The company I work for has started a new online venture. We buy returns from a major national seller , sort through them and resell them.
As background , I spent a lot of years in retail and noticed plenty of lazy inconsiderate asshole customers there too.
1 There’s the customers who just plain steal, because they buy something new and return their similar but older broken item. That’s not inconsiderate , that’s outright thievery. Fairly often there are missing parts or software. You can’t tell on those if it’s intentional theft or carelessness. I suspect it’s some of both. The assholes that really piss me off are the people who send something back and make no effort at all to pack the item carefully. The other day I unpacked an item that was tossed in a box with no packing whatsoever. It rattled around loose through shipping and understandably was damaged.
They couldn’t make the minimum effort to put some paper or plastic grocery bags around this thing? Lazy inconsiderate fucks.
I think major companies making it far too easy to make no hassle returns have helped train a certain % of customers that it just doesn’t matter. You don’t have to make an effort to be considerate of others because nobody will call you on it and hold you responsible for you asshole behavior.
Fuck you, you selfish pricks. I look forward to the moment someone does hold you responsible and you stand there with your mouth open in disbelief because you finally have costly consequences to your ignorant inconsiderate behavior. You share the world with other people dickwad. Act like it.
I endorse this pitting. I currently work for an internet retailer, but have plenty of experience at brick-and-mortar stores. Mostly we drop-ship stuff, but we do have inventory of quite a few items.
A customer bought a deep fryer (drop-ship item), then decided it was “too flimsy”, and wanted to return it (Really? Because it weighs a bloody ton and has a five year warranty). Since we try to minimize things like restocking charges, we had the guy ship it back to our warehouse, figuring we could resell it with no problem. HA! The individual frying baskets that come with the unit (three in total) were originally shipped in open ended plastic bags. The bags were not on the baskets, they were used as partial packing material, and they had been needlessly torn to remove the baskets, to the point of being unusable. The baskets themselves were jammed together, bur fortunately had not been bent. The whole thing was loaded into the clamshell styrofoam, but stuffed the wrong way into the box, so the lid flap could not be closed properly; it was bent over part of the end of the box. Needless to say, it was not salable as new, so we charged the maximum restock fee anyway. Asshole. :mad:
I always keep the original mailing carton and packing materials for 30 days, just in case I’ve purchased a lemon that fails during that period. It really helps to avoid those restocking fees, and I’ve never had a return rejected for damage.
I believe that companies should have return policies that make it easy for customers to return non-functional of unwanted items, within reason. But some companies have taken such a laissez-faire attitude to returns that they encourage all the assholes out there to try and get away with ridiculous returns.
The no-hassle return policies also mean that lots of shoppers end up buying things without paying enough attention to whether the items are things that they really want or need. They literally start off by saying to themselves, “I’ll get that, and if i decide i don’t need it, i’ll just return it.”
Dishonest customers ruined the “no questions” open-ended return policy of some stores. There are people who bought big screen TVs, used them for six months, then returned them. I had a friend was was big into vacuum sealing his fish catch every year. The appliance would invariably burn out after a year’s use and he would return it for a new one. He did this for many years.
Used to be there was compulsory military service in my country. But that was retarded and I’m glad it’s over with.
What we really need however is a compulsory *service *service. One year in every citizen’s life should be spent behind the counter of a post office, or working retail, or at a call center, or waiting tables, or any of those jobs where you have to interact with hundreds of customers every day, and half of them are absolute tossers. No exceptions, no dispensations. You do it or you go to fucking jail.
I guarantee there’d be fewer inconsiderate tossers out there if they knew just what it’s like to be treated inconsiderately by a bunch of tossers day in, day out.
I wouldn’t last long, I’m afraid. I sold RVs for three months; when somebody was rude to me, they got it back in spades and fuck the commission. Luckily, most people were decent enough once they were convinced I wasn’t going to eat their children or molest their dogs.
You are a rare gem.
You would think people who have shopped in America much, or online, would keep the original box intact for that reason. Even if you can’t put it back exactly as it came out. {that’s pretty frustrating I know} they should make some effort to make sure it’s not needlessly damaged on the way back.
