empathy, undertsanding, professionalism and understanding from them around consumer rights and a lacxk of basic human decency. I wasn't asking for my money back simply to exchange for items that were not useless to a child that doe snot have ears pierced.It is no wonder this company is fast disappearing from high streets. Over priced and only interested in putting money in the till.
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