Lids

I went into this Lids after work today in order to purchase a birthday gift for a friend. My friend is a Packers fan, and I thought it would be great to get him a Packers hat with his last name embroidered on the side. After browsing a bit, I picked out a hat and then spoke with a person named Brian who was running the embroidery machine. He walked me through the different options available, and after I decided what I wanted, he entered the information into the embroidery machine and the machine very quickly went to work. Brian was nice and helpful and seemed to know the machine really well, adjusting it quickly whenever it would stop and an error message would pop up.
Unfortunately though, once the machine had finished, the result was really disappointing. The text I was getting on the hat (just 5 letters) was two colors and the border (gold) did not line up with the inside text (white). What’s even worse is that I decided to try the embroidery process again on another hat and the exact same thing happened.
Having already paid for the first hat and embroidery, I figured at the very least I could keep both hats for the price of one, even though I wasn’t satisfied with the finished product of either. I even confirmed with Brian that the second hat was simply going to be thrown away if I didn’t take it. I asked for a bag at this point and Brian went to the counter to get it and said that he just needed to double-​check with his manager, Frank, that is was okay for me to keep both hats.
After Brian explained the situation to Frank, Frank insisted that the best he could do was take 20% off of the second hat even though it was just going to be thrown away if I didn’t take it. I explained that I wasn’t happy with the embroidery of either hat and that the only reason I wasn’t asking for a refund was because at least I was getting two hats for the price of one.
Unfortunately Frank did not budge and reiterated that the best he could do was offer the second hat for 20% off. Given that there was no way I was going to pay more money (nearly $ 80) for two hats that I wasn’t happy with, I simply asked for a refund and Frank did not try AT ALL to offer a different solution or alternative. Instead, he quickly printed out a refund EVEN THOUGH it meant that he would have two hats on his hands that he couldn’t sell.
If I was the owner of this store, which I hope reads this, I would be furious if one of my employees (1) allowed a customer to walk away dissatisfied and (2) went the route that Frank did by quickly giving a customer a refund ONLY because it was the least amount of work for him to do. If I was the owner, I would much rather Frank have come up with a solution that made the customer happy and didn’t result in the loss of two hats.
Overall, I think the situation could have been handled better and would not recommend getting embroidery done at this particular location. Instead of walking away with a nice gift for a friend, I walked away frustrated and angry (obviously enough to write this long post).