Thursday, December 9, 2010

Reply from the mall!

Dear Mr. Gatch,
 

     I appreciate that you took the time to send us an email regarding your situation.  I fully understand you have a medical condition that may require you not to wear shoes. 

      With that being said I have to let you know that the Providence Place Mall is privately owned.  As a privately owned business we have the right to set certain policies that we believe help promote a safe, secure, family enviorment within the mall.  That allows all customers the opportunity to shop knowing that we are very concerned about their experience.  Many of our enacted policies are established to promote our Family atmosphere.  There have been a few occasions when a customer felt that they did not need to follow the mall policies for assorted reasons.   When a customer does not wish to follow the established rules of the mall then we politely ask them to please leave.   We will welcome that customer back when they comply with the established rules.  As much as we may not like or agree with "Certain rules" we must remember that they have been established for the greater good of all the customers.

     We believe that allowing patrons to visit the mall without shoes or any type of foot covering presents two issues.  The first issue is liability and the second issue is a health issue.  It is not the policy of the mall to accept individual waivers of liability from a customer.  We believe that by accepting an individual liability waiver letter it creates an even greater burden on our personnel.  It creates a scenario where others may want waivers for other reasons none on which would be in our customers interests.  Secondly I understand that you have a letter of liability waiver but we would not accept that because we have our own legal department that would be involved in drawing up such a document if we deemed it necessary.  As for health reasons we do not ever want the responsibility of having to police the proper foot hygiene of our customers.  It makes perfect sense that everyone should have their feet covered by shoes, sneakers, boots, sandals , flip flops etc. for the health of everyone who visits the mall.

    I hope this answers your questions and we hope that you would be able to comply with our shoe requirement policy and return to shop at the mall.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

Name censored (by me)

Asst. Director of Security

3 comments:

  1. I Noticed it's from "Head of Security". Call the mall and ask to talk to the Mall Manager not Head of Security. I ran into the same problem at mine and the head of security said no (pretty rudely), but I then talked to the Mall manager and he worked out a deal.

    Security is hired by the mall and is almost a seprate business. Their job is to enforce the malls rules. IF there is a rule somewhere that says not barefoot people , they will enforce that law without exception.
    If you talk to the Manager he/she can change the rule and let security know who would then have to comply with the new rules set up.

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  2. well see what I did was hit the contact option on the malls website and i had no idea it was being sent to the head of security...perhaps it was forwarded there?

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  3. Yeah, the same thing happened to me. I sent an e-mail to Westfield Malls and the head of security wrote back in a negative fashion, but not just so descriptive as yours. He basically told me there is a rule and if you don't like it don't come in the mall.

    The next day I found the office number of my mall by calling the mall phone number in the contact section. I asked to please talk to the Mall manager and declined to give the reason why, I was patched right through.

    I think what happens is when the e-mails come in there is a secretary who reads them and says' Oh this one is for security" and send it over there. Pretty much to not bother the manager as much as possible with complaints.
    But me personally I don't care about bugging the Manager, it's his job to take care of customer concerns not security.

    Anyway Good Luck. I think your new letter will go right back to Security again. Here's hoping someone else reads it.

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