I work in the men’s clothing department of a certain department store (Sounds like “Ears”). People do stuff like that all the time, bringing in stuff that was “never worn.” I think the reason a lot of people act so smug is because they think they’re so clever about doing it, and a lot of the time they know they can get away with it. If the salesperson refuses to take the item back, there’s always a manager who will.
I actually had an employee try to convince me to buy something, use it then return it. I was speaking with a service rep at Outpost.com and explaining that my powercord was in the shop and wasn’t supposed to be back for a month, so I was looking for a generic substitute until then. He checked with the tech guy who said he didn’t recommend using a generic cord with a laptop and I admitted that I really didn’t want to pay that much for something I’d probably only need a short time. He replied “Well, we do have a very liberal 30-day return policy.” I was FLOORED! I said “Uh, no thanks…think I’ll just wait it out.”
Once at a store similar to WalMart (Venture – do they still have those?) I had purchased a scarf as a gift, and when I went to wrap it I shook it out and a second scarf fell out. Well the next day I went back to the store with it and you wouldn’t believe the confusion it caused. “Wait, you want to return this scarf, but you don’t want any money for it?” “That’s right, see it was in another scarf and it didn’t get paid for.” “But why are you bringing it back?” Sad, really.
Funny, I bought an occilating fan at wal-mart. It worked 2 days and then blew its motor. I brought it back a few weeks later without a receipts and they claimed they had never carried the product. I went to another wal mart a week later and there was the brand of fan(that I threw out as a loss) that they supposedly never had carried. I was so pissed
Oh that reminds me of my favorite. When I worked for the portrait studio of same department store, a woman once brought in her kid, changed him into a new outfit, had his picture taken (making a fuss the whole time about how he had to keep his outfit nice for lunch with grandpa!) and left. 10 minutes later the woman from the children’s department came in FUMING with the kid’s suit and said “Did some lady bring her kid in here in this and have his picture taken?” Can you believe it? She bought the clothes, had the picture taken, then took them back and returned them a half hour later. That takes some balls!
There are problems with having liberal returns policies though.
There was a programme on tv about a year ago about theives who would go into stores and steal items. Then they would take them back with all the labels still on with some sort of defect. One woman who did this dozens of times would take things back with just a sweet wrapper in the pocket or something like that. Even though she did not havea receipt, they could not deny that it came from their shop because it still had all the tags on and they could not accuse her of not paying for it without any proof. Eventually she was caught stealing something (on CCTV in the store). But she got away with it by going in different stores and not going to the same branch of a shop twice in succession.
It is a difficult balance to strike.
At the pub where I worked we always had people trying it on that they have given us a 20 or 10 and only got change for a smaller note. We used to tell them we would check the till at the end of the night and they had to come and see us the next day, or we would take a name and number. That would weed out most of those who were trying it on.
TTFN
Rick
I had to put up with this kind of stuff all the time when I worked at Payless. If you brought back merchandise with a receipt you got a full refund. If you didn’t have a receipt, the refund was equal to the lowest sale price during the previous few months (IIRC).
One day I was at the counter and a teen-age girl came in with her friend, put an obviously worn pair of dress shoes on the counter and asked for a refund. Usually when a customer returns something it’s because of a defect, so I asked her what was wrong with them.
Her response? “I don’t need 'em anymore.” Apparently she had bought them for her prom the night before. Prom was over, so she shouldn’t have to pay for the shoes, right? :rolleyes: She didn’t have a receipt, but the shoes had never been on sale so I had to give her back the full amount anyway.
But here’s one the store manager told me about. One time a woman came in with her young son and headed to the children’s racks. There was a sale going on that week so some of the boxes had those little Post-It type sale tags on them. The woman, who didn’t realize that the manager was watching at the end of the aisle, pulled a $7 tag off one box and slapped it on a box of Power Ranger sneakers (about $16.99, I think).
The manager was waiting behind the register when the woman came up to pay. When the sale rang up on the computer at the higher price, the woman threw a fit, yelling about how her husband was a lawyer and how they were going to sue the store for false advertising. The manager just looked at her and said “it doesn’t count when you put the tag on the box yourself, ma’am.”
