Teavana -- If you don't want to buy something, too bad.

587 Replies
Skysamurai said

One bad experience can ruin it for all others alike. This tends to be the case with many stores. I’ve had both good and meh experiences in Teavana. For the most part if I tell them. No I’m just looking they leave me be. I find that they are more pushy in the MOA store then the smaller mall store near us.

darby select said

Sky do you live by MOA? I’m in MN too! Up a bit north so I usually go to the One in Burnsville or out west Maplewood I think.

Have you been to Verdant yet?

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tealife said

ive been studying the tea leaves of their six summit oolong.they added some flavouring it to mask the flavour of the actual tea. upon a closer look i can see why.the leaves have holes in them from bugs eating away at the leaves. also they have multiple sizes of leaves that were carelessly trimmed and made.half the leaves seem to be dead because they are verydark brownidh and shriveled up. do yourselves a favour and dont drink teavana tea!!!!!!

Some of their teas are better than others but generally not worth the price anyway. I do like some of their tea wares though.

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Kaylee said

I haven’t been inside a Teavana in years. However, Starbucks now offers an ounce of Teavana tea as a Birthday Reward option. I decided I’d rather have the tea than a frilly drink or snack, so I ventured into the Teavana Tea Bar.

I had decided ahead of time that I wanted the Gyokuro Imperial green tea and was not going to buy anything else. The minute I walked in, I was approached by a sales rep and plied with (way over-sweetened) samples. Ok, fine. Why not. I explained that I just wanted my birthday ounce, but somehow three other tins got brought down first for me to smell. (By the way, how do other people feel about them opening the entire giant tin every time? I like how David’s has separate little sample compartments in their tins so the whole amount isn’t regularly exposed to air and light.) I declined all of those options, but I couldn’t resist asking about the 75% sale. I did end up picking out a tea – after discount, it came out to $1/ounce. Hard to say no!

I made the mistake of futzing with my Starbucks app while the sales rep weighed out the tea. I looked up and she said, “oh, it’s a little over the 2 ounces you asked for, is that ok?” Yeah, “a little” turned out to be 50%. She poured 3 ounces and what? Figured I wouldn’t ask for a precise number? I made her pour out the extra, but it was still annoying. Shockingly, there were no such errors in weighing out my free ounce.

The overpour and hard sell are small things when they happen occasionally, but they’re appalling as regular business practices. I will say this much in their favor – no one tried to sell me any tins or teaware. Of course, I still have a giant Teavana tin floating around that they convinced me to buy a few years ago. I don’t have anywhere near enough of any one tea to fill it, so it kind of just sits there looking forlorn.

So that’s my Teavana rant. Sorry it ran so long!

Pandeme said

I’ve never been inside of a Teavanna location -too many stories like this one have kept me away. I prefer to buy online from them. That’s one of the reasons I like my local David’s Tea, when I go in and ask for a specific tea they just get it for me without asking me to try/smell/look at a bunch of different things. And the days that I want to just look at million different teas they are good about that too. I’ve had similar problems to your Teavanna experiance at my local Tea Desire though, and it really put me off of them.

Ambelleina said

This happens to me literally every single time I buy anything from Teavana. 3 oz is not “a little over” 2 oz. 3 oz is 3 oz. 2 oz is 2 oz. If it’s 2.3 oz I’ll okay it, anything over I make them pour out. It seems like they’re almost trained to overpour every single time.

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Brent said

Interesting that this thread has lasted for 4 years.

Pandeme said

Very! I’ve never been inside a Teavanna store myself, I’ve only ever ordered online, but now I’m not sure I ever care to if I can avoid it. I’m sure some stores are better then others though, or it might depend on who is working and where, along with a whole other list of factors… but the fact that this thread has lasted for four years isn’t really making want to venture into a Teavanna location anytime soon haha.

Anna said

This thread will most probably last as long as Teavana’s sucky retail practices.

Pandeme said

Haha! Good point Anna

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Nano said

From my time being at the local Teavana in my area, as soon as they recognize you as a person that shows up every once in a while they’ll stop harassing you (turnover rate is a problem I guess for those who deal with it). I also end up really untalkative and very “I know what I’m doing” kind of person (and I guess my excessive open annoyance to being pushed upon helps).

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keychange said

Well, the good news is that there’s no shortage of threads in which to b*tch about your teavana experience, and since this was near the top, it was the lucky winner.

I was subject to the over pour tactic yesterday, and, perhaps because I was already made aware of it in advance, was probably more irritated than I might have otherwise been. The person in front of me asked for 50 g of a given tea and they “accidentally” poured 70 and asked the girl if it was ok. Given the popularity of this particular tactic, I wonder if the employees are outright told to do this, because I suspect that that might be the case and that’s downright appalling. I also think it’s terrible customer service to make a mistake and then insist that your customer pay for it anyway—like overpouring.
Thanks for letting me complain. For wha tit’s worth, I do purchase sugar from Tevana, so I do have to brave the store in person occasionally.

Anna said

I think there are a few threads somewhere where former Teavana employees confirm this to be the case, but I’m not sure if it’s on this forum or somewhere else.

Uniquity said

It is policy. A bad one. :(

Pandeme said

That’s horrible! I hate tactics like that! :S

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Kamyria said

I don’t go to Teavana often (only during tea emergencies) but when I do, I swear I always end up paying more than I thought I would. I find that peculiar, since I condition myself to pay attention to what they are doing… o.O

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keychange said

I really do wonder wy this is a policy. Surely people will notice and become pissed off. Or, perhaps those people are the minority. Either way, it’s just downright embarrassing.

People who get upset about over pour are the extreme minority. I don’t think people in this thread realize this.

When I first started working at Teavana, I was much fussier about getting my pours bang-on. But many more people seemed to be annoyed by you taking the time to knock it back and forth to get it accurate than they do a slight over pour. I had one guy throw up his hands and nearly storm out on me because I was “wasting his time.” (And no, I don’t think I’m unusually slow!) Never had anyone get that upset about extra tea!

There’s no official policy about pouring extra. As an informal word-of-mouth thing though, people will recommend going a bit over vs. under to you in training to “maximize sales.” Every partner is therefore going to handle it slightly differently; the best balance I have found is to automatically knock out extra above 10 grams, and ask the customer if it’s okay below 10. That seems to keep the highest number of people happy. If they ask for an amount above the minimum, sometimes I’ll do a little below to keep it more even.

I’m in no way going to defend somebody who is pouring crazy extra to increase the sale, but customers are all different and have different expectations.

Jillian said

There’s a difference between being fine with over-pouring and being too polite/embarrassed to say anything. So we’re not as ‘in the minority’ as you seem to think. Nobody likes to be duped into spending more money than they intended. If you’re deliberately aiming for above the amount the customer asked for then I’m sorry but that’s just plain dishonest.

ifjuly said

yeah, the all-but-outright-formalized policy of dishonesty with the default overpouring is what makes me never want to buy anything from teavana. if you have a product you stand by, you don’t resort to weird gross attempts at tricking people. blugh.

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keychange said

I feel badly for them also, because I can’t imagine every person who is taught to use it actually agrees with it, and to suggest theat they can all just choose not to work there is a bit quick, I think. But it also frustrates me because I just want to go to a store, be polite and appropriate, and expect the same in return and then go on my merry way.

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darby select said

Surprisingly I went to our pushiest store last week at the Mall of America. I usually dread walking in there but wanted to check out the sale. I actually had a couple of employees talk to me (like a normal store) but not suggest or pressure me in to anything. I got the one tin of tea I wanted and no questions asked! I was surprised and happy to see that maybe their policies are changing.

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