Old Town Florence is a nice place to walk around browse and shop. Florence is a lovely picturesque town on the coast and the Siuslaw River about an hour from Eugene. This is a review of Captain’s Lady Books. This is a little book and gift store located in Old Town. I wish this was a happy complimentary story but it’s not. Buyer Beware. Be very careful when purchasing jewelry or other items from this store. Because I was treated so disrespectfully and rudely I want to share. in the summer 2010 a friend was visiting with me so I took her over to Florence for the day to browse around and take pictures. I bought a pair of pretty red color, earrings. The store owner wrapped them in tissue and put them in a bag. My summer home is down the coast about 25 miles from Florence. When I got home found that the earrings made from metal were falling apart. I hadn’t crushed them or put any pressure on them. Wanted to let the store know right away, I very responsibly checked the business card and to my astonishment found no phone number to the store! There was a phone number but it was so you could order books from a book distributor. So next I checked my credit card sales receipt and found a phone number on it. I rang the number and found it to be disconnected. The next day as planned I needed to go to Portland for a week. I took the earrings with me and thought I’d ask a friend who makes earrings there to fix them for me. By the time we arrived and looked over the earrings, they had disintegrated even further and weren’t repairable. I put them away and thought I’d just take them back when I got back to the coast. About a week after the purchase I drove back to Florence and brought in the earrings to show the owner and discuss the refund. She was extremely disagreeable, stating to me «As far as I know you’ve had children play with them», and she didn’t want to make good on her merchandise. I held my ground, and explained that no children had touched them,(Hadn’t even been around children) and that she should return them to her vendor and probably know that the lot she had bought for retail was problematic, with inferior workmanship and she was going to have problems selling them to other customers. Because I had purchased them on a card, she begrudgingly agreed to refund me, but she didn’t care a whit about alienating a customer and leaving a negative impression with what could have been a return customer. I pointed out to her that I had tried to call but she didn’t have a business phone contact. She went into a litany about how she wasn’t going to pay the bill for phone service. So I ask you if she can’t afford to put a phone in her gift shop, what does that suggest about doing business with her? The fact that she has a merchant account with a disconnected phone number on her credit card receipts is very bad business practice. If the owner and her family want to thrive and have a positive business presence in the community with return customers and referrals they need to improve their customer service and people skills.
