Officine Universelle Buly 1803 — Local services in Paris

Never thought I would have experienced such horrible service from here especially after hearing all the amazing reviews, but here we go…

I was very excited to visit the store and planned our trip around this to buy a few Christmas gifts for my family after being away from home for a few months.

My fiancé and I arrived at the store at 5:30pm knowing that there would be a bit of a wait to get inside.

At around 6pm, we were finally able to go into the store and had a quick browse before deciding what we were going to purchase. We tried multiple times to get a sales assistants attention, but they were either busy serving another customer or ignored us completely.

I should note that we noticed that multiple people cut the line and were served before us, but this didn’t bother us at the time as the store is small and we imagined it would be tricky for the sales assistants to properly track who was next.

After an hour of waiting and trying to get a sales assistants attention, we were the only people left in the store and were finally offered help - until a shop assistant (the lady with dark short hair) walked over to the front door and yelled out at us that it was “7pm and the shop was closed”. She gestured for us to leave and said we’d have to come back tomorrow (even though we were leaving Paris that day).

After 1.5 hours of waiting, we were extremely annoyed that not a single shop assistant offered to assist us until they were about to close. We also couldn’t understand why we weren’t given a heads up that they were about to close at least 5-10mins before so we could complete our purchases.

The store looked beautiful and we were very excited for this visit, but this is definitely not the “Officine” experience we had expected-and at the price point they charge and service they pride themselves on, we were extremely disappointed and would be...

Extremely stand offish staff that seem to favour certain kinds of customers over others, with lots of micro aggressions, eye rolling and side comments.

I hate to write THAT kind of review but I had an awful and perplexing experience, with the staff member refusing to even process my VAT refund form without a printed plane ticket - despite this not being required for other customers in the store at the same time, who just as I would be using their passports. At another point, a three letter name was too difficult for the representative to assist me with writing down, and she tossed a sticky note pad at me and asked me to write it down for her instead.

I had asked for the ivory combs and despite her walking away with it and confirming that they had them, she then came back with tortoise combs that had been engraved, after I politely raised that it was meant to be ivory, she responded with “too bad, they have been engraved already.”

After dropping 800 euro on souvenirs for loved ones, the bags were pushed across the table.

I am not sure if I came off as a rude tourist, but I was certain to exchange my pleasantries in fluent french, wait for my turn, and not hassle the staff. As a person in the service industry, I get it - perhaps this staff member was simply having a bad or busy day, but I am not sure why I was treated this way, so much so that even other customers picked up on it and questioned the cause for the relative hostility from this specific staff member.

I wouldn’t come back or bother with this...

I visited this afternoon and was deeply disappointed with the service, particularly from one salesgirl. When I approached her for assistance, she gave me an unpleasant look, showed no willingness to help, and failed to explain the details of the product I inquired about. She then abruptly left, and another salesgirl stepped in to assist me instead.

After making a purchase, I decided to film the calligraphy process, but the first salesgirl, who hadn’t served me, came over and scolded me in a rude and unprofessional tone. While I understand that I should have asked for permission to film, her approach could have been much friendlier rather than embarrassing me in front of so many people. In contrast, the salesgirl who helped me initially saw me filming and did not stop me.

On a sidenote, I just realised that I should have a chance to choose font and colour which I never been offered to. Only after reading so many previous horrible reviews, I realised that they did not show our purchased product for double checking whether it’s the right product and whether my name was written correctly before packing. The whole experience was taken lightly and felt I went into a marche.

This experience was extremely disappointing, and I would not recommend this shop to my friends visiting Paris. I would rate negative star if there...