Nordstrom Rack

Last week I actually made it to Nordstrom Rack to buy clothes. I hate buying clothes. I bought two pairs of pants, and left them to be altered. They were supposed to be ready on Saturday the 27th.

I went in today, without the claim ticket, because I hadn't seen it recently and I figured "Hey, it has my name on it, I'll show them my ID, it'll be all good." My hidden assumption was that the pants would actually be there in the store, ready to go. They weren't.

The employees started looking, examining their stacks of tickets, looking at their logbook. I left my phone number and went home to find the claim ticket. Phone call #1 was a little garbled, but ended up like this:

"It appears the pants were altered, but one pair was put back on the floor, and the other magically disappeared. We have another pair of one of them in-store, and the other pair I can go pick up from our Westgate store and bring them here, and we can measure you on them and get those altered."
"Can I just get a refund and then figure it out?"
"Of course, just let me get to a register and I'll call you back."

Phone call #2:

"Hello, sir. Are you in the area? I need the receipt in order to do a refund."
"Um, okay. I'll come in later."
"Any time you'd like. In the meantime I'm going to check the [security] tape and try to figure out what happened to the pants."

Phone call #3:

"Hi sir, yes, your wife actually picked up the pants for you. She's the one who showed her ID and picked them up."
"That's interesting. I'm not married."
"Oh...you're not? It shows her on the tape picking up the pants."
"Uh...really, I'm not married. Can you describe the woman on the tape?"
"She's about five-foot-three, light blonde-brown hair..."
"Okay, I don't know who you gave my pants to, but I'm not married and my girlfriend is about five-foot-ten."
"Okay, thanks, I'll get back to you."

Phone call #4:

"Hi, this is the head of Customer Service. We can't figure this out, so we're just going to refund you for the pants."
"What happened?"
"A lady picked them up."
"Right, how did she do that without the claim check or an ID?"
"That's something I'll be looking into immediately."

Oooookay then. This is the East Palo Alto store, by the way. In their defense, they're very, very nice, and they were really helpful during the buying process. But you've been warned.

UPDATE (9:45 P.M.): The Customer Service woman called again, and the latest story is that they have the pants, already altered, and I can just come pick them up. They were "in the store" somewhere. My confidence is not increased, but we'll see how it goes.