Maybe Derek shouldn’t have waited until last week to order a bracelet for his girlfriend as a Christmas gift, or maybe he should have gone to a brick-and-mortar Zales store to buy it. But he didn’t, and their site guaranteed delivery by Christmas if he ordered at that point. It turns out that “guaranteed Christmas delivery” actually means “we might get around to shipping it by the 22nd.”

I want to share a recent (and ongoing) problem I have had with Zales, in the hopes that others are warned about the kind of business they run. I ordered a bracelet for my girlfriend for Christmas last week (December 16th). The particular bracelet I ordered was a special order item, but the page guaranteed delivery by Christmas if ordered before the 17th. I placed my order for the item at that time. I realize that ordering so late before Christmas is a gamble, but have never had an issue (especially with Amazon, who seems the be amazing about meeting their Christmas shipping deadlines)

For the next few days, I checked on the order, which remained at “item located in stock”. Thinking that the item was located “in their warehouse”, I figured my item would be shipping out any day. Come Wendsday this week, I started to get a bit nervous and gave them a call. Only then did I find out the about customer service at Zales. The customer service like is absolutely horrendous. After getting hung up on by the automated system, and an endless list of options, I finally figured out one option that allowed me to talk to a customer service representative. This is when I learned that my item was being processed by a “custom jeweler” and would be delivered by Friday. Asking what that meant, it was evident the customer service person had no idea where my item was or if my order would actually ship on time. It was quite clear that their online order status was a complete lie.

As I started getting a bit more nervous, I started looking online and read tons of horror stories about Zales terrible shipping/customer service. One look at their Facebook page and you can see that there are numerous other complaints just like mine, where people were promised delivery and their items are still not shipped. In fact, many people also had the same complaints about being hung up on by their automated customer service line, as well as getting no email responses back. Their Facebook page seems to be the only place to get a meaningful response from their customer service team, and even then it is a your item should ship soon response. As for mine, my item still is listed as not shipped, and it is just about the day I am supposed to receive it. It is quite clear that Zales does not care but their customers, and I will never do business with them again.

I realize this may be somewhat my fault for procrastinating, but when a company guarantees something for a certain date, they should deliver by that date and only have exceptions in very rare circumstances. Otherwise, what is the point of having a “guarantee.” I would like for others to see this so they don’t make the same mistake.

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