At that point the little boy turned to the woman and said “see, Mom, I told you it wouldn’t work.”
I just hope the woman didn’t take it out on her kid after they left the store.
I’ve taken advantage of Wal-Mart’s liberal exchange policy very recently, but I don’t feel bad about…allow me to explain: I was lucky enough to be able to order a PS2 from Amazon.com during the holiday season, but you weren’t able to order just the console. Instead, you were forced to buy a package that included 3 games, a DVD movie, and an extra controller. Well, that was all fine and good, except 2 of the games were sports games (and I don’t play sports games), and the movie was Armageddon (bleeechh!!!) so needless to say I didn’t want to be stuck with these parts of the package. When I got my grubby little hands on the goods, I packed the two games I didn’t want and the DVD into a Wal-Mart bag, went to the customer service counter of my local Wally World and told them I had gotten them as a gift (well…a gift from myself :rolleyes: ) and wanted to exchange them. I got two games I did want and put the credit for the DVD towards a memory card (those damn things are 35 friggin’ bucks for the PS2 :eek: ). Now, I’m not worried, 'cause everything was intact and unopened, and they will go right back on the shelf and be sold to some unsuspecting person who will never know the difference. This is is a case of abuse to a lesser degree, but I don’t feel the least bit bad about it…now those guys who wear something out before deciding it’s not for them, well they can smoke a turd in hell as far as I’m concerned.
Several years ago my girlfriend-at-the-time bought some sort of word processing console from Wal-Mart. One of those glorified typewriter things. Anyway, a couple of days later, she decided it wasn’t all that great and decided to return it. Of course, she can’t find the receipt to save her life. (This was normal for her…but I digress).
So, we go back to Wal Mart. We’ve packed the thing back up, everything is tip top. But they won’t give a refund without the receipt. Only store credit. About $300 worth of store credit.
We tried to get them to understand that it would be to the benefit of all concerned to give a refund, but they held firm. So, all we could do was grab a couple of shopping carts and start loading them up.
We walked out of there with three carts full of shampoo, paper towels, dish soap, t-shirts, chips, cookies, envelopes, and whatever else we felt like stocking up on. $300 worth.
I can’t believe Wal-Mart would rather lose profit margin on all that than one electronics item. Oh well. We didn’t have to buy household products for months after that.
Most large retailers buy direct, not from a distributer, and they sell enough that the manufacturer will take it back in any case. The retail store chain I am familer with wouldnt not stock any merch. if the manufacturer would not take it back unconditionally. This is not uncommon.
The jerk who did this would be telling his friends, adult relatives, etc how poorly he was treated(regardless of how much of it was his fault) The line they used to tell us was that if you lose a customer, you can count on losing seven others through bad pr(I have know Idea how accurate this is, but they seemed to believe it). Mind you, this gets abused to the extreme, but for most big companys, its easier and better in the long run to just go ahead and do it, rather than leaving it up to the individual employee to decide who to piss off and who not to.
Oh, it was a PSX? Nuts…
Seeing that the manager overruled the clerk makes me think that it was an important customer who spends a lot of dollars there.
Try returning something to Frys Electronics, though. What a project that is.
I just skimmed most of the posts, so this may have already been said…
A lot of the guys I work with now formerly worked for Sam’s, which is not unlike Wal-Mart. One of the guys said that they had a ‘balls back’ policy for returns. If you had the balls to bring it back, then they’d taked it. He said that he’d seen a lady bring back a half eaten wheel of cheese. Wal-Mart’s policy isn’t too far behind. Sears used to do something similar. People would wear the crap out of their shoes, bring them back and get new ones.
