tl;dr: Dirty, poorly lit, mean-spirited employees made experience awful. Overcharged for items. Got laughed at for not knowing the names of rocks (even when they didn't know either). Sister got sick after being in the store. 0/10 would NOT recommend unless you want the satisfaction of turning around and walking right back out again so they know they're not gonna make a sale.
My family and I generally try to shop local and support small, family-run businesses. We had extended family members visiting from out of state and they are very much into geology at the moment so we decided to pick up a few rocks local only to our state as a gift. We thought Earth Brite would be a wonderful place to go since it is local, family-run, and seemed to be full of the kinds of items we were looking for.
The store was poorly lit and fairly dirty. I understand that running a business that sells rocks and gems, and lets you open your own geodes can and will be dusty/dirty. We didn't really care too much about this since you can only be so clean when dealing with rocks. So we pushed on through the store to find a few rocks that we knew our relatives couldn't live without.
I won't touch on how the store was laid out because that doesn't matter much (though the counters were pretty high and if you are shorter or in a wheelchair then you'll probably have a hard time seeing anything). What really matters is the customer service. My family is pretty laid back and if someone treats us poorly we usually just brush it off and move on because it's no point wasting energy and brain cells on people who decide to act like douches.
My family and I ended up choosing a couple of rocks that we liked, and I kept track of them by writing down their names in my phone since the names and prices were written on the jars and the jars, we assumed, had to stay on their shelf. We made our way to the counter and were being rung up. The guy didn't know what rocks we had, which - okay. That happens. So I pulled out my phone with my list of rocks and suggested one (we had two blue ones, and I read off one of the blue ones on the list). The man scoffed then laughed at me and said I was wrong, so I read off the other one on the list. He said that was wrong, and that it was the type from the jar he had besides himself on the counter (which was the same type of rock I had JUST said it was). We went through the list and came to one that he couldn't figure out the price for. So he had someone go back to check and they came back and said it was "X" amount. Okaaay but we had gotten it out of the jar that said "Y" amount, and they were all the same size so they should all be the same price. They insisted we got it out of a different jar of larger stones and charged us almost twice as much for the rock. Two women who worked there were just hanging around the counter, watching a video on their phones with the volume ALL the way up which was kind of jarring against the otherwise quiet and awkward store. All of them had the air of "too good". They were "too good" for us. Too good to look at us or talk to us, too good to treat us nicely, too good to offer their best customer service to a paying customer. Which would make sense if they were too good for us. But they weren't. They were nowhere near better than us, and their sour attitude and audacity to make us feel small and stupid for saying the wrong rock name (when THEY didn't even know it themselves) is piss-poor customer service that stems from having a piss-poor personality.
We just wanted to get out of there and weren't sure where else we could find these rocks so we ended up buying them and leaving ASAP. As we left we saw a child playing in a tiny corner of the store in the dirt??? I mean, raise your kids as you want, I can't say, but it seemed weird that a kid would be allowed to play in geode dust and dirt.
I would have given them 2 stars but my sister ended up getting sick from something in the store (rock dust? bad juju? her body telling her to get tf out of there asap? we'll never know) and didn't recover for a few hours. Also as I was writing this I remembered at how angry I was for them being so rude to not only me, but to my mother, and I wanted to give 0 stars but that's not allowed.
Maybe it was an off day. Maybe they're always like that. I really don't care. They had one opportunity to impress us, to be kind to us, to show us their store, and to make us repeat customers. They failed miserably and they didn't even care. If they can't be bothered to be kind to us, then neither will I with my review.
Get your crap together, Earth Brite. You could have been an amazing store with a fantastic and loyal customer base. But instead, you became a joke in my household. I think the best part of our experience was when we left your store and breathed a sigh of relief at the fact that we'd never be back. read more