American Girl FTW!

This past Sunday, Sarah, my mom and I took Hannah, my 6 year old daughter to the American Girl store in Water Tower Place, Chicago. This was Hannah’s Christmas trip, with breakfast in the restaurant, a new doll purchase, and getting her old dolls (Samantha) hair done and ears pierced.

The day was great. Breakfast was good, the store wasn’t too crowded (being a Sunday morning), and Samantha wouldn't take too long in the “salon”.

Sarah and Hannah dropped her off, said they wanted the “hair-do of the week” and Samantha’s ears pierced. About an hour, they say, and Sarah, Han and my mom were off shopping for a new doll and doll clothes.

I decided to people watch in the mall and catch up on Facebook.

Around 1120, the trio comes out to meet me and Hannah shows me how pretty Samantha looks with her new “do” and earrings. They quickly point out that she doesn’t even like the same doll! She’s clean, her hair is done up and her skin is a touch darker.

Wait….

Her skin is darker?

Weird lighting, excitement of the day… We roll with it. The doll looks VERY pretty.

We continue our shopping at the mall and head back to the car. Sarah and Hannah sit in the back and unpack Han’s new doll (Emily) and put some new outfits on.

Flash forward 2 hours

We’re sitting in my parents living room, playing with the dolls and talking. We explain to my dad that Samantha got cleaned up and almost looks like a different doll. My mom chimes in and says

“What if they switched them when that were getting their hair done?!”

We all looked at each other and Sarah had an idea.

She looked the underwear the doll (yes, they have doll underwear…) was wearing and said to Han:

“See? Purple undies. That’s how we know she’s ours.”

Then Sarah thought to herself - “we don't have purple doll underwear…”

Uh oh.

Inconspicuously, Sarah checks the tag on the doll.

American Girl – Made in China

We will now see a clip from “A Christmas Story” depicting what went through Sarah’s head at that moment:

Hannah’s dolls tag said Pleasant Company and was made in the USA.

Yup. This wasn’t Hannah’s doll. Shoot – this wasn’t even a Samantha doll! It was a Marisol doll!

This is an issue. But not the biggest issue of the morning.

The big issue was the fact that Samantha is retired and no longer available and hasn’t been for 2-3 years.

I swear I heard the Cavalry trumpet charge as Sarah headed upstairs with the phone to straighten the mess out.

Through holds, transfers, supervisors and elevator music Sarah came out victorious.

Turns out that within a 15 minute window, another girl had come to pick her doll up from the salon and was given Hannah’s doll by mistake. Then we came to pick up Hannah’s doll and was given the other girls doll.

Lucky for us, the other girl realized that the doll she was given was not Marisol. She gave it back to the salon and was given a new Marisol doll since Hannah had hers. By the time Sarah called, the people at the salon realized what had happened and been awaiting our phone call.

When Sarah called, they said they would ship Samantha to us within a week and we were free to keep the Marisol doll we received by accident.

Sure enough - Tuesday afternoon there was a box on the doorstep with Samantha (in her white undies), a package of earrings, and a package of hair ties and accessories. Just as promised

Both parties were taken care of in this possible tragedy. We’re just glad Hannah is getting Samantha back.

I mentioned to Sarah – this is what you should get with a premium product – good customer service. American Girl, Apple, Columbia clothing… They may be expensive, but when it comes to making the customer happy and resolving issues, they come out on top.

American Girl FTW!