Worst Shopping Experience: Old Town Spring Holiday Shopping

Every Christmas season, my wife and I make at least one trip to Old Town Spring, Texas, which is about 20 miles north of Houston, where we live. The shopping district is full of antique malls, craft stores, and gift shops, among other businesses, most of which are housed in Victorian- and country-style buildings painted in bright colors. This is where our Christmas shopping starts, and it's usually a pleasure to spend all day wandering in and out of stores.

This past weekend, however, our holiday shopping in Old Town Spring was far less enjoyable than in years past. In nearly every shop we entered, we were constantly followed and harassed by proprietors and salespeople.

Perhaps it's simply a symptom of our economy, or maybe the business owners in Old Town Spring all took an aggressive salesmanship course online. Whatever the case, a typically pleasant and low-key outing turned into what felt like a visit to a discount used-car dealership.

It seems there are two problems in Old Town Spring: shoplifting and poor sales. And the shop owners are counteracting both problems by trailing after their customers like unwanted shadows and telling them the story behind every product on the shelves.

We entered a craft-store-slash-gift-shop, for example, and were immediately greeted by a store employee. At first I thought she was the epitome of customer service, asking us how our day was going and offering to provide us with any assistance we might need. The encounter should have ended there, but instead she followed us around the store, pointing out items she thought we would like (having no knowledge of our tastes, of course), and maintaining a running stream of commentary on the shop's inventory.

Even worse, she did not maintain a respectful distance from my wife and I, but instead hovered right behind or in front of us, giving us no opportunity to consult one another privately should we consider making a purchase.

This scenario repeated itself in almost every store we entered. In some cases, the proprietor would hang back a ways and simply watch us as we walked the aisles; in others, salespeople would talk to us non-stop while we browsed, in one case providing us with graphic and unsolicited details about the individual's recent knee surgery.

We spent only a couple hours in Old Town Spring this year, and for the first time in almost a decade left without making a single purchase. As I unlocked the doors on our truck and slid in behind the wheel, my wife said, "I feel like a fugitive under police surveillance."

She summed up my impressions perfectly.

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