MH
Melissa Hamilton
Apr 24, 2025
Update:
In response to the owners reply...
I've been attending Scarborough Fair for the last 5 years. My husband and I have been considering buying mugs from Wondrous Wood on a few different occasions, in that time. So, the owner is telling another falsehood to say that the mug prices have not gone up. I've also seen WW at other fairs over the years. The mugs have definitely gone up in price between just the 2024 and 2025 seasons.
It's important to note that when I spoke with the owners of Scarborough Fair about this incident, they completely denounced the actions of the owner of Wondrous Wood, and agreed that she should have offered me a similar mug at the same price as the "defective," MUCH cheaper mug. It wouldn't have been hard to find a similar non-defective mug, and honor the same price as the one that the owner scratched the sticker off of. Which is what I would have done as a small business owner.
I stand by my claim that the interaction was dishonest and was not handled as it should have been. If in fact the owner has been doing this as long as she claims, she should have known better. She should have made it right instead of immediately hiding the mug as she scratched off the original sticker price.
Original review:
Pretty sure it's illegal and comes with a heavy fine to not sell something at the displayed price.
I was so excited to finally buy a mug from this shop. This is our fourth year at Scarborough, we finally decided to be Friends of the Faire, which means of course that we needed mugs! My husband and I walked into the store and found perfect mugs. The one I picked had a sticker price of $155, my husband found a less intricate but larger mug with a sticker price of $99. We were also planning to buy a few leather mug straps at $18 a piece. Needless to say we were about to drop $300 dollars for two wooden mugs and a couple pieces of leather. But it's part of the experience so we were ready.
As we excitedly took our finds up to pay for them, The woman behind the cash register seemed shocked at the price of my husband's mug. She handed it to, what I can only assume was the owner of the shop, who immediately started to rub and scratch off the sticker price.
What I think happened is that they've recently raised their prices, and somehow this mug my husband found was overlooked in the new stickering process. I did see other mugs similar to his at higher prices. This mug however was dusty and had obviously been sitting there for a while.
Instead of honoring the sticker price that the owner had now scratched off, they made up some story about it being a return mug. That was probably someone else's that needed to be repaired and returned to the previous owner. The mug was in perfect condition with no flaws other than the dust. My dear sweet husband who is a veteran, who works really hard and was excited to find a mug, was upset by the blatant lies and disregard for laws that have been put in place to protect people from this type of treatment. As business owners we would never treat customers in such a poor fashion over a difference of $50 or $60 that they might be able to get from the mug after it is priced higher and put back on the shelf.
We plan to reach out to the owners of Scarborough Fair and let them know of the unethical business practices of one of their vendors.