I know. Some of you are saying it doesn’t have to be an either/or issue.
Barnes & Noble was having a sale on DVD’s last month. If you bought two, you got a third one of equal or lesser value for free. Which is essentially a third off if you pick them right.
I bought six DVD’s last week that happened to all be Criterion DVD’s. After I checked out the clerk told me that they would be having a sale on Criterion DVD’s the following week with all of them being half off.
I was a little annoyed he waited until after I had checked out to tell me the items that I had just bought were going on sale the following week. But I figured it was no big deal. I just left all of the DVD’s and the receipt in the bag in my car.
Today I went back to the same Barnes and Noble. I confirmed that I could return them all for the price I had paid for them. So I said I wanted to return them all and then buy them all back at the sales price.
And they said I couldn’t do that. I went through three levels of managers and they all refused.
They all agreed I could return the DVD’s and get my money back. And they obviously agreed I could buy DVD’s at the sales price. They even agreed that if I returned the DVD’s I had bought they would just reshelf them and put them back for sale. But they said I couldn’t buy back the same DVD’s I returned.
Obviously I could have gotten around this. I could return the DVD’s and then sneak back into the store in disguise a few hours later and buy them back. I could return the DVD’s at one store and buy the same movies at another store. I could give somebody else the money and have them buy the DVD’s for me.
But this was just so stupid. Can anyone come up with any reason why this policy would make any sense? Right now I’m half way tempted to return all of the DVD’s after the current sale ends and keep my money. “There, you didn’t sell them to me for a third off. You didn’t sell them to me at a half off. You didn’t sell them at all.”
I think they’re saying that they can’t sell you back the DVDs until they reshelve them, correct? They weren’t saying that you couldn’t go right back into the store and pick up new copies of what you just returned, right?
If so, it makes sense-ish. They probably have internal policies that mandate certain protocol when examining and rehabilitating returned goods to make sure they are fit for sale.
Yes, they could have overlooked these polices since you wanted to immediately re-purchase, but they didn’t.
(you should have just purchased second copies of the DVDs, then returned the previously-bought ones in a separate, later, transaction)
Nope, they were clear that if I returned them, I was never supposed to buy those DVD’s. Their policy seemed to be that I had one chance to buy them and having used that chance I didn’t get a second one.
I considered that possibility. But they didn’t have that large a Criterion section. Most of these DVD’s were the only copies in the store.
That said, what I’ll probably end up doing is returning them all to the store and buying copies of them online. It seems sort of petty - we’re talking about less than fifteen dollars. But at this point I almost feel obligated to figure out a way to thwart their stupidity.
With the clerk thinking he/she did you a favor, since they presumed you were a fan of Criterion DVDs. Barnes and Noble has no obligation whatsoever to let you know before you make their purchase that they are having a sale.
That’s because they realized you were scamming them.
Then why didn’t you?
They would probably have been better off if you did, since obviously you sound like a bit of a pain in the ass.
I work in customer service, and have to put up with people like this all the time. You made a conscious, educated decision when you bought the DVDs and got the third one for free, or whatever. The clerk went out of his/her way to let you know about an upcoming sale.
No good deed goes unpunished, as a week later, there you are, wasting valuable time with three levels of management to try and screw Barnes and Noble out of 10 bucks. This was probably going on while there were ten people in line behind you, probably had about 1000 things to do that day, but your petty complaint torpedoed their day.
If they said yes, then, what is to stop you 6 months later from showing up with your unused DVDs to try and con them into another sale?
I bet if the clerk DIDNT tell you, and you found about the sale after it was over, you’d probably call the store to complain, as well.
My advice is this: put your DVDs in your DVD player. Watch them. Get over it.
Stop being a freeloader. This is why so many people in customer service are nasty to customers—they just cant take people like you anymore.
Let me get this straight. The store will let you return all 6, and you can buy anything in the store subsequently except those particular 6? Is there something in the fine print that says that? After you return them, do they keep a record of the ones you purchased and returned?
Return all 6, then get a friend to buy the same 6 when they are shelved, at the discount price.
A sale he was then denied the opportunity to take advantage of by virtue of the clerk not telling him about it until after he’d already bought the DVDs.
Sorry, but this was not a trouble customer. The store’s policy is idiotic. He was complaining because the store’s policy was ridiculous.
Every other major store in the country, if you go back within the time you are allowed to return an item, will do a price adjustment for the new sale price. I have never heard of a store not doing it for the exact reason that if you can return something then you can do it then buy it back on sale. It’s just easier for everyone if they adjust the price, it’s less restocking for them.
