Sportsdirect

Company out to make money at whatever cost to customers

I visited the Hull St Stephens store yesterday and bought some socks. They were on a stand that was clearly marked 2 pairs for £10 in very big writing. When we got to the checkout we queried the price and the lady on checkout told us they were not in the 2 for £10 sale, so I told her that I would like to not buy them then as that was the only reason I had picked them up in the first place. She came across like we were being very inconvenient to her even though there was nobody waiting in queue behind us. So I thought that she was peeved that she would now have to get a senior member of the team across to take the items off (I was feeling sorry for making her have to do this extra work), it turned out that she did not have to do this so she was just being ultimately very rude for no reason. Also whilst we were waiting in the queue a few customers in front of us were served and my husband noticed they had been offered a bag for life to put their shopping in and when we were served the lady on our checkout had offered us a bag for life that was already on the checkout in front of us. There were no alternatives and at no point did she or any of the other checkout workers make us or other people aware that they were not free. Only ever asking "would you like a bag?" (not "would you like a bag for life?" even) So we thought that we were getting a free bag for our purchases. When we queried the price again after refunding the socks and aqcuiring new socks. We were told that we had purchased a bag for 69 pence and that the prices were clearly shown behind the counter up on the wall were there were bags for life hanging with price tags on. I feel that this was false advertising as no one, including us were told that if we wanted a bag we would have to pay 69 pence and the lady on checkout did not in any way make this clear to us by drawing our attention to the prices on the wall. We were shocked and disgusted at what had just happened we told her that she had just conned us, she continued to hand us our receipt and made no offer of refund for the bag that we did not want to buy. How much they must make from unsuspecting customers is mindblowing. What makes matters worse was that it is not even a bag that we would use for anything else. Sports direct isn't even somewhere we would normally shop and the bag is so big that we just would not use it for anything. The lady on checkout made us feel that we were unable to ask for our money back on both occassions in the same shopping trip. The second time we just couldn't do with her attitude and chose to make a more formal complaint regarding this to someone higher up than in the store. I urge anyone that has a bad experience to contact watchdog/trading standards and get something done about the bad customer care that I and others on this site have had to experience.