I wanted a hood for my Barbour jacket and after finding several potential sources decided to order from Barrington's.
I paid for the hood, and the shipping, and it came as promised a few days later. However when it arrived it was missing one of the press studs to attach it to the jacket, clearly a factory defect.
After I opened the package and found the defect, I called and emailed Barrington's telling them about the problem. I eventually spoke with Brooke Barrington the morning after and she apologised, and this is where in my opinion customer service broke down.
I asked how we could put this right and was told that I could send it back to them at their expense, not using the courier service that they used to ship to me, but Canada Post.
I was told that this was company policy, I suggested that it should be company policy to verify the product they sold me and charged for shipping was correct before sending it out. I was then told that they usually do but somehow they hadn't this time. I was also told that they had to receive the defective item so that it could be verified as defective before replacing it. I've had bad experiences with sending things via Canada Post so I didn't want to go this route.
It could easily be over a week to get there and then however long
to get back to me, two weeks, three weeks and don't forget I'd paid for the hood and the shipping because I wanted this quickly.
I was told that this is the way it has to be done, company policy etc. I feel that I received platitudes not customer service to rectify what was clearly their problem.
At this point I decided to drive a few hours out of my way down to their store in Oakville to make sure that I had the desired outcome.
It's a very nice store and Brooke and her colleague were very polite. I pointed out that It had cost me to have a defective product shipped to me, yet here I was in the store, and to be fair I was refunded the shipping cost.
I'm happy with my purchase and I recognise that one critical review amongst a lot of good ones is probably of little consequence to them. If anyone was to look at my other reviews they'll see that the vast majority are positive and I'm not someone that complains unnecessarily.
If they'd said on the phone we're sorry, we messed up, but send the defective hood back to us and we'll immediately ship one out that's been properly checked, I could have lived with that.
