I once waited at 2:00 AM in a Jack in the Box drive-through for nearly an hour before an employee walked out and told all the drivers to back out and leave because there was a drunken homeless man being belligerent at the service window. That was a vastly superior customer service experience than my first and only time shopping with Saks Fifth Avenue. I sincerely wish that was hyperbole.

Literally the only reason I ever considered buying something from them was that my recently opened credit card offered a promotional credit with them. I figured I may as well use it around the holidays. Additionally, they had a Black Friday promotion where if you spent $150, you would receive a $75 gift card. Keep in mind, I've been burned by these kinds of promotions before where the promotional gift is only valid for a short window during a non-sale period, so I know to read the fine print and adjust my expectations accordingly, but this particular promotion said absolutely nothing about any expiration date.

The first major issue I encountered was due to having separate shipping and billing information. I don't know why this is a red flag to Saks Fifth Avenue. Literally every online retailer allows this as a standard option. They basically have to in order to accommodate a non-negligible portion of sales, because people order gifts for remote family, have things sent to vacation homes, or share credit cards and other billing information. In my case, my wife and I were visiting family out of state, so I had the order shipped to my father's house where we were staying. I also had an active ShopRunner membership, so I was supposed to receive 2-day shipping. We had about a week left at this location after ordering, so I figured the risk of not receiving it on time was extremely minimal. I would normally just have it sent to our home, but we were planning a long road trip back, so it would have been left outside during Winter for several days.

Well, Saks Fifth Avenue must never receive gift orders or something, because they called, not me, the person paying for the order, which would at least make some degree of sense, but my father's phone number, which I only provided out of habit as part of the shipping information. Why would they ever contact the recipient? It's not like they're shipping dangerous contraband. What if I was ordering a surprise gift? It makes absolutely no sense. Anyway, my father was gracious enough to actually answer the call while at work, and he said he thought the shipping information was correct, but they should call me to make sure since it was my order. They then tried to call me, but I didn't find out until later that night when my father came home from work that they had called to confirm the shipping address. So I called back the next morning, explained the whole thing to a female representative with a heavy accent, and she said she wasn't aware of any issue and the order seemed ready to ship. Later that day, I received a call, and I recognized the same female representative with the heavy accent. She said she needed to confirm the shipping address because it didn't match the billing address. I of course confirmed, reminded her that I already called earlier to resolve this issue, and that they should go ahead and finish processing the order quickly so it could arrive in time before our departure. Late the next day, I received yet another call, again from the same female with the heavy accent, asking to confirm the exact same information. I confirmed, and asked if at that point, I could go ahead and change the shipping information to our home address. I figured if it arrived too early, we could call and have a friend pick it up for us to protect it from the elements while we were returning home. However, the representative said she could not change the shipping address (why the need to confirm it then? What if I said it was incorrect?) as it was already sent to ShopRunner, and I would need to contact them or the shipping company to have the destination changed.

That brings me to my second issue, which is that it then took them another 2 days after that final confirmation call to finish processing, after which shipping took at least another 2 days, and by that time, we were already gone. I told my father he could simply keep the items for himself as a gift since we didn't really need them ourselves, but he insisted on sending them to us at his cost. My wife still wanted to try changing the shipping address while we were on the road, so she called 5 more times. Take a wild guess who answered every one of my wife's calls? Yes, that's right, the same woman with the heavy accent. I wasn't the one on the phone since I was driving, but I recognized the voice through what I could hear from the phone speaker. I don't know if they just have extremely few representatives, or if they somehow assign a single person to answer specific phone numbers, but don't expect to receive any better or different help on subsequent calls, because we kept getting the same person over and over again. The weird thing is she consistently had a hard time understanding our situation every time we repeated it. We kept clarifying what I basically outlined above, and she kept thinking it was my father who ordered the items for us. Anyway, she kept repeatedly telling my wife that the only way they could change the shipping address was to wait for items to ship out, and then contact the shipping company to redirect them to a new destination. This is extremely counter-intuitive and not at all how most online retailers work, but okay, whatever. It wasn't until the 3rd call that the first batch of items was shipped out, but they weren't that critical to redirect. It was really the last unshipped item, a heavier cast iron pot, that would likely be more expensive for my father to ship, and was the item we were most interested in using at home, that we wanted to redirect. On the 5th call (I guess they're into puns?), my wife finally asked to speak to a manager since the pot had already shipped out, and he claimed to have submitted a request to redirect the package to our home. He repeatedly assured my wife that it would not be sent to my father's address. She was extremely happy and relieved... but not for long. I don't know if that was an outright lie or just a misunderstanding, but it shipped to my father's address anyway.

