Key takeaway: this shop is clearly optimising for single purchase customers and neither cares about the lifetime value of a customer (aka a customer coming back) nor recognises the power of word of mouth. I guess it would make a good shop to buy something very basic — wax, some fins or perhaps a leash — but for anything else go elsewhere.
10 minutes after purchasing a wetsuit (in lieu of the one I have at home), I bumped into a friend who had a spare. Naturally, I immediately walked back to the shop to return the wetsuit, as while it was a good choice for me I don’t need two 3/2 wetsuits at home.
It turns out that this store doesn’t allow cash returns from the moment that you purchase, and only allows exchanges.
Not only is that an arbitrary policy for something that had verifiably been in my hands for less than 10 minutes, it’s also not something they advertise anywhere in store or in person, only in small print on the receipt, which is something you receive after it’s too late to do anything about it.
This otherwise reasonable position was met with shock from the store attendants, who thought both the policy and it’s implementation were sound. The owner of the store, despite hearing the details of my case, doubled down.
If it had been half a day, then perhaps I start to understand the goal of this policy. For 10 minutes, I’m puzzled.
Do not expect good customer service from this location.