What a terrible experience at Aaron's Rent and Lease in Concord NC my family had today and I'm afraid my three children will never get over!
My wife and I had been talking for several weeks about treating ourselves to a new bedroom suite, and since we had done business with Aarons before, we would go there again since we had liked there payment plans. For the record I had purchased a livingroom suite, a big screen TV, and a freezer from them over the last several years with no problems.
We arrived at the Concord store at about 2:45 pm on Saturday, 11/03/07. We looked around and found a bedroom suite that we were interested in and at approximately 3:10 pm one of the salespeople came to help us. We showed her the one we wanted and proceeded to get our information (which seemed odd since I had maded several purchases there before) and went to process the information, which was fine with me. After the sales clerk had the paperwork done she informed me the payment would be $187.86 per month, and to have a seat in the office and the manager would be with me in about 5 minutes.
During this time my yougest daughter of 5 years old had made a friend in the store and they were walking around. After about 20 minutes of me waiting in the office my wife came and told me that the little girl my daughter was with had just come screaming to her mother that she had broken a lamp. As soon as the little girl told her she and her daughter left the store. Right behind her was my daughter telling my wife that her "new freind" had broken a lamp. My wife didn't think much of it since she had went back to see what happend and saw that the base of the lamp simply came off.
Right after this my wife and three children were sitting in the office waiting to sign the paperwork for our new bedroom suite.By 4:30 the manager, Michael D. Johnson finally walked in. Keep in mind that we have been in the office for over an hour, and without even saying hello said "so your daughter broke a lamp!". My wife explained to him that it was not our daughter that had done it and what had happened with the other girl. Mr. Johnson turned at us and said "well someone's gonna pay!" and walked out.
Now my wife, two daughters and son were shocked, my two daughters started to cry, so my wife took them outside of the office. My wife watched Mr. Johnson at the cash register for the next 25 minutes taking payments from customers. During that time he said to the other employee's "I'll get them to pay" and "I don't care who did it". There were at least 15 customers in the store. My wife was shaken by the store managers approach to this and was visably shaken by the accusations that Mr. Johnson had made. Now come's the horrible part...
The store was scheduled to close at 5pm. At 4:58 pm I was still sitting in the office waiting to sign the paperwork for the bedroom suite when Mr. Johnson finally walked back in. I asked him if we could get the paperwork done since my family was waiting outside and all he said was "As soon as you pay for the lamp." I asked him if he had spoken to the other girls mother and he said "no, they left." I asked him if anyone else had seen this happen and he said nothing. I asked him if they had security cameras to review this and he told me " we don't have camera's in the store." Still wanting to get the bedroom suit I asked him if we could get the paperwork done for that and he said "as soon as you give me $105.00 for the lamp your brat broke!" Seeing this was going nowhere I gave him the money, asked for a receipt and left the store.
When I got to the car, my wife and two daughters were crying, being accused of something they had never done and basically being called liars. My 5 year old told me tonight "I never want to go to a store again!" and "I'll never trust anyone again!".
I called Mr. Johnson when I got home at about 5:20pm. I tried to re-explain what had happened. He said "I don't care as long as it paid for." After he told me that I told him that since I had paid for it I wanted the broken lamp and he said "good luck if you can find it in the trash" and then hung up on me.
So now I have no bedroom suite, no lamp, no $105.00, a daughter that is now afraid to go to a store and a family that will live in terror of dishonest store managers. We'll never get over this experience.
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