July 2020 by Toni S.
A few months ago I moved back to my native town and, like I used to when I lived here before, I started to shop at the natural foods store again. I was excited to support a local small business, and even though their prices are a bit higher than other big box stores like Whole Foods who is now owned by amazon, I was willing to budget that in for the sake of keeping my shopping local. Plus when you factor in gas expense to cruise up to Orland, it just made sense. However I'm sad to report that over the last 4 months or so I've had some negative experiences with this store, despite their winning attributes. First, there were 3 separate occasions where I asked about specific items they did not have currently available, and asked if I might place a special order through them as to support their business (instead of going through somewhere like AMAZON, eye roll) Unfortunately, on all 3 occasions they took my contact info and told me they'd be in touch, but only ONCE did they ever actually follow up with me and it was literally months later... so do you think I called them back? NO! They clearly did not want my business. Mind you this was for animal food, an ongoing expense that I'd much rather pay a local merchant for rather than ordering online. Month or so later I have another more significant negative experience with their cloth face masks. These are so cute and it's amazing to be able to purchase one made by a real person local to the region. I was so jazzed. Unfortunately these masks were not labeled by size, had no distinguishing pile or anything, leaving me to logically assume they were one size fits all. Long story short I ended up with 3 out of 5 that I purchased that are kids sized. With no kids I have no use for these. I asked to have an exchange and they said because of the virus they could not accept that. I asked if they could at least credit me the $15 expense since that's how much I was out and the manager said no. Continuing along with what happened, the manager told me she didn't appreciate my "threats" or how I was talking about the business and told me I was being disrespectful. In reality, I never raised my voice, used fowl language, nor distributed a single threat. What I DID say up until that point was that I did not feel like they appreciated or valued my business because of this and the past 3 attempts to order specialty items through them and that if this is the kind of customer service they deliver then I'm going to have no other choice than to take my business elsewhere. And she responded like THAT! How much more disrespectful and non responsive could SHE be? So I found myself being verbally attacked by a member of management for bringing very real, every day customer service concerns to their attention in a respectful way. How dare I?! It's clear this store cannot take constructive criticism nor do they value their customers. I truly do not appreciate the tone I was met with. Moreover, the conversation finally resulted in her saying she'd credit me the $15 but it was only because she was being forced to in order to make me happy and it would be the last $15 I spent with them.... (I'm serious that actually happened.) I NEVER was disrespectful to this woman, I just told it like it was and in a level tone. I don't believe in screaming at customer service representatives... After she said that she quickly back pedaled and said "after that if you choose to continue doing business with us that's up to you"Overall I'm extremely disappointed at the LACK of customer service I've experienced over the last few months at this store, not to mention the judgey, prissy manner some people who work for this business seem to portray to those who might look and talk differently than them. I feel completely undervalued by this business as a whole and I will not even take my $15 credit there. They don't deserve any more money from me. As unfortunate as it i
