Railroaded Into a Big Purchase…

We've all spent too much money on something, only to regret it later. Well, have you ever had that feeling while buying it, but being intimidated enough to purchase it anyway? Me? Never--it's one of my strengths. But for my wife, a different story.

If you have ever purchased a Louis Vuitton product, than you know how crazy expensive that stuff is. Neat thing is the customer service that follows it is incomparable. Still not worth the price, but cool nonetheless. I got my wife some giant purse for a recent anniversary and she loved it obviously. It has, however received some wear from everyday use and until recently I never knew about their free 'reconditioning' at their stores (my purchases have always been online, since hold on to your hats, there isn't an LV store in Iowa!).

On Crazy Friday my wife spies a store while picking up some stuff for my son, and decides to go in and have the latch fixed on her bag. Well, at the LV store, you walk in and are greeted by your personal sales valet, who then accompanies you for your entire visit. She's loving the attention, asks about her latch (which she finds out is a 'clasp' and not a latch), and they say no problem we can fix it right now.

She is then escorted to a private area in the store, so she can remove her valuable from the bag so they may work on it in the back. She removes her keys, her LV Wallet, Her LV cherries clutch purse and LV makeup bag…a few tissues and hands over the bag. (I should mention at this juncture that these items are every LV purchase we've ever made in some 25 years together, but that fact that they all happened to be in the same purse at the same time makes her seem like the most frivolous shopper ever) the valet says, "Oh, Mrs. Dwyer we will get this taken care of RIGHT AWAY," and starts snapping her fingers and people start scurrying about like the scene in pretty woman! Well, now emblazoned by her new popularity, she asked for a glass of water…here comes the Pellagrini, and she'd like to see the wallet in this case right here. $9000.00--she puts it back, and asks to see this business card holder with the LV logo…$150.00…well, they are almost done at the store fixing her purse, and my wife is feeling a little guilty from all the attention, so she decides to buy the smallest thing she can find just to be nice. She sees a small LV keychain and says, "Could you gift wrap this for me?" Sure enough…it's in a gift box 10 minutes later, and they are now reassembling her purse and she's checking out. Handing over her credit card, the valet says, "Of course the repair is complementary, as is the gift packaging, so your total today is $450.00." My wife's eyes must have shot out like a Warner Brothers cartoon, because the sales girl asked if everything was alright. She was in a tight spot because she thought the Keychain would have been way less since it was "down the line from the higher priced items…" Not so…but she has no choice but to go ahead with the sale,because she didn't want to look bad in front of the employees, especially since she happened to be LV 'outed' during the purse unloading fiasco.

So now it's up to me to return it, using some lame excuse about the gift not being right, but I could tell they knew what was up, because they first ask, snidely, if I would like store credit. No, I would not!