Cool Ridge Company

They always treat you very wierd in here which is odd considering you are their customer. Hippie type shop with all sorts of things from clothes to water pipes and it just always smells like incents of course

Horrible and embarrassing business — run by lunatics who treat both their customers and employees like garbage. Seriously, buy whatever you need online from someone else. Support a human, not this mediocrity.

Very brusque with customers, not helpful at all — I asked for a 9 mm slide and went home to use it and it didn’t fit. I know I need a 9 mm, so it’s not my mistake. It was also for a pipe that I BOUGHT THERE. I called to ask about an exchange or store credit or something and they told me I’d have to wait for the manager to call me about it even though I’d just bought it less than an hour before.
Waited days, never heard from the manager (big surprise), so I called again and asked to speak to him. He was very blunt on the phone and of course offered no apology; the only explanation was that all of their stuff is handmade and varies, which I know, but how can they vary so much that I can’t even know what size to use? From their own store? Couldn’t they have warned me that they all vary WILDLY at the very least? They clearly don’t give two shits that I wasted $ 25 there.
Every time I go in there, I’m made to feel like I’m doing something wrong. I’ll take my money elsewhere!

Poor management, terrible customer service and failure to treat me with respect. I’m not a criminal.

They do treat every single customer like a criminal. I had the misfortune of meeting their new blonde manager. I think her name is Wendy. She is the rudest woman I have ever met. While browsing, I tried to initiate a conversation and she did everything she could to be her rudest to me. She also brings in her friends to work when they don’t have enough employees and gives them blown glass pieces in return for service. Very unprofessional. I’ve been a loyal customer at Cool Ridge for 10 years, and it is certainly a shame to see such a wonderful place go downhill because of poor management.

I’m about to go to Cool Ridge today or tomorrow for a holiday gift for my brother because it’s the only place in the area that I know of (I don’t live here, I’m only visiting) where I can get what he wants. But 1 star is for agreeing with the other commenter – they treat paying customers like criminals. I have had only one experience with Coolridge and here’s how it went.
I had just left the clinic and I had a brown bag filled with personal items: condoms, birth control pills, and urinary tract infection medicine inside of my purse (this matters later). When I entered the store, I was asked to check my purse. Knowing that most stores with security like this don’t actually (and shouldn’t) require women or men to hand over their purses, I did so anyway because mine was kind of large and I wanted to be in and out quickly. I went downstairs to purchase a pipe. Not only did I have to write down personal information with my name, address, and telephone number (all of which I fudged for the sake of – why should I have to do that?) when I checked out with a pipe, but the girl working behind the counter was very cold about it. I joked with her and asked her if she was serious about making me fill out a form like this and she told me I was free to go to another store to purchase my tobacco pipe. I brushed it off and went upstairs to retrieve my purse and leave.
I was handed my purse and when I walked out the door and the alarm went off. No idea why. Having worked at bag check when I was much younger and knowing the drill, I stood around the door and looked for an employee to reciprocally verify that I hadn’t taken anything that I hadn’t paid for. No one came. After a minute, I decided to leave the store, as many people do in these situations when an employee does not show up at the door to double check why the alarm went off.
I was about half the way down the street when I noticed that a middle-​aged man was racing toward me. He was yelling, causing a scene, and basically treating me, in public, like a thief who’d just casually walked out of his store. He demanded on the street that I show him the entire contents of my bag. As he went through my bag, including the brown bag with the condoms, birth control, and urinary tract infection medicine, I realized I was trembling from feeling violated. By no means did I have to show this man my bag, but he actually seemed crazy enough to call the cops on me if I didn’t and I didn’t want to deal with that. My privacy was totally violated and I haven’t forgotten the incident to this day. This was July 2010.

Cool Ridge has a great selection of hippie stuff. Too bad they insist on treating all their customers like criminals. They assume everyone is a shoplifter and demand that you hand over your purse to their employees while you are shopping.
Uh, sorry. NO. If you don’t trust me with YOUR stuff, why on earth should I trust you with MINE?