As for the box of the OP’s PSX, it usually doesn’t matter. Most retailers don’t resale returned merchandise, because it’s too risky. Most retailers RMA or in our case, D&D the merchandise, which means they send it back to the manufacturer for credit, so the retailer isn’t really out of anything. Some stuff has to be thrown away, tho.
oh well
I have to say I’m not suprised that they took the PSX back. My store has done worse, all for the sake of not loosing one damn customer. For instance a manager recently authorized a return of a TV box. Yep… that’s right a TV box… inside said box was four telephone books. This was pointed out to the gentleman by the assocate and he freaked and demanded to see a manager, he said he got it that way, that someone else did it. The manager authorised the return AND gave the man a $25 dollar gift card for his trouble because he said the girl was rude.
When we took out the phone books after the guy left with his money out fell his phone bill from the leaves of his phone books. OH YEAH… he didn’t do it… riiiiiight.
We now, unlees there are some VERY special circumstances only give out gift cards (store credit) without a reciept. This is becasue of all the theft and abuse that our return policy gets. We frequently get people that try to return stuff from different stores. ALL our stuff is in our system. If it doesn’t ring up it ain’t ours. This pisses some people off.
You can’t get new boxes for stuff from vendors. It is counted as an unsellable loss.
The most frequent abuse of our return policy (90 days with recipt) is when our camcorders go on vacation. People buy them just before they leave and return them for all thier money back when they are done. Frequently covered in sand ,oil, and other crap.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not rooting for WalBarn, but customers do make our lives hell.
For references on this… see my thread in the pit. I am defintely not alone. Anyone have any questions for the WalMart babe?
Over last Christmas, I got my dad a Levi belt from 'Ears…on sale for like, $24.99. It didn’t fit, so after Christmas I went back WITH my receipt to exchange. The belts were no longer on sale, so I had to pay an extra $6.99 for another. Such bullshit.
One of the Cub Foods stores around here (we’ll call it “Working Class Suburban Cub Foods”) has a sticker by each register reminding cashiers to “Check Under Basket” (Get it?) Perhaps this store does have a big shoplifting problem–they keep all the baby formula in a locked case (or perhaps they are just promoting breastfeeding :)), while the Cub Foods closer to my house keeps formula on an open shelf.
I love people who think it’s okay for them to steal from a corporation, because they have millions of dollars. I work for McDonalds. There used to be this guy that’d come in, he (and his schoolage children) would order their meals, sit in the corner, dump out half their fries onto the tray, and take the cartons back to the counter, complaining either that their cartons weren’t filled, or that the fries would cold. By store policy, we have to replace them. We’d give him new fries, he’d gain half an order for each kid. Just stupid stuff like that pisses me off.
There was one day, I was ordering food from my store, but I wasn’t working yet. I was waiting to order, and the guy standing in line next to me was complaining about the service. I just kind of smiled, ignored him. “This place sucks! It’s the worst fast food place in town, all the employees are incompetant! What you do though, complain that they messed up your order, or they didn’t give you food, and they’ll give it to you for free! And they never even realize it!” It was about then that I smiled, took off my sweatshirt revealing my management shirt, walked behind the counter, and very politely asked if I could help the next customer in line. The look on his face was priceless…he left before he could scam food off us 
I worked at Pergament for a summer when I was in college. That place had such a liberal return policy, it was a wonder that all their stores aren’t out of business.
People would buy tools on Saturday and bring them back Sunday. Thank God I didn’t have to handle the actual returns with the consumer, but I did have to re-shrink wrap them and get them back up on the shelves. Managers didn’t care if there were pieces missing or anything. They’d just tell you to shrink wrap whatever came back and get it back on the shelves. Re-shrink wrapped pieces stuck out like sore thumbs on the shelves. Customers avoided them like the plague. When it was time to re-stock, you would end up with all these pieces of crap lying around that no one would buy.
I worked in the plumbing department, and I would frequently see customers putting together elaborate schemes of pipes and fittings and then peeling off all the price tags. Then they would go to the cashier and claim they found the whole contraption in a 99 cent bin or something. I’d have to go fetch a book full of SKUs, look up all the parts individually, and let the cashier scan them in, usually while dozens of customers waited for help.
