Hello all - this is Jacquie the Owner of On Course Consignment. I was surprised to hear that this was posted on such a national site for my small consignment store. I find it ironic that it was not posted on a local Wellington chat board (there are quite a few) which would have addressed more of my customers. Perhaps they felt that most local people who have shopped with us would defend our policies, as well as praise the fact that I take returns at all, which in all my years have never encountered a consignment store that has. The Chronicle is definately much more of an open forum to post where most people do not know me or my employees personally. As I am sure everyone posting is aware there are always 2 sides to every story. My take on this rant is that it was blown way out of proportion. When people do not get their way for whatever the reason, they get mad, and in the heat of the moment take things personally and obviously the wrong way. I did hear the whole conversation the first time around and my employee was remaining calm and just re-explaining the policy of the 5 day return. There is a reason for this, we pay the consignor after 5 days, so once those 5 days are up the purchased item is yours to either keep or re-consign. Of course we have made exceptions, many, many times in fact, and this too could have been one of those times had they just picked up the phone and called us and said they were mismatched. We would have then put it aside to be returned and not paid the consignor. We are a consignment store and take in over 10,000 items per year, so yes we could have missed the mismatch but would have taken them back without question had they called. It comes down to how it was handled. For a customer to come in and demand a refund on an item after 30 days makes no sense. The fact that they were really dirty made me feel that they were used even though the customer said they were not. She felt I called her a liar but she too was calling me a liar for saying I would have not taken them that dirty, it goes both ways. Beleive me I have sent many items back with consignors to be cleaned before consigning. Since this is the daughters post and she was in the car while I was speaking with her mother, she only got her version. I am sure her mother did not tell her that when I remained calm and told her all she had to do was call us and that they knew our 5 day policy, she told me “To Kiss Her Ass”, which was how the conversaion ended when she stormed out the door. Nice! So in closing I am just over people saying that the customer is always right, because as a business owner, sometimes they are not. I defend my employee and I in saying that all we did was continue to state that this was our policy, and all they needed to do was call, this customer took that as us calling them liars, thiefs, and trashing us on a public forum. We have around 5,000 customers, and I do know that you will not be able to please all the people all the time, but in this instance I felt the need to post so the people who do not know me could hear my side of the story.
Jacquie McCutchan
Owner - On Course Consigment
Wellington, FL
