Today I had one of my worst, if not the worst retail shopping experience in my life. This is clearly a complaint, but I just want to emphasize that this is about your system and processes, and not the staff.

Long story short, I arrived at the store today (19-Aug-2023) and quickly found a Ted Baker long coat I liked. Knowing there were a few more items I want to browse, I had asked one of your staff to keep the item for me at the counter, so I don't have to carry it around while I continue my shopping. 10 minutes later I returned to pay for the coat at the counter only to be told someone had just purchased it online and they had to honour the purchase of that customer.

This baffled me as I believe it is common practice for clothing stores, whether it be low-end or high-end fashion, to hold on to items for customers at the counter so they could continue to browse around the floor. After all, you are not a supermarket that provides a trolley for customers to carry their goods. In this scenario, your inventory system and sales process had prioritized your online customers, while I, the instore customer, who made an effort to drive to town and walked into your store, was disadvantaged.

Where I think you could improve with this operating model is perhaps allow customers who are physically in store to have their items held at the counter and system for a short period or time, or straight up put up a message saying pay now or you could lose your item to an online customer (jokes).

I hope the explanation above has clearly illustrated why this has been a poor customer experience for me. I am likely to continue to shop at your store in the future, this is going to be a bad taste that lingers on for a while. And please don't misconstrue that I was trying to ask your store to hold on to the item for an extended period of time so I can have second thoughts, I was extremely clear to your staff that I wanted to buy the item but wanted to continue to browse your relatively large store.