This is my email to Space NK apothercary after a throughly depressing shopping encounter. They could have been bigged up to the www.verygoodservice.com website. Instead they got this. which is basically the opposite.

I use Acqua Di Parma Colonia intensa and it is quite hard to find in the high street, only a handful of stockists you see as it is quite exclusive, or maybe just unheralded. Anyway Space NK is one of the few stockists in the City of London and your Fenchurch St outlet is the nearest to where I was going to be on my monthly trip to London. So I thought, excellent opportunity to pop in and get some. It was raining quite heavily on Friday 10.06 in London. I walked some distance in the rain to your store and arrived at about 12.30 pm and entered a shop bereft of customers and staffed by 5 sales assistants, all quite unoccupied, two in fact where dancing arm in arm to some tune on the Shop PA.

I located my box of A D P Aftershave balm and headed for the sales counter. I arrived at the counter and stood in front of the manned till holding my purchase and watched a girl watch her till screen. I undertook this activity for nearly a minute, She did not look up despite me being an arms length from her. A colleague of hers approached the other till and without looking at me started tapping into the other till and after about half a minute looked at me and whispered, “wont be a moment”. Then eventually without really looking at me, held out a hand, I assumed for me to place my purchase into. So I did, she scanned it and told me how much the product was. The other girl still hasn’t looked up from the till. I gave her my card and then I thought actually, you know what, you really don’t deserve my money. I am the only customer in the shop staffed by 5 disinterested girls and being ignored by the people I thought would be carrying out my transaction. IT was all just so unpleasant I changed my my mind about buying something from you. Bear in mind  I had made a special trip specifically to make a purchase of a hard to find product and your staff so discouraged me from doing so I left the store empty handed. That is an extraordinary feat in the retail sector!

I feel I should write to Acqua Di Parma about their choice of retailers in the UK. Maybe I will. I’m still contemplating that one. I will be interested to hear what you make of staff so useless they actually repel customers from your store without making a purchase they had specifically come to make. I look forward to hearing from you.