The Legend of the Tire Purchase

You won’t spend much time researching Nordstrom without running across the story of an elderly man who went to a Nordstrom store and complained that the tires that he had bought there were bad and that he wanted his money back. This is not an unusual customer service story until you find out that Nordstrom doesn’t sell tires!

The sales clerk politely explained that fact, but the man persisted with his complaint, assuring the clerk that he had indeed purchased his tires there and that he wanted a refund. After a few minutes of the conversation, the Nordstrom clerk refunded the man’s money.

You can understand why this has become a legendary story in customer service. While the exact details are not known, the fact remains that the story lives not because it is unbelievable, but because it is believable. It sounds like something that a Nordstrom employee would do.

I spoke recently to the annual meeting of a group of hotel executives. During my talk, I told one of the Nordstrom stories that I like to use when I speak. At the break, one of the executives approached me and told me that her company had hosted a meeting of Nordstrom managers at one of its hotels. She first told me how polite and kind the Nordstrom group was, which was exactly what she had expected. Then she said that she had asked some of them whether the “tire legend” was true. She was assured that it was.

One interesting exercise is to reverse this tire legend to reflect what would have happened if this had been your customer and your employee. What would have happened? Would your employees have done the same thing? Would they be fearful of what would happen to them when it became known? Would they have been reprimanded, fired, fined, or praised? What would you have done if you had been the clerk?