Sunday, April 20, 2008

ULTA is NOT my favorite place right now...

Dear ULTA,

I have been a loyal customer of yours since you opened a store in Murfreesboro, TN back in October '07. On your grand opening day, I filled out your reward club card and dropped it in the box by the nice lady who asked me to fill it out. Since then, I have spent approximately $300-$400 on merchandise in your store and have YET to receive ANY of the benefits you promise to your loyal customers for spending their hard earned money at your store.

Yesterday, when I purchased $20 worth of merchandise and mentioned this fact to one of your employees, she looked up my customer number and apparently my information had never been turned in. I was given a card with your customer service number on it and was deferred to your customer service center instead of a manager at the store, so as instructed I came home and promptly phoned your customer service center.

In the past 24 hours, I have been on hold with your "customer service" department for a total of 45 minutes. Currently, I have been on hold for 21 minutes and counting. I have left TWO messages with your phone service with TWO contact numbers. Of course, I was contacted during a time that was well over 12 hours after my original message (is that REALLY your earliest convenience?) and I was not home. Did your customer service team bother to call my other contact number? Of course not! So, I'm back on the phone again.

ULTA, this is a SORRY excuse for good customer service. I am VERY dissatisfied with your company at this point. You must only have a total of three people working at your customer service center, which is evident by the current wait time of 26 minutes I am experiencing. There are companies twice as small as yours who would KILL to demonstrate better customer service.

Please be advised I will be posting this message on my personal blog as an open letter to my readers. Surely you know that word of mouth is the best promotion, so it is within your best interest to right this wrong as soon as possible.

Lastly, I am hoping this situation will be rectified soon and that you will honor the points I have built through your club since your store opened here. I am enclosing my Club number along with TWO contact numbers, in which I'm hoping you will use.

Sincerely,

Stephanie Smith (still holding after 40 minutes)
xxx-xxx-xxxx
xxx-xxx-xxxx

Club Number xxxxxxxxxxxxx

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello,

I am an associate at Ulta. I'm sorry for your bad experience. I know that it's frustrating when things don't happen as anticipated. If you don't get help from our customer service help line, it might be best to go into the Ulta store and ask them for an address inquiry sheet. You can fill out all your current address information, and mark that you haven't recieved any of our ad's. In about 4-6 weeks you should be able to create an ulta account on our website to access your information. I would continue to call customer service to make sure that you are being credited for the points you've earned!! I hope this helps!!

Anonymous said...

Hi, I also work at the Ulta here in Murfreesboro. I am very sad to hear about your bad experience and would like to reiterate that if you come into the store and ask us for the form to change your address it should fix the problem. I agree that our "customer service" number doesn't give very good service. I'd like to think that we would be able to do a better job, but as such, hopefully the next time you are in the store we can help you there. :)

Stephanie Smith said...

Thank you both for your concern. I actually received my gift certificate for the full amount about 3 months ago. I did update the blog to reflect the fact that the situation was handled.

I still shop at Ulta on a regular basis and will continue to do so. I love the store and hopefully, we won't have any more problems! :-)

Thanks again!

Anonymous said...

I sit 10 cubicles away from ULTA customer service. I walk past them while they take their calls. I see how many calls they take. They are swamped.

The whole company is swamped because they try to open 70 new stores a year and yet they don't hire new corporate employees to cover the space.

Anonymous said...

Ulta needs to learn how to treat customers so they WANT to come back! Purchased a Christmas gift for my daughter (make up mirror) on 11/8/08 Key word is Christmas Gift! Just tried to return it to the store (I paid cash for it originally) on 1/24/09, was told it was past their 60 day return policy, I agrued with the manager that it was a Christmas gift and it wasn't past 60 days, she kept telling me they don't care if it is a gift or not it was from the date of purchase and I had to take a store credit, would have been nice if they would have told me this when I purchased it since I told the sales girl is was a gift. I took the store credit, but asked for a 800# to call corporate she only gave me a toll #. Yes, I took the store credit no other choice and I bought hair products with it, but will I ever shop there again? NO, I have my own business and if I treated customers this way, I would be out of business, funny thing is stores on both sides of this Ulta have gone out of business in the past 3 months...hope they do too!

Faith said...

I thought I was the only one who had issues with Ulta. I was the victim of terrible, awful customer service. Glad you received your certificate.

Anonymous said...

Just went through ridiculous hell to try to make an online purchase, enticed by offers of discount if you buy so much and free shipping if you buy some more. HORRIBLE experience, that literally (in the true definition) took probably more than two hours of my day, because of the lousy website and phone service (eternal hold, then disconnection). Of course, at the checkout, one is told you can only use one of the offers (either discount or shipping); it would be nice if they mentioned that on the first page (if it's there, I couldn't find it). Anyway, I felt so disgusted at the waste of time, but of course, one doesn't want to give it up after having already invested so much time and effort, so it's a vicious cycle. I probably won't ever use Ulta.com again.