You’re not a pain in the ass customer nor are you scamming. If their policy says you can return something within a certain time, then you can. They cannot control what you buy with your returned money.
This is really simple. Ir isn’t even crazy, though it’s pretty stupid. They are viewing this as one complicated transaction, and their accounting/cash register software can’t process it.
The can’t push the right buttons to make it happen. The cashier who would give you credit for the return is probably not the same person who would re-enter the items into inventory to prepare them for resale.
Chill. I used to work for a large chain bookstore and would authorize this kind of thing all the time. And I don’t really care for most people so it wasn’t like I was going out of the way to do anyone any favors.
To keep things kosher, I would have the customer bring back the merchandise and the receipt. I realize some stores will do this sort of thing based on just the receipt but it becomes an LP issue if the item is paid for in cash…someone could easily pick up the receipt someone tossed out on the way out of the store and demand the cash difference. Still, you want to read the the latest piece of crap from Nora Roberts but it isn’t hitting the best seller list until next week. and so isn’t discounted right this very minute? No problem, bring it back in a few days and I’ll refund you the difference, now go away. This was just SOP where I worked.
So yeah, they could be tools or it could an LP issue I haven’t heard of. DVDs are always problematic in this regard but especially so when sales are ongoing. Either way, it looks like you’re out of luck so I’d try and move on with your life.
This is in the B&N operations manual right next to “No returns on books taken into bathroom”.
Some retail stores are willing to do the sale adjustment at the register and some are not. I would imagine it’s a fairly common request so it’s surprising that they could not do this. If a GPS I bought drops $ 10.00 on sale from one week to the next I’m absolutely going to be at the Best Buy counter getting my credit.
Criticizing you as petty for wanting to save $ 10 is absurd. Retail is a war. If they want to put on sales to drive business and I can save 10.00 by taking the better sale I'm doing it. It's my money. I'm not looking to B&N to pay my mortgage, and their expectation that I should not be looking for a perfectly acceptable sales credit is bullshit. 10 is more than enough to make an exchange worthwhile.
In the future when you meet obdurate stupidity like this just buy the new then return the old in separate transactions. Calling in three levels of managers to review this was unnecessary.
…is this another one of those bizarre American-centric things? Let me get something straight: you bought something on special, found out that it would be cheaper next week, bought it anyway, then went back the week after to get a bigger discount?
I didn’t buy it twice if that’s what you’re asking.
I bought the product.
I was then told that product was going on sale next week.
The store policy is that you can return any unopened product with a receipt for any reason within thirty days.
If the clerk had told me about the upcoming sale before I bought the DVD’s I wouldn’t have bought them. I would have waited until the sale started and bought them then.
I considered returning them all right then. As I said, the store’s policy allows you to return them and get your money back - this is not something I made up. But I decided to wait a week. Maybe the clerk was wrong about the upcoming sale. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to get to the store next week.
Nor did I somehow secretly trick the store into having a sale. They decided to have a sale on their own and decided when to schedule it without my input.
So I’m not trying to “scam” anyone. I’m just trying to use the store’s own policies to pay a lower price.
I don’t see how there’s anything bizarrely American-centric about deciding I’d rather pay eighty dollars for a product rather than ninety-five dollars. Do people in other countries intentionally pay more for what they buy? Why is that? Are they worried that the store won’t be their friend?
Read the back of your receipt. It’s fourteen days. Has been for about a year now. Of course, the general return policy is irrelevant to your purchase. Read up on the terms and conditions of the in-store Buy 2 Get 1 Free DVD/Blu-Ray promotion. During said promotion, and for 14 days following it, there are NO REFUNDS on DVDs purchased as part of the promotion. This has been the case for the last four or five years that the sale has taken place, and the signage states this. Not clearly, but you’re an American consumer and the concept of fine print is surely not new to you.
If a manager agreed to give you a refund on your DVDs, they were making an exception for you. This would have been clearly communicated to you during the refund procedure, but for some reason you don’t mention it in the thread. If your dilemma really involved “three levels of managers” there is simply no way the “no refunds” aspect of the Buy 2 Get 1 Free promo would not have been (gently) pointed out to you.
I’m also curious as to how you managed to work your way through three levels of managers when there are only two levels of management in a B&N retail store, assistant managers and the store manager. If for some reason there was a district manager present who was involved with your customer service issue, they would have caved instantly to all your demands and apologized profusely to you, because they have that kind of power.
I’m skeptical. I think you’re not telling the whole story.