Well, you and Bubba can feel anyway you want about this, but the fact is this practice is very common and accepted by most people. If you’ve honestly never run across this situation, you live a rather sheltered life.
Go grab a Sunday newspaper sometime and go through the several pounds of ads. See how many have some sort of qualifier regarding availability. Typically in very small print.
Does it suck that businesses do this? Yes, it sucks. Could I see this happening to me? You bet. I can easily imagine seeing a cool deal in some ad and dropping by the store later in the week only to be told they’ve sold out or never had the item or whatever, and it would really suck. But it happens, dude, all the time, and blaming ol’ Hung for this practice is silly.
I’m also in the Hung Mung camp. Folks today seem to have a somewhat deluded sense of self-entitlement when it comes to customer service.
A recent example of this was a caller from another country. He purchased a gizmo that we make, and decided that it was defective. He took it to a tech to have it inspected, and the tech decided the gizmo was bad.
Now I have no problem replacing a gizmo that’s still under warranty. Happy to be of help. But the caller also expected me to pay for the labor that the tech charged the caller.
Admittedly, the caller may have not had the mechanical know-how to use a phillips screwdriver. He may have even though that a phillips screwdriver was vodka and milk of magnesia.
But expecting me to pay for the labor? Where do I draw the line? Should I also pay for his gas to drive to the tech? Buy his breakfast for him that morning?
(bolding added)
That seems fairly clear. “Quantities and Selection May Vary” is not the same as “supply is limited and/or the merchandise is available only at designated outlets”. It’s just as easy to put “supply is limited and/or the merchandise is available only at designated outlets” in the ad as “Quantities and Selection May Vary” so why not do it?
The only thing I can see where **Hung Mung ** might have done things differently was to call around to a couple of other stores in the chain to see if they had the item. And I’ll honestly say I don’t even know if this is a possibility for him. It might be something his company doesn’t do, although I think most places should. As a customer that would have been the first question I would ask.
However, sold out absolutely does not imply that there will be more coming in. Who in the world doesn’t know that wicker is probably a seasonal item? Sold out in this case means we don’t have any more, we won’t be getting any more and we’re sorry about that but too bad for you. No store can absolutely match the number of items they carry to the number of customers who might want it. It would have been smarter for the customer to call first to see if there was one in the store. It’s a seasonal item. They sell out. And yes, different stores within a chain carry different items sometimes. Anybody who has gotten to the age where they can be referred to as geriatric should have learned this. I can understand asking if something could be done for them if they wanted to purchase the furniture that wasn’t on sale, since they were there and ready to buy something, but pushing for the same discount? No, no, and no.
You can holler all you want about zero not being a quantity, but the fact is, for this particular customer there was no difference between “we don’t have it now” and “we never did have it”. It still wasn’t there and wouldn’t be.
And to Hung Mung. I truly believe you were completely in the right on this one. I have worked retail before and how some people feel they are entitled to things just really pisses me off. I remember one time when I was working produce when and old woman brought in this bag of potatoes. Complete with rotting ones, and growing stalks about a foot long. And the fack that they were in a bag that was a brand we didn’t even carry. She complained that she wanted a new bag because she bought them this morning and didn’t notice they were in this kind of shape. I politely told her that there was no way she bought them that morning (due to the condition) and she did not buy them at our store (due to the brand) and that I wasn’t allowed to exchange them. She got very pissy and demanded to speak to my manager. I went and got him. She explained to him what had happened and he went and got her another bag of potatoes and exchanged them. When he came through the back doors I lit into him for not standing up for me. He just kinda chuckled and stated that it was nothing personal and the it was easier to loose a few bucks than a customer. Even bought me lunch to even things out. Helluva guy he was.
And to the fast food rants, I couldn’t agree more. It’s an even bet for me every time I go out that my order will be screwed up. I’ve gotten in the habit of sitting in the drive through and checking my bag. They always get mad at me for blocking traffic, but more than half the time, they have to fix my order. Just slow the hell down and get it right the first time. Geez, how hard is it really? (I have worked fast food by the way and know exactly hard it is.)
Nope just a guy who reads “quantities may vary” and expects an actual quantity to be present at least at some time Also reads, “selections may vary” and assumes that there are other similar items on sale (as in a selection) if the ad display item was not at the store.
Is that a simple enough explanation for your little mind. If not maybe the next time you crawl out from mommy’s basement you can have your sister explain it to you. Maybe you can have her go missionary instead of doggy so she can tell you to your face and not over her shoulder.
Sure it is. Looks pretty clear to me. In fact, the first is far preferable over the second because it is short and to the point.
