Invalid New Gft Card and Terrible Customer Services

[goldenhour]

On March 23rd, I called Sephora Canada’s customer services 3 times concerning my gift card of 50$ that’s never been used and yet the balance was 0$.

During the first call, the employee told me that the card was used in store, at Place Ste-Foy (Québec city) despite the fact that I’ve never been to that mall and they could clearly see on my account that on the same day I made a purchase in store in Montréal. Therefore, I couldn’t have used my gift card in Québec while being in Montréal. Since there was nothing he could do for me, he gave me the store’s number because according to him the store had all the information about said purchase. I found out that he gave me a fake number simply to be done with me.

2nd call : I called back and asked for a supervisor. No French speaking supervisor was available, so I was transferred to an English Speaking general supervisor named Barbey. The man told me repeatedly that gift cards are like cash and cannot be traced back despite the fact that his subordinate told me otherwise. It took him a couple of minutes before even looking up my gift card and telling me that it was used in Ontario and there was nothing he could do for me. He became extremely rude when I asked him to speak slowly because English isn’t my first language. He proceeded to repeat himself multiple times without listening to what I had to say. I explained to him that it was impossible for me to have been in Montréal and somewhere in Ontario on the same day especially during the holidays with the road conditions. He simply didn’t care and kept being rude by trying to get rid of me by offering me 300 beauty points and 5$ store credit. I told him that there was nothing I could buy with 5$ in Sephora and that I had a gift card of 50$ so he instead offered me 10$ and refused to spend more time on the phone with me.

Later on, in the night, I called back for the 3time, I explained the situation to the new employee. I told him that I don’t understand how Sephora think I could’ve been in Québec city, Montréal and in Ontario on the same day to make different purchases in different stores. He made up this conspiracy and accused me of giving out my card number to people so they could make purchases with it (because obviously you can buy a ton of products at Sephora with only 50$...) and now trying to deceive them. After being wrongly accused, I asked to speak with a supervisor and was transferred once again to Barbey, the general supervisor, who told me that the person who bought the gift card probably didn’t buy it from Sephora but from a third party. I told him that’s impossible because my brother told me that he did buy it from Sephora and I had the little mirror pocket/wallet that came with it. I asked him to not accuse my brother of lying when I’ve already been wrongly accused of deceiving them. Once again, Barbey the supervisor was extremely rude on the phone and he gave me 20$ in store credit instead of the 10$ even though my gift card had 50$ on it. By the end of the phone call that lasted over 1 hour he was yelling at me and he told me that he wasn’t going to spend more time on the phone with me. He apparently had others calls to take which was a lie because at that point it was midnight (eastern time) and his shift had ended. He started screaming even more at me when I pointed that out and told me there was nothing else he could do and that I should call again tomorrow to speak with another supervisor. He then hung up on me.

I had simply the worst customer services experience with a supervisor yelling at me, refusing to listen to what I had to say, accusing me of lying and accusing my brother of lying as well and making up conspiracy theory as we go. He simply was rude the entire time but especially after I asked him to speak slowly because of language differences. This is an inacceptable behavior coming from a supervisor. I can only imagine what example he is setting for his subordinates. Sephora needs to have better standards and training for their employee. It is unacceptable for a client to remain calm and polite while the supervisor is the one yelling and throwing accusations around.

I would advise everyone to NOT buy Sephora’s gift card because they definitely do have a fraud/scamming problem going on OR most likely Sephora is NOT careful nor diligent enough while printing gift cards and they are printing multiple cards with the same numbers and selling them to different clients. Sephora DOES NOT care for their clients that have problems with their new gift card because they’ve has already been payed so it doesn’t affect their bottom line. Sephora may pride himself on being a company that cares for their client but from my experience it’s a LIE. They don’t care enough to refund those of us who are innocent and unable to use their gift card because of Sephora’s own mistake. Barbey the supervisor himself told me that they had another client calling in today for the same reason and that her card was used on the other side of the world and they still did nothing for her. If anyone takes a look at Sephora’s forum you’ll see that this is not a rare occurrence but actually a huge problem that Sephora has on their hands and yet they are not taking the necessary steps to remedy it nor are they refunding clients who cannot used their new gift cards.

[LaurieBT]

Hi @goldenhour,

I'm so sorry for this experience and thank you for sharing this feedback with us. I will take a look further and I'll send you a private message to help shortly.

Best regards,

Laurie