Upon checking the website or entering the store through one of the portals from the Westchester Mall in White Plains, NY, the impression is given that this is one of the twenty-plus branches of Nieman-Marcus which allows walk-ins to pay with cash, American Express and the Bergdorf-Goodman credit card. None of this is true. The sales staff is ordered to "profile" customers as they walk around the department, and decide who can look around and who is obligated to leave without buying. The problem with this is, of course, is that the advice is completely counter to the standard training given to sales staff in very upscale boutiques that the stiffly-behaved and formally-dressed customer could waste your time without buying anything or else become a nuisance as everything paid for months ago will be brought back with a request for a full refund. Conversely, the scruffily-dressed customer who isn't really comed and shaved could very well be a regular high-end customer ready to spend a lot of money on this visit and then return again to do the same thing! Once the staff has profiled who can look at their merchandise, they sill are told not to let anyone buy anything unless they remember to wave the HSBC Mastercard issued by Nieman-Marcus which they prefer to take. If a customer who wants to buy something wishes to apply for the account, it takes a month to get the card, so that the customer can't pay for the item he or she has picked out for a whole month! Furthermore, the website lists only two places to file complaints. One is the fashion buying office which they call CORPORATE, and the other the department at headquarters which arranges receptions and fashion shows in the branch stores which they call PUBLIC RELATIONS. It is obvious that a complaint duly filed with one of these office would receive no more attention than possible be recorded in a database where no one able to respond to it would ever even bother to look. On Wednesday, May 12, I was in the dinnerware department at about 3pm. As an avid collector of Royal Crown Derby who owns over 150 pieces and is still collecting, I was checking the Derby Panel Green. I heard a loud voice behind me from a distance calling for me to stand down and step away from the merchandise. There was an angry gent in a heated temper running toward me who refused to identify himself as a security, management or anything else. I asked him if there were any more Crown Derby patterns on display. He said "no", without his heated temper. I pointed out Gold Avesbury and Darley Abbey right on the display. The gent decided to park himself near us and simply wait until we left, refusing to sell us anything. I then picked out a pair of pajamas in the basement. A gent who at least had the courtesy to identify himself as the salesperson in men's furnishings on that shift went into a tantrum when I wanted to pay for the pajamas.in an anxious wail, as if he were used to doing this, He indicated that he was tired once a day warning customers that unless they applied for the HSBC NM card a month before, he could not sell them anything. Since NM carries designer boutique merchandise, just about everything they sell is avaiable at a fixed price from other retailers. Therefore, the staff who refuses to sell you at NM WP is simply telling you to buy the same things from a competitor at the same price, so you are not going without the merchandise. The complaint ought to be that they must clearly post on both the website and at the mall entrances to the store from the Westcheste Mall that this is a private club which "profiles" walk-ins who wish to look at displays and is free to ask them to leave without viewing the entire display, and who also will not sell you anything unless you have applied a month before for their NM HSBC credit card.
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