I'm not going to be the area

This chain of stores is a gold mine. Area Kids, Area Mom & Baby and Area Play are a Brooklyn based store and playground group that is raking it in... at least from my perspective. I was first introduced to Area Kids when my best friend had her twins almost 2 years ago in Park Slope. Yesterday I was in search of a birthday gift for my husbands 8 year old god daughter. Without going after the exact location, the shopping experience was a 6 at best... on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best. I was with my sister-in-law, who is a pretty experienced shopper and consumer herself. The sales girl was a friendly women with great potential upon our entrance into the shop... from there, all down hill. I was looking for girls size 6X in anything and she told me they carried that size but did not set me in the direction to find anything. My sister-in-law and I fished through the shelves and found 1 t-shirt for $36. Fine, not great. Then we found a charm bracelet section. Perfect. I asked how much the charm bracelets were... she told me $10. Then I asked how much the charms were... she told me $5. We spent about 10 minutes picking out charms. I am now paying for the t-shirt, the bracelet and the charms only to find out that the charms we chose do not fit on the bracelet that we chose. She was out of the bracelet. Now, we are the only customers in the 10x10 foot store, so anything that we say, you can hear... perfectly! If you notice that we are asking about the bracelets and the charms... it might seem as if we are pretty interested in buying these items. Chime in! Be a seller! Make a sale! Tell me you are out of the bracelet and guide me into another item or help me get the item from one of your other stores. Customer service people! We bought the t-shirt and she called another location in the area for us to pick up a bracelet for the charms. So she was nice and she found us a bracelet beyond that... there is not much else to say.

In today's economy I would be working a bit harder to make and close any sale. Always kill them with kindness. I recently had my bag stolen while out celebrating a friends birthday... in a bar of course. Clearly the person who took the bag did not want what was in it, but wanted the bag... my first Gucci... very sad. Anyhow, my personal Blackberry perished in the theft. I spent some quality time on the phone with AT&T in the days following the bag snatching episode. The customer service was really thorough at AT&T. I can't say enough about them. They were extremely accommodating and helpful in aspects of replacing my Blackberry, shipping confirmation, setup details, etc. I am thrilled with my decision to have switched from Sprint to Cingular the now AT&T. All be it almost 2 years ago, it has paid off to get out of the Spring contract. Customer service goes a long way. I can not stress that enough... ever.