REI — Attraction in San Carlos

Not Going Back After Terrible Customer Experience on 3/1/24 @ 5 pm.

I've been buying at REI for 40 years. This is the first terrible experience I had with an employee at REI. His behavior forced me to buy a mountain bike and bike rack from another store. Extremely unprofessional customer service behavior. I should know. I've run a successful service company for 8 years.

Details of What Happened: I went to the San Carlos Store this evening (3/1/24) with the intent of buying as Salsa Cassidy or Blackthorn Carbon SLX Mountain Bike and a Thule hitch-mounted bike rack. I went to REI Wednesday, followed by research, and returned Friday at 5 pm to buy the bike and rack. I walked out with no purchase due the poor behavior of the REI bike employee.

What happened: I asked an employee in the bike section to answer a couple of questions. He was clearly reluctant to do so by his tone of voice and body language. He was staring off in space when I walked up to him and I guess I interrupted his trance state.

I asked him about the pricing on why some of them were on sale as a "manager's special." He looked at the tag, shrugged his shoulders, and said he didn't know. He added that perhaps it was last year's model. It was clear he didn't know why the price was marked down as a Special. He also made no effort to ask anyone else about the pricing. Something I'd do if I didn't know the answer. He conveyed boredom and disinterest in the bikes or my basic question - which he should have known the answer to.

I then asked him if the price was flexible on other bikes. He then went from apathetic to surly in a flash and said absolutely not. As if it was the first time he'd ever heard that question on sale items.

He then said the Special was good as new (even though he had earlier said he didn't know what the Special was). He then asked me abruptly if I wanted to "snag it" (the bike). He was like some bad car salesperson with an attitude of "screw you, I don't care."

At that point, it was clear this guy just wanted to make a sale and have me get lost. As many of you know, his behavior is unlike any other REI employee I or you have interacted with.

It was clear he could care less answering my questions or getting someone who could. His attitude was surly and unprofessional.

As someone who has built a service company from scratch, an employee's attitude can't be trained or changed externally. Only they can change it. 99 out of 100 times, employees who have a bad attitude aren't going to change. They infect other employees and alienate customers (like me) and can sabotage a business. I've found it's best to fire them to remove the poor performer. No amount of company resources will change an employee who has a bad attitude. I'm surprised the REI San Carlos manager hasn't already fired him. Better to be short-staffed than to have someone who treats customers poorly and damages the brand.

Why did I walk out? Because if I'd attempted to talk to the manager that evening, I would have lost it over their employee's poor behavior. I did follow up with a formal complaint to REI corporate management. I also want to share my bad experience with you so you can steer clear of REI San Carlos and with that employee.

I recommend you buy somewhere other than REI San Carlos. If you choose to not follow my recommendation and find yourself trapped there interacting with a male REI employee in his late 20's/early 30's with long straight black hair, a short beard, wearing a beanie, and radiating an attitude of apathy, impatience, indifference, and ignorance, then I urge you to leave ASAP and spend your money elsewhere. Terrible customer service shouldn't...

Hi,

We went to the store to buy what we need for one night of camping. The tent was important for us that it was easy to install. However I felt that after we made the decision with the tent, everything we were advised to buy was just super expensive and in each category the most expansive product . The first sales rep we spoke with was very kind and professional. But then another young man came and we felt treated quite arrogantly, he said he is 18, he seemed to be annoyed by our daughter‘s questions, and gave her a sticker, saying that we work together and that means for him that she is not interrupting while we talk. We didn’t appreciate that. If our daughter has questions, we want to hear them. We are making decisions as a family, and we think it was not his place to act like that.

And then he was super super insisting that we buy the most expensive mats they have. I had to say 3-4 times, that we have some mats and that is why it is not worthy for us to spend extra 800 $ for one night. He used all the arguments, while we should buy on the spot. I said very clearly no. And then he said, then we can come back later, as this mat is the most expensive and they don’t sell is often. That just made me feel even worse. I don’t like to be pushed in my decision. I very much appreciate professionalism and knowledgeable advice, but not to be pushed, and if I say 1-2 times no, then it should be enough.

Then he insisted that we make the membership and we tell at check out that he recommended the membership. I felt stressed out, and rather that they were trying to sell us all most expansive products instead of listening to our needs.

It was the first time we went to REI in San Carlos and I feel very disappointed.

So I would say the store is big, has parking, the Oper people we spoke to were very nice, they have good choices and different brands. For all that 5 stars. But the fact that they tried to sell us only the most expensive products and we felt that they were very pushy, that is something we don’t appreciate at all.

And just as a last tiny peace of info, the head lamp he recommended and we bought, I found on Amazon for 19 $ instead of the 49 $ that we...

I would like to preface with saying that I am a long time REI member and have never had a bad experience in any of their other stores. That being said, I have to give a bad review here for bad customer service and staff that were not knowledgeable.

Long story short is that they sold my fiance ski boots that wouldn't work with her skis/bindings(we even brought the skis into the store when buying boots to avoid this). We left them there for them to be tuned for safety. We got a call back saying that they weren't compatible. When we picked them up they more or less shrugged and wrote down a part number for new outsoles that we needed to source ourselves in order to make the boots work with the bindings. Not great customer service.

We did end up ordering the part directly from the manufacturer, but guess what? They were not compatible because they were 5355 outsoles, and the boots are compatible with 9523 outsoles. I figured this out after getting fed up with all the terrible advice we have been getting and went online to figure it all out for myself.

In the end, we needed to return the boots, beg for a refund from k2 for the outsoles, and find another shop to buy boots at. Props to REI for such a good return policy. That's the only reason the review is 2 stars.

We wasted a lot of time and money. The whole reason I go to a store like this is for the expert advice and to save time so I don't have to learn everything myself about ski boots and bindings compatibility. Because of the lack of knowledge and poor service I ended up learning a lot about ski boots and bindings, but I'm busy and my time means a lot to me. I...