But you’re probably right. Someone’ll sue somebody somewhere for not using precisely the correct legal mumbo-jumbo, and the result will be a longer, more obtuse, and smaller print legal disclaimer than before. And then someone will decide that wasn’t clear enough, and the cycle will continue as legal disclaimers get longer and longer and longer and tinier and tinier and tinier until no one reads them …
People like you are the reason that simple step ladders are covered with little stickers full of legalistic crap.
Sort of yer base-model chicken without any options and possibly missing one or two bits of anatomy that you’d usually expect to find otherwise – the sort of scratch 'n dent chicken you’d find in the discount bin. Vengefully accosting someone anally with anything more would just be a waste of fine poultry. (It’s a flippant explanation, but it’s basically true. You can google it if you like.)
As for this whole Hung Mung fiasco, I sort of have to side with him. Even if the wording is a bit dodgy, the practice is so common as to be virtually ubiquitous in larger North American chain stores. Not all stores carry exactly the same selection of merchandise as other stores in the chain – it depends on the demographic of the market where the store is situated and what that market is most likely to buy the most. Perhaps the choice of wording could have been improved, but I can’t imagine seasoned shoppers, much less septuagenarians, aren’t aware of that. I’ve worked enough retail jobs to have become convinced that some of them are fully aware of the fact that if they piss and moan loud and long enough, they will get their way, and they use that to their advantage. Not just geriatrics – if anything, I’ve mostly found that it’s the 30-50 crowd that damn near give themselves a prolapsed rectum screaming at the poor CSRs when they don’t get their way.
As Og is my witness, if I ever opened a chain of stores, I’d make it quite clearly understood that determinately obstinate customers who just can’t fucking read and/or understand plain English and easy concepts will get no concessions and that managers of all levels will back employees in such disputes, pain-in-the-ass customer be damned.
Actually it was just my interpretation of written words. I interpreted the ad the way others could. I can see that it could be interpreted differently, but I stated quite plainly why I had my interpretation.
I’m not sure how you got some sense of my entitlement.
Oh I didn’t really throw a random insult. I returned one. I’m not tossing one at you because you’re playing nicer than the “guest” poster.
Since your so concerned about my point, its this - Hung Mung has a decent gripe about having to deal with assholes, but his company’s misleading ads are what started his problem.
The ad does clearly and adequately disclose that the supply is limited by saying that quantity and selection may vary.
The funny thing about the law is that the meaning that one member of the general public (or even many members of the general public) apply to words does not win a race against the actual, agreed-upon meaning of words.
it seems clear to you because you think the words mean something different than they actually do. And while the meaning you assign to them may be congruent enough to everyone else’s to get by in conversation, it’s not the actual meaning and thus you get your frustration. So you think, “I know what these words mean! How come they’re not using them the way I understand the words?” when the truth is, you don’t know what the words mean.
Anyway,BubbaDog, you are very amusing. It seems as though you are trying to misunderstand things on purpose. As if everyone in the entire Western capitalist world isn’t aware of the possibility that if participation and quantities very that the possibility exists that you wont get what you came there for. As if you don’t know full damn well that these old fuckers were damn well aware of what they were doing and working the system. Give me a break.
What the fuck happened to ice-cube-tray technology in the last 10 years? I remember the my granbdma’s old stainless steel ones(that had a bit of rust), My mom’s aluminum ones, and the plastic ones I had when I first moved out on the own. Three different mediums, but they all worked on the same basic procedure;
Fill with water.
Put in freezer.
Pull out of freezer.
Give a cattywompus twist.
Remove Ice and place in refershing beverage.
I had no idea the secret of the Ice-cube tray was held by so few people, because in the last couple months after I decided to get new ones I found out they are all peices of shit nowadays. The first pair I bought (at the dollar store)was apparently made of a plastic not rated for cold temperatures, cause both snapped on the first twist. Right in the garbage. The second pair just will not release the damn ice with any twisting They are frozen in place even as the device becomes a cork screw. I don’t want to wait for hot water so I can coax the bottom free for my damn ice. Right in the garbage.
But the third pair is the worst of all. Some frustrated ass of an engineer created them so that the ice works as a reinforcing component against the torsion of the twisting stress. The result is 4 cubes shooting across the room and onto the floor, or behind the microwave. 4 more that shatter into useless ice debris. 2 that won’t release at all, 2 more that bisect themselves horizontally, into an almost useable hemi cube and a pile of ice debris below, and two that are actually good(although they are the ones on the corners where my hands are so they may be candidates to shoot across the room that didn’t make it past my thumb pad).