Apparently, two sisters have been banned from shopping in all Filene’s Basement stores. The reasons cited in the letter to the sisters include excessive returns and chronic unhappiness.
How embarrassing!
It seems to me they can still go to a Filene’s outside of Boston and pay with cash to, er, circumvent the ban.
Finally, a place that recognizes that the customer isn’t always right (because they’re not).
There are lots of customers I wish our OfficeMax store could have banned when I worked there. Not only were such people a big pain the ass to deal with, they were costly to the store, that is, counterproductive towards the store’s goal of making a profit. Such customers become a burden to a business when they continually bring back merchandise, demand discounts, complain about the pettiest of matters, and in general, waste the staff’s time and the store’s resources. This, in turn wastes the time of other customers who have to wait for the PITA customers to finish up. If this happens too often then legitimate customers leave the store, costing the store even more in terms of lost sales.
Since such customers cannot seem to be satisfied no matter what the store does for them, what incentive does the store have in trying to please them and keep their “business” (in spite of the negative profits such business brings?) I can see the store’s point in banning its most bothersome customers.
I used to work at a busy coffee shop in a mall. There was this woman who worked at a nearby store that thought she was more important than all of our other customers - she would barge in (several times a day) and loudly demand her espresso immediately because she only had a 15 minute break.
We did provide this kind of service to other mall employees, who were nice, who respected that we had jobs to do that didn’t centre around their break times, and who appreciated that we were doing them a favour by letting them skip the line, instead of them doing us a favour by allowing us to make their drink.
That woman did none of these things. I’d have loved to ban her from the store.
I have a sister-in-law who has worked as management at a few department stores, and we were just talking about this the other night - her store got returns from one person worth a few thousand dollars in one evening, which wiped out her sales numbers for the week. She was saying that similar letters had been written previously at other stores she’d worked at (not banning so much as very strongly suggesting they never return), and she was considering writing a similar letter in this case depending on this person’s returns history.
I have no problems doing this in my prior roll in Activations in the cell phone company I work for. If I saw too many excessive promotions (discounts) or calls to managers in prior accounts I’ll demand a security deposit to prevent the customer from activating. The best thing about activations is that, there is no one over us. I don’t have to transfer no one to one of our managers because they only deal with activated customers, not pending ones.
The funniest account I went through was for one of my GF’s patient’s at her phsyiotherapy clinic. He had asked me to look into his account because of some issues. The issue was him, in the end an Exec made a comment on his account (one that I didn’t tell him out right) that this customer should not be reactivated…ever. He was such a PITA that no less than 6 managers had noted his account and his comment log was over 60 pages! I spent my whole lunch reading it.
I don’t get this. If I received coupons/promotions and used them, why would you prevent me from reactivating? What do you mean by excessive? If I used every promotion that came my way, no matter how many that would be, what’s wrong with that?
I’m assuming you meant reactivating, by the way, because how could you have information on an (presumably new) account that hasn’t been activated.
We have some gypsies that come into our restaraunt and always find a way to complain about the service or the food or the atmosphere or something. Then their meals are comped in the name of customer service.
Once or twice would probably not be noticed, but when they decided to come in every week and order more and more expensive meals our management decided to that they weren’t going to keep buying meals for these people. That caused another row because they insisted that we have done it every other time and that if we make them pay then they aren’t going to come back.
What a threat!
People fail to realize that “I’m never coming back here again!” said in a huff after you’ve done something stupid isn’t the threat it seems like.
Moderator’s Notes:
Please keep your racial slurs to yourself. They are most unwelcome here. I realize you only do this out of ignorance, but . . . stop it.
I complained to one of the store clerks at Belk Lindsay’s that a shirt had buttons missing. She said that she often gets returns from repeat customers. They wear the clothes then return them for a refund. She said she bets the shirt was one of them. She said they actually had to tell one customer that they would no longer service her because of her constant returns. For those of you that don’t know Belk Lindsay is an uppser scale store like Burdines.
UncleBeer is gypsy now considered a ratial slur? It’s derivation for the word Egyptian is of course far from accurate, but I for one wasn’t aware of it being considered offensive.
Or are you against the use of the word to discribe a particular group of people who are shown to have acted in a negative way? Would a story such as
“We have some Japanese Businessmen who come into our restaraunt and always find a way to complain about the service or the food or the atmosphere or something.”
Was a racial slur?
I worked with someone once who did this alot. She had a baby girl and when they had to go out or somewhere fancy she would buy a new outfit for the baby and then return it the next day. Usually she asked for credit or a store voucher rather than just exchanging the item for more clothes. That way she could save up for the next outing.
When I was managing a medical centre we had a few patients we asked not to return. Not something you do lightly in the medical profession as there is a whole stack of paperwork you have to fill out. Generally extreme action of that kind is reserved for drug seekers.
I saw the article too and for one say “Amen” I am tired of trying on clothes with Makeup on them or that have been torn or are sweaty. I hate paying inflated prices to cover the costs associated with these people that abuse stores. I think I have only returned something once in my life I can remember and that was because I got home and found the pocket was sew into the seam of the pants and you couldn’t get your hand in.
A guy I work with catches a lot of salmon and halibut during the summer which he vacuum packs. He goes through a vacuum sealer every year. When it craps out, he returns it to Wal-Mart for a replacement. I think he’s up to six at this point. Should he not be allowed to do this? Shouldn’t the machine hold up to the use for which it is intended? I think it’s debatable whether or not his returns are excessive.
I did this once. I had a job interview, I was totally broke, and didn’t have any nice clothes that were in good condition or fit me well. I stopped by a Gap on my way to the interview, bought a shirt and a sweater, walked to the interview, put them on, gave the interview, took them off, folded them nicely, and had them back at the store an hour later and got my money back. In some ways I felt bad. I didn’t get the job, either.
At a large electronic retailer I worked for stores were given a daily return/exchange rate. This helped track stores that had excessive returns. Management was held responsible to control this by 1) Training it’s staff properly to get the customer the right thing the first time, and 2) stand tough on return/exchange policys.
The company received thousands of complaints about the “horrible” company policies and people vowing “never to return”.
It worked in the long run however by getting rid of those who abuse the system and saving the company tons of money in having to sell used/open goods.
Why not deal with the manufacturer’s warranty? It should last longer than the store’s return policy. Plus, IMO, that’s why the manufacturer gave the thing a warranty.
Add me to the small list of people that are confused as how you think “gypsies” is a racial slur.
The word is properly capitalized as it refers to a person’s culture and origin and is no more derogatory than saying a group of Germans or Italians came into the restaurant.
Re: “Gypsies” as a racial slur
It depends. “Gypsies” is sometimes used as a catchall to describe scam artists or freeloaders. If that was what Snake Legs meant, I can see how it could be considered a slur, implying that all Gypsies (as in Romani) are con artists.
Of course, they could have actually been Romani, in which case I don’t think it would be derogatory to call them Gypsies.
The problem with the people who say, “I’m never coming back!” is that they usually don’t follow through.
One of our managers once had someone say that to her and replied, “Good!”