Fenwick Reviews Summary

Customer Service

Pros:

• "Bow was very friendly, efficient and trustworthy."
• "Positively good service, pleasant staff, used cafe nero indoors at Fenwicks, exceptional service really great to still have quality department store."
• "Always great service at every stage. So much so that you'll end up spending more than you bargained for! The products are always top quality."
• "Excellent customer service from Karla in the Home Department. Helpful, down to earth and friendly."
• "This young lady was delightful and so helpful, even though they were obviously short staffed she made sure that myself and daughter were well looked after."
• "Always a great treat to visit Fenwick in Colchester. Customer service is always beyond satisfactory."
• "Very professional friendly staff always smiling and ready for help, never ignore people!"

Cons:

• "The assistant went into panic mode as she needed the supervisor who refused to exchange the gift or listen to reason."
• "Having a sales assistant approach me as I was looking at gifts and say 'These are rather expensive so may be out of your price range' is a little bit elitist."
• "Unfortunately there is one male member of staff who always seems to look you up and down and has zero customer service."
• "Having worked in retail myself I was amazed when I said 'good morning' to staff as I entered the shop and was ignored."
• "Staff are miserable as miserable can be, mainly because they have very little to do."
• "The layout is good and clean. It annoys me when I see staff chatting among themselves, you could be making a sale, you can't switch off on the shop floor."
• "One thing that always gets me is the young girls that work on the department's can be quite rude and arrogant."

Store Atmosphere

Pros:

• "It's Fenwick, an oasis of luxury, modern but still old school (in grace brothers sort of way). Even if you don't buy anything it's worth going in for the ambience."
• "Such a great variety of premium brands."
• "Love Fenwick. Such a top quality building carry a huge amount of top quality products without being pretentious, also very well laid out."
• "Love this store. Very clean, classy, sophisticated."
• "Italian restaurant on top floor with views over Colchester."
• "The place is huge and the range of products are good."
• "Beautiful shop maintaining that old school department store feeling. High quality decor, very pleasant polite staff & high standards in everything."

Cons:

• "I love this store, one of its downfalls is its far too expensive for most of the people in Colchester."
• "Expensive shop for rich people who have too much money and live a style over substance life."
• "The prices are insane and they seem to have instructed all the female staff to look like air hostesses."
• "Its prices are out of reach of me and many others in the area, people who look for bargains in Primark."
• "It's a lovely store. Looks beautiful. Helpful staff. But lacks depth, very expensive across the board, with very very few 'wow factor' products that would inspire me to spend."
• "Very expensive, I'm surprised it's still trading."
• "Shame it's next to the NCP carpark that basically mugs you on the way out it's so ridiculously expensive."

Product Selection and Quality

Pros:

• "A brilliant department store, always clean, fresh, completely modern, festive and a huge selection of things!"
• "Phenomenal team especially the Chanel girls."
• "The collections in the store are not huge, but the items stocked are will priced and displayed."
• "Very spacious, excellent choice in all departments."
• "Prices are competitive on many items. So good to see a strong independent store in these days of homogenized high streets, good on Colchester."
• "High quality products unlike many other stores left in Colchester."
• "With its 4 floors filled with every colour you can imagine, from the clothes to the stunning range of ladies designer handbags *drool*."

Cons:

• "Very disappointing. Signage we found confusing as to finding our way around the store."
• "No Returns. They have a fancy new shop front but their policies on exchanges and returns are from the old-school department store book of retail."
• "Very nice to look around. Exceptional clothes and homeware. But...prices extreme for regular shopping."
• "It’s a tranquil oasis in Essex."
• "Tried to buy a cashmere jumper but they were only suitable for very old ladies, poor selection of ladies fashion unless you are of a certain mature age."
• "Most of the ladies section was sale items. I was specifically looking for Seasalt which we were finally directed to but no salesperson able to help."
• "The one thing that makes me cringe, is the down-right snobbishness of the whole atmosphere."