Then we get to the gift card. Remember, I specifically checked the fine print, and it made no mention of expiration dates. Also, it was not a digital gift card, but a physical card sent with the ordered items. Upon receiving the card, my father sent my wife a picture of the card numbers so we could use it online. My wife repeatedly tried using the card online for a follow-up order, but the web site kept giving cryptic error messages that didn't seem to apply to our order. She called customer service again, spoke to the exact same woman again, and she said that she was aware of technical issues the web site team was working on which prevented anyone from using gift cards, and that they did not have an ETA at the time. However, she did offer to send us an email notification when the site was fixed so that we could place our order. More than a week passed by, and we never received any such email notification, so my wife tried placing her order again, and this time it reported that the card had expired. We checked with my father, and it turns out, the card was only valid for a single week. What kind of garbage promotion is this? It takes them more than a week and dozens of customer service calls to fail to amend shipping information because of their pathetically incompetent order processing, yet the gift card that customers spend good money to qualify for is only valid for a week? Give me a break.

My wife called again to see if anything could be done, the same woman answered yet again, and she said that no, nothing could be done, because the gift card was expired. My wife was unsatisfied with this response, as any reasonable paying customer would be after so much frustration, and she tried calling in again 5 more times, but every one of those calls went unanswered. I know that several common customer service software platforms keep records of customer interactions over time, and representatives can sometimes effectively blacklist troublesome customers, so I suspected that my wife had gotten blacklisted by the useless woman. I came online to check other reviews, and I see that multiple people claim to have had their phone numbers blacklisted and had to call via other numbers to reach customer service afterwards. I tried calling from my phone number, and sure enough, I got through on the first try, though miraculously, I was answered by a male voice with an even heavier accent this time.

The joy from being answered by any other human was short-lived, much to my dismay. This man had some of the worst customer service skills and etiquette imaginable, though as you'll find out soon enough, he's not the absolute worst. I explained the whole situation to this guy, and much like the previous lady, he had a really hard time understanding it. He thought I was saying that the gift card simply never arrived. I again repeated my entire story, and finally, he put me through to someone in the gift card department. That man was already incredibly slow to speak and respond, so imagine my surprise when the gift card manager sounded like a mix between an Indian call center responder and a heroine addict. This guy was tripped out of his mind. He spoke so slowly, never using polite words like "please" and "thanks", and he would frequently just go silent for extended periods of time without asking me to hold. He had me explain literally everything I typed above, and then looked through the transaction history on the gift card to confirm that it lined up with my story. At one point, he went silent for a good 5 to 7 minutes without asking me to hold, and I just waited listening to the background keyboard chatter of whatever call center he was in. Eventually, he came back and told me that he had reactivated my gift card. I stood there waiting patiently for him to give me details, but when he didn't, I said, "Okay, thanks, can you tell me when the card now expires?" He responded, "Yes, sir, I can." And then he paused for a good 15 seconds or so, before very slowly saying, "It expires in 3 days." 3 DAYS?!?! I mean, I know he's doing me a favor, and we put in the order immediately, but my goodness, they are committed to this broken promotion thing. But I was glad to finally be done with this nonsense, so I thanked him, and he just silently stayed on the line until I hung up.

As you can see, I was not exaggerating in the slightest when comparing this to my experience at Jack in the Box. The fact that this kind of experience was with such an expensive "luxury" retailer just blows my mind. Saks Fifth Avenue's customer experience is insultingly, offensively bad. I would lose my mind having this experience at a Goodwill, let alone a "high-end" retailer. If you look at the time and effort my wife and I spent to get these issues resolved, our "savings" probably came out to well below minimum wage, and we had to pay their ridiculous prices for that privilege. Heaven forbid somebody buys anything really expensive from their web site. It's so bad that I actually now consider the credit card promotion a negative value, because it's essentially a trap. I will never order from their web site again. Their nearest retail location is at least 2 hours away from us in a major city where we would have to pay for parking and transit, and if (that's a big "if") we ever bother to use the credits again, I would most certainly go use them in store instead of online, that way I could at least resolve such issues in person and take shipping out of the equation. This is truly the worst shopping experience I've ever had. It's worse than those data breaches that happen from time to time at other retailers which force me to update my passwords. Short of giving away my information to identity thieves or actively trying to steal my money, I don't know how a retailer could get any worse. Do yourself a huge favor and never shop with Saks Fifth Avenue. They should rename themselves to Sucks Fifth Customer Service Call.

