So it’s really not that eating $20 to $100 dollars for “customer service” will break us. It’s that we get customers like you all the time that think your situation is special and we should ignore policies we have for good reasons and eat a few dollars. That translates into hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month.
For instance;
The item you bought has a warranty from the manufacturer. That warranty does not mean you get to bring it back to us and exchange it for a new one if something goes wrong 6 weeks from purchase.
You don’t get to use something for several weeks and then come exchange it for full value when it is very obvioulsy used. We don’t have a rent for free program.
If you want to return something and you live a good distance away, getting it here is still your responsibility. Return shipping, your gas or your time is your responsibility, unless the item is defective.
You don’t get an extra discount because you’re buying it for Jesus.
If you don’t like what I offered for your used guitar or amp then by all means don’t sell it to us and make the effort to do Craig’s List or ebay on your own. I don’t owe it to you to offer more because you expected more. And here’s another tip. If you want more , trying cleaning the dam thing before you try to sell it.
and please, you, and especially your kids, treat our merchandise with a little respect and consideration. If your kids are banging on stuff, we’re going to say something. Don’t hand them an intrument to play with and then expect to put it back after they’ve banged it up. You bought that one.
Still remember the woman in the cell phone store where I worked as an armed guard for a couple of months.
Comes in with 2 year old boy. Starts letting him paw all of the phones. I say no. Third time, manager is looking at me to do something and I tell her that if she can’t keep her kid’s hands off the phones, she needs to leave now.
"How am I supposed to buy no damned cell phone if I don’t know if he’ll break it?"
:rolleyes:
“Are you going to pay for the ones he breaks now?”
“No”
“Then you need to leave the store.”
It’s amazing when they are that stunningly stupid and unreasonable. We;ve had to tell parents to take their kids out because they can’t or won’t control them. Then there are those who get mad because you spoke to their children.
YOu have all this stuff on display. You should expect kids to want to play with it"
I do expect kids to want to play with it. And I expect thier parents to teach them how to repsect other people’s property, and how to politely ask for permissioon , and to generally supervise thier kids while they are here with far fetched phrase like, “please don’t touch” and “let’s be very careful”
One young couple gave their toddler a kazoo to play with while he played a bunch of guitars. She had the thing in her mouth for 15 minutes biting and spitting on it. Then when he is buying a set of strings he casually tosses it back into the kazoo box. “Oh no sir. You bought that one” and he seemed surprised.
I know it’s only a couple of bucks but dam people. Think a minute.
The sense of entitlement that some people have is amazing.
Chimera, I don’t know if I should laugh or cry over your story, because I used to see it all the time back when I worked retail.
The “I’m buying it for Jesus” people were the very worse when I worked for the Pizza Czar. They would call to order 20 pizzas during rush hour, be upset when they were told that it would take over an hour and then start demanding discounts and free stuff because it was for God’s work.
The Pizza Czar hired me to deal with those sort of things, so when they started yelling at the front end people and demanding the manager, the manager would give them my number.
Those weren’t customers we wanted to keep, so while I couldn’t be rude, I could be blunt. My line was usually “I’m sorry that we can’t accomadate your request, perhaps you would be better served by calling “competing pizza place”. I have their number, do you have a pen?” They didn’t seem like good Christians when they started cussing at me.
St.Paul Midway, five years ago. Where I learned how completely fucking insane poor people can be about having the latest and greatest ‘status device’ that they have no real need for and cannot afford. Which was really odd for me, because I was so busy being poor that it was all I could do to pay my rent and buy food. Having a cell phone, especially with those kinds of bills, had never occurred to me as being something desirable.
In all fairness, I will confess that the Pizza Czar and I gave a lot of pizzas away to real good Christians.
They would call and ask for freebies and discounts, but they didn’t demand them. They would schedule early and tip the driver very well.
That’s something that the Pizza Czar demanded and would ask about after the pizza was delivered. If they didn’t tip the driver, no more discounts/free stuff for them.
I’m guessing you’re in the US, but this isn’t true worldwide. In the UK, where I am, the contract is with the retailer, not the manufacturer, and if something goes wrong before it could reasonably be expected to, the retailer is liable for replacement or full refund. There may be additional protections offered by the manufacturer, but they don’t override the basic ones.
The retailer then has to return it to the manufacturer and claim their refund or replacement.
We had someone who claimed to be a preacher try to return several obviously used drumheads that had been purchased new, and demand a full refund. When he was told no he accused us of stealing from God.
I did enjoy quoting the Bible to one preacher. Render unto Ceaser, what is Ceasers.
Wow, that’s very cool of them to0 be looking out for employees. I imagine they were irrate when they got the freebies one time and couldn’t get them again.
