Academy Sports + Outdoors

My husband needed to speak with someone and he waited patiently for well over 10 min. while the employee chatted with someone who must have been their friend. Finally we left without purchasing a thing, why give them our money. Store was very clean, not many customers. Pricey, too.

Only giving one star because you can't leave zero stars. I looked up pickleball paddles online and saw one my son liked. I went to the store and the same one that was on sale online was not on sale in the store, so I went to checkout and said "I assume y'all will price match your own company's prices" and she said that is online only. I said you have to be kidding. She said they can't honor their online deals. Then she called a manager over, so I assumed he would override it, but she was calling him to help get the anti-theft device off and then asked him and HE even confirmed I can't get the online price. I told them it sounds like their company would rather not really be in Florence and just sell online. She said I could order online for pickup for the item I was holding in my hand, to which I said so I can order online and then just leave with it, and she said "no, because it takes at least 30 minutes for them to process the order once they get it". I was dumbfounded. I am not mad at the employee or really even the manager - as a business owner myself, this is clearly poor training and a company that doesn't care about their customers. Any small business would LOVE to make that sale in person. As much I wanted to save time, I just handed them the paddle back and walked over to Dick's, where I ran into the same exact issue with an online price being less and they replied that they would happily match that price - I told them thank you and that Academy wouldn't match an online price. They said "we always match a lower price"...."and we are a lot friendlier". I said, you know what y'all ARE WAAAYYY friendlier, too!