Don’t leave us hanging,
@Oops, spill the tea!!
Since it’s Saturday so I have a little spare time and since you have asked (I think
@Hunevoque2 once asked too) I will attempt to tell the sorry tale. Apologies for the length of it...
I boycotted Hermes in 2004. I did so because of an extremely tiresome and stressful experience with them in their Paris store. (I think it may have been that store that refused Oprah entry because she was a woman of colour!!
) But - I digress...
So - the year before, I had met a Lady whilst making a series of TV programmes for a well-known company. (I’m no one special or famous, I just had a particular skill they needed for the program.) She was a very commanding woman - very tall and very elegant. She could fill a room with her presence. We really hit it off. We really got on with each other and we laughed and laughed and laughed together. We stayed firm friends until her sad, untimely death some years later.
This Lady was extremely grand and a force to be reckoned with. Some found her to be prickly and aristocratically high-handed. She never was with me but she was formidable when you saw her in action. I loved her for this because she was such a kind and lovely woman when you got to know the real her. She was a lot older than me but that didn’t matter because we shared similar interests and an almost identical sense of the absurd. She was great fun and a truly wonderful, supportive friend to me.
She had a big Birthday coming up that year and so I took her to Paris as a treat. We shopped...every day we shopped...
One of our excursions found us in Hermes. My friend raised an eyebrow and immediately a lovely silk chair appeared for her to sit on whilst I frolicked in the frocks. I bought a grey coat (worn twice but still in wardrobe) and then we just wandered together throughout the store. I mentioned that I was looking for some cutlery having recently bought a London flat and was fed up bringing knives and forks from home when I stayed there.
She found some...She urged me to buy it because it was lovely to look at and she said it suited me (I had always wanted to look like a fork and anyway she was the best friend to go shopping with because she always told the truth AND she always found the loveliest and most perfect things for me. She had SUCH a good eye. I trusted her implicitly.) So after not much deliberation I went ahead and bought a whole canteen of this beautiful cutlery. As it was fairly heavy they said the would post it to me in London. So comes the day - comes the cutlery - and I admit I did a thrilling unboxing when it arrived. I laid it out and I gave myself praise for choosing so wisely.
In a VERY short time the silver cutlery turned orange and then brown. So I polished it, stored it back in the big boxes it came in and didn’t think any more. Until, I had to use it for a bash I was throwing in town. Lo and behold - I opened the box and it was orange and brown again. So I cleaned it again and repeated the whole charade. I got fed up with this so told my friend. She came to stay with me that weekend and I showed her. She was very put out for me and said she wished she had never set eyes on it as she felt responsible for urging me to buy it. I assured her this wasn’t the case. Anyway, she decided that next morning (Saturday) we were going to Hermes in Sloane Street (very nearby) and SHE was going to complain!
She sailed into Hermes like a galleon. She quite literally opened the boxes and emptied them noisily on the glass counter and told the SA in no uncertain terms that their cutlery was utter rubbish! (She did not use the word rubbish btw). I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights standing behind her watching this scene all pan out. The SA then said (and I quote)
Madam, this silver needs cleaning! My friend then royally KICKED OFF! She explained she had had silver all her life. Her family had used family silver all their lives. She had family silver open to the public. She was well aware that silver needed cleaning, however it should not need cleaning EVERY DAY! The SA took out a silver cloth and cleaned one spoon. He put it on the counter and we watched it turn pale orange in front of our eyes. He explained he would have to send it back to Paris and have tests done on it. So my cutlery was confiscated and sent back to Paris. It could not be dealt with in UK. WHY? Who knows...
After many weeks nothing was heard from Paris. My friend came to stay again. She carted me back to Sloane Street and a chair appeared (for her) as soon as we entered. She explained that nothing had been done and demanded a full refund. She was told that that would not be possible and that SHE had to get in touch with the store in Paris!! We went back to my flat and she did - in flawless French.
This carried on getting batted backwards and forwards for months. In the end they rang me and told me there were indeed problems with that consignment of cutlery and that they were sending me a credit note. My French is poor - very poor. However, I managed to tell them I did not want a credit note - I was much more in favour of a full refund please. NON! NON! NON! It was not company policy to give refunds - only a similar amount to what I had spent in Paris (taking account of fluctuations in currency meanwhile). I was told that they had given me their permission to spend this similar amount in their store in London. I was so hacked off by this because it now meant I had to go and spend a fairly significant amount of money on things I really didn’t want or need. Like a leather pochette containing a battery light to shine on the keyhole of my front door and a watch I would not normally have chosen to buy. This along with various scarves and almost every scent bottle they sold completed the wretched transaction. It was a dreary shopping excursion undertaken with no enthusiasm, which took hours just to get goods to the value of.
So that’s why I have very good reason not to shop with them ever again. They produced sub-standard cutlery and I had to pay the price for it. There was no apology - no uptake of responsibility - just hard-nosed retention of my hard-earned cash. THE END.
its as if she is playing dress up 
in a few months time she will change again to something completely different....she's an absolute muppet 
I can't remember if she has 
right now. I think it just goes to show if you're an unpleasant person your mask will eventually slip and people will see behind it