I purchased a Versace Robe for international shipping on April 12th to my brother in Aus for his birthday. The item was delivered with no waist tie. After calling and being on hold for over four hours I finally spoke to someone who said they would check their distribution center and if it wasnt there they would send out the waist tie and to expect an email with shipping information within a few days. I did not get an email so I called again and waited 3 hours to speak to someone. I was told there was nothing Saks could do and was offered 15% off my next order (what!?!?). I demanded to speak to a manager and was told I needed to ship back the item and then reorder which I agreed to. I requested a return shipping authorization and shipping label which the manager said he would email me right away and then he hung up. I did not receive any shipping information. After a few days waiting I called back again as I couldn't return the item without the label. I tried emailing countless times but they would either go unanswered or get a generic replies with no actual information on them that was of use (I have even been called the wrong name over email multiple times). Finally I was able to get the label and then they CANCELLED my return with no explanation once we hung up so I yet again had to get on the phone and wait to speak to someone to get a new label - another two hours of waiting - every time the customer service have been rude and seemingly no idea of all the previous conversations I had had so every time I needed to go over the issue again. Finally we were given the label and my brother shipped the item back that same day - May 1st. We were not provided with any tracking information despite asking numerous times. After 6 weeks of no updates from Saks I called and I was told I needed to wait 2 more weeks - I waited on hold for over an hour for them to tell me to call back in 2 weeks. So I called again at the 8 week mark and I was told that they had no idea where my package was and would look in to the issue. I was put on hold multiple times by the customer service representative. She said she would email me an update once she knew where the package was. I did not receive any email. About a week later I got a generic email saying I needed to wait up to two months for Borderfree to return the item (despite it already being over two months). I also reached out via instagram, facebook and twitter but to no avail. Now it has been 3 months since purchase, 2.5 months since returning the item and I still have not received a refund. I have not been able to find out if my refund is processing and when I can expect my money back. This entire experience has been incredibly stressful. I am tired of being on hold and having to go over all of this information over and over and over again - I simply want my money back so I can buy my brother another present (3 months late and certainly from a different store!).

I ordered a dress from you on line on 18 of December. $199.93

When it arrived it had a twisted strap, I rang and organised to return the dress.

I had to then pay for another one to be sent to me $163.34, a discount was applied for my inconvenience.

The second dress arrived and it had a stain right at the front centre of the dress?

I rang to return it. The gentleman I spoke with said it was better to exchange the dress because I was very unhappy to have to pay a THIRD time for a dress i didn't actually have!

He gave me a number of a store to ring to exchange it, having checked to make sure there was one available.

I rang the store FIVE TIMES, the call ringing out everytime I was put through to the Helmut Lang department.

I rang AGAIN and asked not to be put through AGAIN, the lady I spoke with physically went up to find the dress. She had no idea what it was even though I had given her a description and the style number of the dress. So I had to then send her a photo!

She then informs me that no they didn't have it!

I call the orders department, I go through everything AGAIN, the gentleman finds one at a store, says he will ring the store to check they have it I AM THEN DISCONNECTED!

I then call the orders department AGAIN *******7257. I ask for a manager, I am pretty upset by now.

I have paid for two dresses and have zeroyou have $350 of my money, and I am then informed I will have to PAY FOR ANOTHER DRESS before they can send it out! Offered a gift card, no thanksthen told the dress is $152 which is more than I paid for the second dress!
When this was pointed out I was offered the dress at $134

Then they can't process my credit card! Meanwhile 5 x $1 transactions appear on my credit card statement!

ARE YOU SERIOUS WHAT SORT OF BUSINESS ARE YOU RUNNING HERE?

I was initially told no one was able to call me back, but guess what, when my credit card wouldn't process somehow magically they could call me back!

She said she would call me today. STILL WAITING!

This dress was bought for my daughter's wedding, I cannot begin to describe the frustration, disappointment and anger I feel right now.