Clearly Brookstone doesn’t spend enough time training its employees to be dishonest, because this airport Brookstone clerk did a terrible job at trying to sneak a $4 warranty onto Nadav’s father’s purchase. She even admitted to the act when confronted.

My dad and I were at the airport and went to Brookstone’s to browse and we ended up buying a massager thingy and some batteries to go with it. While at the register, the saleswoman kindly informed us that it comes with a two year warranty. We were pleased but didn’t think much of it.

After she passed the items through and gave us the receipt, my dad looked at the price, saw the math didn’t compute and asked if the tax was really that high (this was after just glancing at the final price and not looking at the whole list).

The saleswoman tried to tell us that we forgot to add the batteries to our calculations but my dad maintained it didn’t make sense. Than the saleswoman mentioned that the warranty was $3. We were pissed. She definitely had us thinking it came with it for free. After taking a much closer look at the receipt to make sure there weren’t any other problems, we found another “mistake”. It was $4 and not $3 and certainly not free.

Seeing how she wasn’t remorseful and didn’t at all seem embarrassed, I asked her straight up, “Were those your mistakes or did they tell you to do that?” She answered surprisingly honestly, “They tell us to come up with schemes to sell the warranty.”

After being pretty pissed I told my dad we shouldn’t get the warranty after all this. We both kinda wanted it but we didn’t get it out of principal. We left warrantless and unsatisfied.

Later, after examining the product, we realized we still had the receipt that said we got the warranty- and therefore could use it anyway since all you needed was the receipt. Sweet revenge.

Maybe she actually read the company’s Code of Conduct and Ethics (pdf) and was having trouble reconciling her own behavior to Brookstone’s stated commitment to “ethical dealings with customers.” All we know is, she would never make it in certain big box retailers, not with that attitude.

(Photo: The Talented Mr. Nimo)

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