Elisabeth Manente shared her customer service experience with an Etsy shop on TikTok. The store owner greeted her with contempt when she requested a refund. The store owner, Cleaver and Blade, accused her of being drunk or high in a testy exchange. Loading Something is loading.
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A woman’s experience receiving a refund from an Etsy shop went viral after she shared a rude exchange on TikTok.
In the video, which amassed 2.3 million views, a shop that sells candles tells Elisabeth Manente to “have the day you deserve” which she accuses her of shopping while drunk or high.
Manente, a model and actress with 11,000 followers, said she was ordering a Harry Styles candle at Cleaver And Blade, a pop art shop that sells celebrity mugs, T-shirts and posters with church designs. The candle costs $19.
She said she accidentally bought the wrong one on January 9, realized her mistake the next morning, and requested a refund.
The interaction was immediately hostile with the store approving the refund, but complaining that it cost them $5 to refund you. Manente apologized and said it was an accident, starting a testy exchange.
“I refunded you and I highly doubt you accidentally ordered, have the day you deserve,” the store said.
Manente sarcastically thanked the store for its customer service and said that he would “see them on TikTok,” prompting a new wave of insulting messages.
“Last night, while smoking your peace pipe, you ACCIDENTALLY went into our store, picked out a candle and bought it,” one message reads. “You woke up this morning, sober, and decided oh, better not buy that candle… it was an ACCIDENT, so you asked for your money back.”
“What part doesn’t make sense to you?” the store continued after Manente responded. “Would you like me to buy my dancing shoes and create a TikTok to help you understand?”
Manente told Insider that he assumed the person writing to him was a teenager.
“I’m like, there’s no way an adult is going to talk to me like that,” she said. “The peace pipe part, where they hinted that I was under the influence, that’s what threw me off a bit. That’s completely unnecessary.”
Manente posted his TikTok on January 11. Later, the store’s owner, Vladimir Costa, posted a response titled “the melodrama of Saint Elizabeth, the spectator of Karen’s tears.”
In it, he accused Manente of a backlash against the store. He also said that she would start donating $5 from each sale to a local women’s shelter in New Orleans. That post has since been deleted.
“You said you couldn’t afford the $5 refund and now you’re going to donate $5 to a women’s shelter?” mante said. “That didn’t sit well with people or me, because I’m like, well, I’m a woman, women end up in these shelters because of verbally abusive men.”
Harry Styles’ candle offensive.
CleaverandBlade/Etsy
In a lengthy written statement to Insider, Costa admits that his response to Manente was “spicy and sarcastic,” but also accused her of “weaponizing social media.”
“Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google, Twitter, FB and now TikTok are being weaponized by consumers to get what they feel they are entitled to,” he said. “Small businesses walk on eggs losing control of their profit line in fear of not ending up with bad reviews.”
Costa said he still did not believe the purchase was an accident.
“We’re not a big company like Amazon and Wal-Mart,” he said. “We really believe that people like Elisabeth need to know that we don’t operate on the same margins or huge budgets that they do.”
Costa also sent Insider screenshots of some threatening messages he had received from other people, including one that said “commit suicide.”
Manente said she didn’t post the video to get any kind of response, but rather to prevent other people from being treated the same way.
“I’m still baffled,” she said. “All about a candle.”
Etsy did not respond to Insider’s request for comment. Manente said that she had been in contact with the platform and was told by a customer service representative that they would escalate the case.
Source: news.google.com