One of the problems we notice is that when you accomadate people once they then expect that same accomidation every time. They buy a $1000 PA and get a discount. Then they come back to buy $20 worth of cables and expect a discount. Sorry, you didn’t earn a permenent discount status with that purchase.
What if the item shows some sign of abuse , or improper use?
If it’s 30 days or less we will usually take care of it rather than insist they contact the manufacturer. We either fix it, or handle the hassle of returning it to be fixed, or we swap it out.
btw; I actually would prefer it to be the way you describe as long as the manufacturer is required to take it back and give us full credit.
Really? I thought that was exactly what a warranty was for.
If it has gone wrong within a mere six weeks though, I think I am entitled to my money back. Are you saying using a product voids the warranty?
Seems to me your attitude is “Screw you, customer. We’ve got your money so suck it. What, did you think we had a responsibility to sell you non-defective goods? Ha, ha, ha!”
Depends on the item, but almost always not less than a year. This is for non-consumable items, where the problem is with the item, not the way it was used. For example, if I buy a fridge from you and it stops working in 6 months, you are responsible for the refund or replacement, and then you may, if you wish, claim the replacement or refund you are due from the manufacturer. Who may then, if they wish and are entitled to, claim from their suppliers if they are at fault, and so on.
If it happens to go to court, a “reasonable time” has sometimes been considered to be several years, depending on the item. Basically, if the item fails before it could reasonably be expected to with normal use, it was not fit for sale in the first place.
Depends if that’s what caused the failure. This may, of course, not be immediately obvious, and the retailer would have to decide. If the customer disagrees, they may take it to court - usually a small claims court, which are set up so an individual can get the case heard very cheaply or for free.
I used to work for a wholesalers, and we would take the items back from the shops, credit them, and then claim from the manufacturers. I now work for a manufacturing company, and I do know that when consumers return stuff to us it actually complicates things, because we don’t have a direct contract with them…
It is not a store’s responsibility to carry out a manufacturer’s warranty. I often use a credit card to buy stuff that doubles the warranty period. If I buy a TV from Best Buy, you think I can show up two years later and try to exchange it because American Express said I could?
No, that’s what those 1-800 phone numbers are for on the warranty card.
BTW, I’ve had warranty service that is far better than the hassle of finding an old receipt, hauling shit down to a store, and talking to a manager. One monitor I bought went on the fritz after 9 months, and the manufacturer sent a courier to my home to deliver a new monitor and pick up the old one. It was awesome.
Back in grad school when I worked at a Sports Authority, I came to a few conclusions about customers:
[ul]
[li]A significant percentage have an attitude that they haven’t done their due diligence unless they’ve tried to pry or weasel some kind of discount out of the store.[/li][li]Another large chunk of customers seem to think they’re somehow special and that they should get all sorts of extras just for virtue of having bought some small-ticket item. “I just bought a baseball glove from you- can’t you throw in a free ball?”[/li][li]A lot of them are just idiots plain and simple. A guy bought a scoped 22 rifle one time, and I boresighted it, but told him that he’d still need to sight it in to get it to hit where he aimed. I also explained that there are no returns on firearms. What happens? This idiot comes back a day later wanting to return the gun because it shoots about 1.5" to the left of where the sight is.[/li][/ul]
Now there was one thing the store did that caused a lot of customer service headaches, and was just shady. They’d advertise items in the newspapers on Saturdays, and then ship the store like 3 of them the following Monday or Tuesday.
So they’d advertise a sale in the Saturday paper on some item taking place over the next week- from Sunday to the following Saturday, and then ship the store 3 of the sale item on Tuesday. It was a huge bait & switch- people’d show up on Sunday wanting the air mattress or swim goggles or workout gloves or whatever, and we’d have to give them a rain check or explain that for whatever reason, we didn’t have any. Then we’d have to deal with the “can you check in the back?” questions, which the new guys would try and explain that the only things in the back were bulky items like weight sets, ping pong tables and coolers or seasonal crap that nobody ever bought. The old hands would just use it as an excuse to take a 5 minute break in the stockroom.
What’s weird is that I switched to SA from Dick’s because Dick’s would always do this with shoes – keep the lowest (i.e. at least $20 less expensive than the nearest similar pair) “special sale” shoes out on the display floor when they didn’t have any in stock. Or perhaps they did but just not in my size. But after having had this happen three times in a row, I learned my lesson. ETA: and they didn’t have their shoes out to peruse so you can’t just look to see if they had any left, you had to ask an employee.
“Your total is [price].”
“What?! Let me ask you this… what would Jesus pay for this?”
“Sir, Jesus paid the ultimate price and died for your sins. Your total is [same price as before].”
