I am a former employee of Neiman Marcus? I worked for them for several years and loved my job very much. The company itself is fabulous! I have nothing bad to say about the company's philosophies on customer service or the exceptional service they do provide.
However, there are some people within the company who I know for a fact are very dishonest. Dishonest at all levels high and low. They are what are giving the company a bad name on this site. I do not know how many there are, but I know about the ones that I worked with at a store level. The company has a system called "will calls" in which employees of neimans can ring things up onto customer's accounts when they are not in the store. The company is suppose to have a signed letter on file from the customer authorizing the store to ring up things on there account when they are not there. Example: A one of a kind dress arrives to the store and the associate knows that her customer would just love it, so she rings it up on her account and notifies her that she now has a will call being held in the store. A will call tag is place on the sold item, and the item is left in the stockroom. Typical will calls range from 30 - 60 days and there are plenty of those in each department at any given time. I have seen some for as long as a year. The will call tags are suppose to be signed by all levels of management as the date into will call matures.
Of course in my store the proper signatures were rarely obtained, and managers were always fighting, arguing and coming up with different excuses about why they could not get the proper signatures. They would even fight about contacting the customer in the first place to let them know that they even had a will call. It was like they did not want the customer to know it was there. I found this to always be strange, and looked into it further. I found out that allot of the will calls had in the past been stashed by management and the customers knew nothing of them. They were hiding them in the store, and returning them slowly back to the customers accounts so it would not disrupt current day sales. So instead they returned them over several weeks, meanwhile customers are being charged and have been charged interest on there accounts. All of the employees are commission based. So the temptation for committing commission fraud is huge. The company only accepts neimans charge or amex, so they really push for the charges on the neimans account.
There was also a situation with an associate who was opening up fraudulent neiman marcus accounts under different people's social security numbers. The employee quit when question about doing so. The store manager said that they could not loose one of there top sales people, and convinced him to come back to work. They allowed him to retain his job after committing a crime. Allot of there customers have so much money they do not even look at there bills. They have an accountant or someone like look over there finances. So $5,000, $10,000, even $20,000 plus can easily go unnoticed on people's accounts. Yet they are getting the sales and the interest from such fraudulent activity. Then weeks and months pass after it has been disguised as a will call, and it get returned to there accounts, or in some case just put back on the sales floor. Each year there Loss Prevention department takes out employees for commission fraud. The strange thing of it is, is the upper management does not want to loose these people. They fight to keep them on board anyway, for fear of loosing business. Never mind that most of there sales are fraudulent anyway.
I only know of this happening at the store I was at. Although, I have heard this from other employees at other locations around the country. I think the company has some very dishonest people working for them at all levels. Neimans itself as a name is great, but the management very is dishonest.
Too top all of this off the LP District Managers and Operations Managers submitt fraudulent travel receipts. This I observed first hand, and could not for the life of me understand why they do nothing about these crooks. Even when they are turned in or caught red handed, nothing happens.
Bottom line. If you are a thief, Work at Neiman Marcus. If you value your identity and personal information, Do not shop with them.
Be careful!
Oh, and one more thing. The same dishonest corporate Loss Prevention staff. Lost a computer server with every employees information from 1995 a year or so ago. That means thousands of social security numbers could have been and probably were compromised.
Coincidence? You tell me!
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