COS — Local services in Prague

I went to this store a few weeks ago - I often travel to Prague, and multiple sales people came up to me to take the items that I was carrying - as if I was going to steal them!

I was dressed very cute and fashionable, wearing expensive clothing and had a nice purse, and I was constantly being looked at by the staff and followed! I did not notice this behavior being done to anyone else in the VERY busy store. When I shop for clothes, I usually look at the tags to see what materials are used because I like natural materials like cotton, silk, and so on; however, I was not being secretive or sneaky.

When I later went to the register to pay for the clothes that the store took, the same lady who took my items acted like she wasn't expecting me to buy them and then said, "Oh, so you don't want to try them on?" This is after I told two workers that I didn't want my items hung in a dressing room until the one insisted with pleading eyes that I have the items taken from me. I have been shopping at COS for years and usually like to stop at their stores in the different countries that I go to, but I have never been treated this way. A part of me didn't want to go to the lady to get the items back because I was so embarrassed, but then I wanted the items I found and the other part of me wanted to prove that I was there to buy what I had picked up - WANTING TO PROVE SOMETHING TO A STORE IS SO RIDICULOUS! After this incident, I've done more travel and wanted to go to a COS store, but decided not to because I didn't want to be profiled or treated...

The COS store on Parizska is out of place with all of the other stores on the street. First its a high street brand (H&M) more suited to the shopping malls rather than the exclusive brands on sale on this street. The expectation is designer quality items and service, but instead racks of reasonable quality lower priced everyday casual wear. Second is the service, whilst all of the staff seem polite, they often can't cope with the volume of customers, this is a shop which seems to operate on minimum (or below) staff levels. Lastly is the management, which is well below the standard even for a shopping mall. I had an issue with shirt I bought for my son, I asked to speak to the manager, who refused to speak to me even though they were present in the store. No where on Parizska would a store treat its customers this way, not even to the tourists, never mind someone who lives only a few meters away. My advice to H&M is if you want to elevate your brand to compete on this street, then bring your service up to the level of the district, otherwise you only disappoint, otherwise stick...

Price tags are very misleading for foreigners. They are displayed in different currencies which would seem to help as you can consider the purchase based on your currency (euro in my case). However the real price in CZK is considerably higher. Say one of the items was 90 euros but I paid 2500 CZK which when converted is much more, it's about 100 euros. That's about 11% more than what I thought I was paying. It was misleading, it made you falsely believe the items costed less. I wouldn't have purchased some of the items if I had realized what I was paying in reality, realized it only later. We visited other shops in Prague displaying prices in both currencies but the actual exchange rate was more or less in line with the real current one,...