Shared Earth — Local services in Liverpool

The York branch is one of our all time favourite shops, so my partner and I were very excited to visit the one in Liverpool. However, the two members of staff in there yesterday were really unpleasant and I’m still not sure what the issue was. We had a loyalty card with two stamps left to fill and presented it at the till alongside our purchases, which were roughly 26 quid altogether. You get a stamp each fiver you spend, ergo we thought this meant we would fill up the last two stamps and then use the card to get a fiver off. On presentation of the card the woman behind the till sighed and looked at another member of staff who was re-stocking items at the front of the desk and said “you do one favour and they always ask for more”. I’m not sure how allowing us to buy products from the shop is doing us a favour? We joked that we could leave and then come back in so it would be two separate transactions and she snapped “do you just want to pick which things you want off” so I took off two items that came to five pounds. So by now being extremely uncomfortable and feeling like we’d done something wrong we paid and left, and then on inspection of the receipt outside we realised she’d charged twice for one item. So excruciatingly we had to return inside which she was visibly annoyed at and then blamed her mistake on us because of the whole discussion of said loyalty card- “I’ll just have to give it you in cash” she snapped. As I said, we visited the York store many times and have spent a lot of money there, and have never had an issue with and have always been encouraged to use the cards. I am not sure why all items could not be added to the till and then five pounds taken off at the end.

The woman said that in a coffee shop you can’t use cards like that, so it’s the same there. As a person who visits coffee shops regularly and has been a barista for four years I know from experience that this is not true. If you have a loyalty card with one stamp left and you buy two coffees you only pay for one because you get a stamp for the first coffee that you pay for, then you can pay for the other coffee with the card, what a treat!

The experience soured the Liverpool visit, maybe the staff are unhappy or were having a particularly bad day, but we did not do anything to warrant being spoken to so unpleasantly. The other shops on Bold Street were rammed but this store was empty, so I think that in itself speaks volumes.

We won’t visit again which saddened us. Better off going to ‘The Hippy Hole’ next...

A member of staff was very rude to me. I have used the refill shop loyally for nearly four years and always used the same containers. For context, the poster on the refill station says bring ANY container to refill. Normally the staff here are lovely and I've never had any problems. There was a friendly member of staff who was chatting to me while I was looking to see which products were in stock before going to ask for assistance at the till (you can't fill the bottles yourself - fair enough as it's messy). I went to the till where there was a member of staff on each side. I asked the woman behind the till for help who appeared very reluctant and looked at her colleague on my side of the till but did come to the refill station with me. The other member of staff (a woman with dyed red hair) had walked as far as the refill station with us as though heading for the back of the shop. But suddenly she stopped and quite aggressively told me that the bottles I had brought were no good because they were not transparent and so it was impossible to know when they were full. I said that no one had ever told me there were any problems with these bottles and that I was just reusing what I had as that was the whole point of the system. She persisted with quite a hostile and aggressive energy but eventually walked off and her colleague filled the bottles for me. I mentioned to her colleague that the sign does say you can bring any bottle and that it might be worth changing the sign. She pointed out she wasn't the one who had challenged me and I said that I knew that but that she should mention it to her colleague. I was almost at the point of turning round and walking out of the shop because her colleague was so aggressive towards me. She certainly needs to brush up on her customer service and people skills as I was at the point of abandoning my purchase and only went ahead because I really needed the shampoo. In any case, my bottles were filled without overflowing and so there was no problem at all apart from the woman creating aggressive energy in a shop that I normally love and consider to be filled with good vibes. Even if the bottles were a problem there was no need to be so aggressive about it. The fact that people are going out of their way to buy refills instead of new products should be encouraged. I will be shopping...

Had a little bit of a disappointing experience when I found quite a serious problem with an item when I got it home, with no realistic opportunity for me to visit Liverpool to get it sorted in person. I raised the problem by email which was swiftly answered with a hands-up, friendly and no-fuss "We want to put this right" attitude. It was resolved quickly and fairly, and exceeded my expectations. Hats off to Shared Earth for not doing the usual corporate nonsense when told about a problem! We all get things wrong. Putting them right is what matters and Shared Earth did this... brilliantly....