Horrendous. The worst shopping experience I have ever had by far.
I am a 33 year old local who has shopped at Lloyd's for years. Though I have purchased many shoes from Lloyd's, I will not be returning to the store. Nor will many of my like-minded girlfriends who I told about the experience I had there last weekend.
I was shopping for a very casual shoe: TOMS. It should have been cheap and simple to get an inexpensive shoe for the spring weather and head to the beach. However Lloyd's doesn't carry the best TOMS selection.
The store was jam-packed because of the weather being so lovely. I couldn't find the jazz shoe style of TOMS I was looking for, but I did find a cute suede pair I had seen previously at a store in PG. However, the store in PG had the same shoes for ten dollars less.
It was the busiest I had ever seen it in Lloyd's. There were boxes of shoes and women, and more shoes ....everywhere. It was a little nuts and disheveled.
The sales associate who was "helping me" was short, not attentive at all, and just plain rude. Most of the girls who work there are very sweet and very helpful, but this one associate consistently has a chip on her shoulder, and I tend to avoid asking her for help. In this case she jumped in when I was asking another associate for a size, and she was awful.
She was inattentive, which I sort of understood because it was so busy. She was also very curt and flippant, which is never necessary.
In the end I asked to see a pair of sandals to go to the beach in, but the associate took so long bouncing between clients (rudely), and my husband was getting anxious to get out of the insanity of the store, so I had to leave without letting her know I was leaving because she never reappeared from the back room.
Almost ten minutes later, as my husband and I were approaching our car, the same very aggressive sales woman came running down the street at full speed, yelling like mad and shouting for us to stop.
We turned around and she demanded to know where one of the pairs of shoes I tried on were.
I said I had no idea.
She claimed I had "taken the box to the front and now they're gone."
I said I was sorry but I didn't know where they were. I had shown my husband and then returned them to their box, and she very, very snidely said "Are they in your purse?"
My husband and I were appalled. I have never been the victim of such inappropriate, blatantly rude, accusatory, hostile behavior.
I told her they absolutely were not in my purse and she then glared at me for a long time before giving me a nasty look and saying "okay". Then she just left. No apology. Totally NOT okay. She ran back in the direction of the store.
I am grateful my husband and I were on a side street when the Lloyd's associate came running and screaming at us. Had we been on Ocean Ave. during such a bustling afternoon it would have been even more humiliating and insane, and even traumatic. Regardless, this woman's behavior was unprofessional, insulting, and flat out bizarre.
Feeling creeped out we headed back to Pacific Grove and I bought the same TOMS I'd seen at Lloyd's for ten dollars less to cleanse my palette. The PG store had a great shoe selection, and the owner was giving bouquets of tulips to shoppers as a "thank you" for shopping with them. It was a pleasant, and much needed, antidote to my experience at Lloyd's.
What a blow from a boutique where I have purchased so many shoes. I suppose I'll be ordering online or going elsewhere in the area in the future. I prefer to shop locally, and it is such a shame. One bad apple. Luckily I know the brands I like at Lloyd's and get them elsewhere without the crazy.
This is the first negative Yelp review I have ever written. I usually don't share bad experiences, but this was just terrible. read more
