Spencer's — Local services in Columbia

Husband went in yesterday to purchase a fortnite toy for our son's 11th bday. Today we went back in to return it after realizing how ridiculously expensive it was for how cheaply it was made. Upon entering the manager legit yelled at us asking what we were there for. We said for a return. She yelled, "WHY?" After taking a second to realize that she was indeed yelling at us with an attitude, she yelled "Do you have a receipt?" We explained no, but we used our debit card... with our account pulled up showing the purchase date and time. She freaked out on us. My husband proceeded to ask what her problem was and ask for her bosses number. She refused to give us the bosses number and gave us a piece of paper telling us to call guest services. Then she got on her phone and called security while my husband walked out of the store to call guest services. I stayed inside . She proceeded to lie to the security guy about what happened. My husband was told by guest services they would indeed do a return, NOT an exchange. Samantha, the assistant, was extremely helpful and understanding. I feel bad for her. She should be the manager and the current manager needs to take some customer service classes. Samantha, the assistant, even stated that all the manager had to do was pull up the transaction from yesterday. That wasn't even offered!

Needless to say, we will not ever be going back there.

Thank you Samantha for taking care of duties that the person above you should have easily...

This store RACIALLY PROFILES EVERY PERSON OF COLOR WHO ENTERS IT. My friend and I were in the store today, my friend who is black picks up an item to look at it then puts it down on a shelf. After a little while when we're done looking around and head towards the exit. the MANAGER stops us and asks my friend if she "decided to get" the item. My friend says that she put it back, and the manager asks us to show her where she put it. After my friend shows her the item on the shelf, in plain sight, the manager says "just don't want any of my merchandise going missing", This situation was absolutely APPALLING to me. The MANAGER of this store chose to specifically target my black friend, with no purse or any pockets; while I'm white and apparently was completely innocent to her, though I had a big purse and several bags. This happening was very CLEARLY racist and an instance of racial profiling. This store will no longer be receiving my business, and I will be sure to tell everyone I know that if they have any melanin in their skin, they WILL BE A VICTIM OF RACIAL PROFILING AND RACIST STAFF. This is a STORE WIDE issue, because this was the MANAGER. No other store in the mall is ANYWHERE NEAR reaching the level of pure racism and profiling that I witnessed in this Spencer's today. This situation is unfortunately NOT UNIQUE, as there are MANY other google reviews that detail the racial profiling and racist manager that they endured while shopping...

Absolutely horrible customer service! Apparently in 2017 they started a new protocol where a customer can't even contact any stores directly to check on certain items. All calls go directly to people in a call center that deal with their website. This is a huge unethical problem when it comes to retail because there are stores that will carry certain items that the website may not currently show.

And since you can't contact any of their stores directly anymore or can't even get an item number from the site if it's not being shown, there's no proper way to find out what they actually have in stock anywhere without driving all over the state to find out firsthand.

Never have I dealt with this ignorant level of stupidity with other retail stores like Hot Topic when looking for certain items. Never again will I waste time with Spencer's, who like their sister company Spirit have created too much communication separation between the customer and store. It's apparent that the company knows how bad their customer service is in this department and simply doesn't care, which is also why they've made it to where you can't review them accordingly on their social...