I believe some retailer insisted people bring an item back in the original box or the return will not be accepted. It was giant retailers competing for customers that started it all and allowed customers to be lazy and inconsiderate with no consequences. For those who don’t even check their returns , they’re still enabling bad behavior.
I completely agree. The no hassle return has encouraged people to simply try things out for 30 days.
We identified people as chronic returners. Look up their history and you see that they’ve returned 90% of everything they’ve purchased. I love it when those customers are shut down. Sorry, no thanks, you’re cut off.
That’s also one of the things I like about doing business online. You only have to deal with assholes once.
It blows me away that they would allow it. It’s one thing to deal with the company on warranty, but you’d think the retailer wouldn’t take it back after a few months.
Could you explain what a tosser is and where the term comes from? Just curious.
One thing years in retail has taught me is to be nice and try to be patient. I tend not to blame the person in front of me or on the phone for their companies stupid policies. When I worked for a small independent retailer I enjoyed not having to take abuse from any customer who decided to make a mountain out of a molehill.
The management was all in store and on the same page. No cursing, no yelling, no personal insults, or it’s out the door.
One coworker used to work at a furniture store. One day he said “Good morning Ma’am, have you been helped ?” and the lady snapped his head off saying she’d like to look around without being hassled or pressured so please just leave her alone.
Minutes later she came over to him with a question and he said, " Oh no Ma’am , you made it clear in a very rude way that you didn’t want my help. I’m not helping you"
She insisted on talking to the manager. He filled in the manager on what had happened and the manager went out and politely asked how he could help. She said that employee was refusing to help her.
“Well he said you were very rude to him when he offered to help earlier, is that true?”
She stormed out. We sometimes use the phrase, “firing a customer” when a customer has been far too much trouble and you just don’t want their business.
It’s funny when people are put on the spot and can’t bring themselves to just admit a mistake and apologize.
I’m gonna file this under “Wanted: A Better Proleteriat.”
I agree that these people are being shits and all. But in the mass of humanity, there’s a nontrivial proportion of shits. The question is, what do you (or in this case, what does your employer) decide to do about them?
In the cases cited here, it seems that various mass retailers have decided that it’s important enough, in terms of sales, to make it easy for your average Joe or Jane Schmoe to return things, that it’s worth letting the shits out there get away with being shitty as a cost of doing business.
That’s a simple, straightforward business calculation. I guess you could Pit your employer’s business decision due to your having to bear the brunt of it, but I really don’t see the point. It’s just life.
Can’t remember if it was Walmart, Costco, or both that had that sort of ‘anytime return’ policy. Costco finally had to curb their policy to, I think, three months, as they were losing too much money.
We kept all of the RVs on the lot locked up because of vagrants and thieves in that part of town (but enough about the sales staff), and everybody had a set of master keys to open them. Sometimes when I asked if somebody wanted me to show them something, I’d get a snotty or rude reply and would just walk away. Sooner or later they would come looking for somebody with keys, and I would give them a long, drawn out “are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure you had no interest in seeing anything I might be able to show you. I can find another salesman, if you don’t want to deal with me.” Most had the decency to look sheepish and make an apology of sorts.
I used to work in a women’s clothing store. Most of our customers were all right. However, the few that tried to game everything pretty much ruined things. There was the woman who kept returning fancy occasion outfits…she managed to get a different dress for the rehearsal dinner, the wedding, and then got an office outfit. We didn’t give refunds, just store credit, and she was outraged that she couldn’t return the Mother of the Bride dress for cash. Anyway, we told her that from then on, we would not accept returns from her. Then there was the woman who kept trying to return underwear, and some of it was obviously used. All of it might have been used, but with some of it, it was pretty apparent. Since we couldn’t resell underwear even if the customer swore that she hadn’t worn it, we wouldn’t take it back. There was the woman who had bought some slacks in THE hot color for spring…and tried to return them the next winter, covered in dog hair. The color was out of fashion by then, and of course we couldn’t sell clothing that was covered in dog hair. There were others that still stick in my mind after more than 25 years, most of them wanting to return a special occasion dress, which is why we eventually made a policy of all special occasion clothing being final sales, NO returns.