A Michigan woman is alleging that Saks Fifth Avenue employees profiled her after she made some high-end purchases at their store last week.
With only a few days left until Christmas, Dana Hale and her 24-year-old daughter, Paris, went to a Saks store store in Troy, Mich., on Dec. 21 to get some shopping done.
As WXYZ-TV reports, Hale bought $6,731 worth of Louis Vuitton designer bags, a belt, a keychain and Christmas gifts. She put some of the luxury goods on her business credit card, and paid for the rest in cash. Hale, who owns a training center for nurses in East Point, Mich., says that the clerk told her she could leave her purchases with her as she continued shopping, which Hale did.
That should have been that.
But while Hale was checking out some sunglasses, someone called the Troy police. The next thing she knew, she was being confronted by an officer.
“He said ‘You and you, I need to talk to you,’” Dana told WXYZ.
Her daughter began filming the encounter with the police on her cellphone. On the footage, the officer can be heard sayings that the name on the business card doesn’t match. He also says that the card is declined.
“So we’re like, OK. Then this is possibly credit card fraud,” the officer says.
Hale responds, “[The card] didn’t decline, though; it went through.”
And she literally has the receipt to prove it, which she showed to the WXYZ news team. As anyone whose card has ever been declined can attest (seriously, who among us hasn’t experienced this?), there is no receipt at the end of a transaction that never goes through.
Hale says that she knows exactly what the issue is.
“They profiled me because I was in sweats. Because I was black ... they could just treat people any kind of way,” Hale said. The entire experience left her “really sad” and “embarrassed.”
“They made me feel belittled,” she continued. “They made me feel harassed. And it was intimidation that you called the police?”
Saks is reportedly “investigating the matter,” according to WXYZ. Hale was told that the Saks clerk called in the report to the police, adding that a representative for the company called her last Saturday offering to refund the money she paid for the goods (which she had kept).
Hale told the TV station that she’s called an attorney.
Read more at WXYZ-TV.