How Macy's Lost My Business

Shortly after I moved into my place, my mother offered me a new couch as a house warming present.

The problem is that the living room is small, so it was a little difficult finding a couch that would fit in the space without overpowering it. The couch there now is a hold over from my apartment days.

One day Macy's decided to have a couch sale...

I was already skeptical, I was boycotting Macy's because of the shaby way they had dismissed Marshall Field's retail store after over a century of service to the Chicago area.

Macy's CEO, Terry Lnudgren, had determined that national advertising would cost less overall if the Macy's name could be taken national. He decided to absorb all of the other local retail stallwarts Macy's had gobbled up over the years. The problem was that Macy's, with all due respect, couldn't hold a candle to the retail supremacy of Marshall Field.

The Marshall Field motto had been "Give the lady what she wants...". You could get just about anything you wanted at Marshall Field at one time. I remember going there to shop with my Aunt Elaine when I was very little and being overwhelmed by the place and all the things you could get - clothes, rugs, furniture, furnishings, electronics, and my treat for being such a good little girl as I was dragged from department to department - a piece of german chocolate cake from the Marshall Field's bakery. And you thought Sears had everything!

Over the years Fields had been taken over and each successive buyer stripped away a little of the glory that had been Marshall Field's until they reached their nadir by refusing to take gift returns after a certain date, no matter what the reason. Macy's took quite a hit for their decision - It didn't take long for Chicago shoppers to say "Well, OK, I'll tell you what.... if I stop buying gifts here altogether, I won't have to worry that my friends and relatives are being the run around to make a return."

But if you thought the decision to stop making Frango mints in Chicago was controversial - you ain't seen nothing yet.

The decision to eliminate the Marshall Field's name, the brand, the quality, some of the best vendors, and replace them with what can charitably be called dreadful (yeah, I said it) - created a united front the 9th District in New Orleans could have benefited from during Hurricane Katrina. Chicagoans stopped shopping at Macy's en masse, and the boycott goes on!

After such an arrogant and anti-customer stance, I didn't have much faith that Macy's would be able to turn me into a raving fan - sadly I was not disappointed.

The day of the delivery, my mother and Paul were waiting patiently for the delivery man to drop off the new couch and dispose of the old one. Sure enough, mid - way through the day they were told that the delivery men were lost. The next day we were told that the couch was not even in the Chicago area to begin with.

After a terse letter to Terry Lundgren, I was informed that the saleperson who sold my mother the couch had ordered it from a warehouse in another state and the deliverymen were looking for my address in another city. The manager of the furniture department in Chicago couldn't understand why I wouldn't reschedule the delivery when the couch actually arrived from the East Coast.

I don't care how many glitzy commercials and mega personalities they bring in to hawk their merchandise, a retailer that can't read a map accurately is still in the dark!

Boycott - 1 Macy's - 0