Academy

Happy to have stumbled across this boutique shop whilst on holiday in St Ives. The staff were extremely friendly and helpful. Full of nice quality brands and perfect for a few holiday treats!

Let me begin with a scenario:

If items in your recently placed order are out of stock...

Good service: emails you to let you know the situation and ask how you would like to proceed.

Poor service: sends out the remainder of the order without consulting you, refunds the difference.

Academy clothing service: sends out the cheapest item in the order (gave me two of them to make up for the other missing items) £6 worth of a £55 order. No email to let me know this was the case, no refund. Only reacted to the issue when the I contacted them.
At no point did they acknowledge that there was anything wrong with this scenario.

Instead, I had to initiate a PayPal dispute, which should have been enough to coax someone to refund. No. I had to escalate it and then post back the items they sent me (at my own cost) to get my money back.

All in all, I ended up around £3 out of pocket through my ordeal of ordering through Academy.

Most buyers will acknowledge that when ordering online, mistakes can be made, but the telling of a good seller is how they deal when these mistakes are made.

I can't speak for their in store services, but I can say hand on my heart, after countless years of online shopping, this has got to be one of the most bewilderingly bad shopping experiences I have had.
I rarely leave feedback and don't like to berate independent shops, but the way I have been treated has incensed me.