David M.

I am a long-time Brooks customer who probably just made their last purchase due to the dysfunctional system that the company uses.

I recently made an online purchase with Apple Pay. I brought the items to a Brooks Brother's store with the credit card that I used to make the purchase. I was literally standing in the store with proof I made the purchase (through my online account) and the credit card that was charged, and I was told that they could not process the return because I used Apple Pay to complete the transaction. I was quite surprised - as most people would be, and I left. While running other errands, I called Brooks customer service, and they sent me a shipping label and told me to drop the items off at the store with the label. I returned to the store, and they needed me to forward them the email to process the shipment, so I waited for 30 minutes and then left with my items.

Between driving to and from the store, talking to customer service, and waiting for my emails to go through, all of this happened over the course of four hours. I'm back to square one and on the way to FedEx now to return the items.

I rarely ever write online reviews, but I think this experience says a lot about how companies no longer care about their customer's experience. Using Apple Pay should not prohibit one from making a return when there is no warning that this will happen when you make the purchase. Nor should a customer be refused in an effort to return something, when there is no question they made the purchase. The return could have been placed on the credit card used for the purchase. I have had other companies process a return on a new credit card after I closed the one on which I made the purchase, so asking them to return to purchase on the credit card that was charged does not seem like a big or unreasonable ask. This is not good customer service, and I hope Brooks figures out how to better serve its customers when they are trying to make a basic transaction.