Customers would also rip apart sink trap and toilet kits and try to piece them together right in the middle of the store. When I approached them to see if I could help, usually they’d go “This wasn’t what I was looking for” and leave the stuff on a shelf. I’d have to find all the washers and little pieces and re-shrink wrap the kit, which would sit around on the shelves forever.
One day, a customer picked out some pieces of 1" PVC pipe, some fittings and some glue and started piecing together a project right in the middle of the store. “Sir, you have to purchase these pipes and fittings before you put them together. And you can’t use this glue in an enclosed area. The fumes can make people sick.” He gave me this strange look and then plopped his “project” into a bin, tipped over the can of glue, and walked out of the store. I had to block off the aisle, call a manager, and clean up the puddle of glue. I dunno if any of you have ever dealt with PVC glue, but it smells like rubber cement (only about 10 times as strong), is blue, and is really tough to get off your hands if it comes into contact with exposed skin. In my haste to clean up before some other customer passed out, I got it all over my palms and spent half an hour with some nice industrial hand cleanser after work. It sucked.
I worked in retail (selling clothes) for a long time. I hated it when people tried to return clothes that had OBVIOUSLY been worn. I know some people think they are so slick and clever that we don’t know it’s been worn, but we can ALWAYS tell, even when it’s been washed or dry-cleaned.
It was even worse when people (usually female) would try to return something, swearing it had never been worn, but it smelled like a combination of cheap perfume, smoke and beer, and looked like it had been slept in.
WE CAN TELL WHEN SOMETHING HAS BEEN WORN! We would have to take it as a loss. Every so often, that kind of merchandise would be sent back to the distribution center, and was usually donated to shelters or some place like that.
The worst thing was when someone would buy clothes for a gift, put it in a box from a different store, then the recipient would try to return it to the store the box was from. I worked as an Assistant Manager for The County Seat (like The Gap), and had a girl come in with several boxes of stuff…jeans, shirts and sweaters, all in County Seat boxes, but with no receipt or gift slips. The stuff WAS NOT ours, which I politely pointed out to the customer, but she insisted it had to be ours, since it was in our boxes. There were no price tags, but most of it had “Jaclyn Smith” tags on it, so I knew it was from K-Mart. It had been a gift from her grandmother. Another employee came over, pointed out the Jaclyn Smith tags, and said, “This stuff is from K-Mart.” Boy, that pissed her off! She yelled and screamed that her grandmother didn’t shop at K-Mart, and she would never wear clothes from K-Mart, blah, blah, blah. She finally left, and I called the other County Seats in the area, and told them what happened. She hit all the other stores trying to return the stuff, but no one let her do it.
Sometimes we win.
I used to work at a cellular telephone company. We had a very liberal “insurance” policy. If you paid the dollar a month fee, we’d fix or replace any phone for free. If a phone was fixable, our techs would do that, but if it was irreparable, we’d replace it. We’d also replace any accessories for free, like batteries or chargers.
One day this guy walks in, bellies up to the counter, puts his perfectly good looking phone down, and says, “I want a new phone.” The tech made a couple test calls on it and everything seemed to be working fine. He said, “Sir, there doesn’t seem to be any problem. We can take it and run some more tests on it.”
The guy demanded a new phone. The tech told him we only do that for phones that can’t be fixed. So the guy picked up the phone, went outside, and ran over it with his truck. he came back in, dumped the pieces on the counter and said, “Give me a new phone.”
I remember I took a can of wood puty back to Home Depot, that was defective, it wouldnt dry…it was absolute crap. I had used a good portion of it, and when I was over in the wood puty section looking for another brand so I could re-do my project, I see this employye come walking up and put the can I had just brought back right back on the shelf, I told him I had just brought it back, and that it didnt work, and that some of it was missing, and Said “yeah, that stuff is crap. I would get this stuff over here”. I mentioned again that we used some of it, and he just shrugged, and put it back on the shelf and walked off.
Just pulled the stats on WalMart (WMT) and it doesn’t look as though there stock has done too poorly over the last 5 years. Not that I condone the practices you folk describe, but that particular corporation’s return policy does not seem to be hurting them too much.