Macy’s has one that’s just the opposite, and it annoyed me as a customer and really annoyed me as a sales associate on commission. It is the pre-sale.
The item is going on sale next week. You can buy it now, they will box/sack/package it, and then not give it to you–you have to come back next week, during the actual sale. Show your receipt, and they hand it over.
Gah, I hate that. I know I lost sales because of it.
I made up for some of them by telling the customer, “Or…you can buy it now, at the full price, and next week when it goes on sale come back and we’ll do a price adjustment.”
In theory, whoever did the price adjustment the next week would put in the original associate’s sales number, so you’d still get your commish. In practice, there were a couple of people in my department who only did that if somebody else was watching them.
I also have failed to buy things because of it. Last year I needed a comforter. The ones at Macy’s were going to be half-price the next week, and they offered it as a presale item. Problem: It was very cold and I needed the comforter immediately. So I went to Target, where I got approximately the same product for the approximate sale price, but I got to take it right home and sleep under it that night.
There’s probably also an inertia factor. Some people who haven’t completely decided whether or not they want to own an item might base their decison to buy on the logic, “Well, I’ll take it home and try it out. If I don’t like it I can return it.” If the return option wasn’t there, they might not make the purchase.
But once they’ve purchased the item, brought it home, and started using it, the inertia swings the other way. Now they’d have to make a conscious decision to return it. And many of them end up never getting around to returning the item.
Overall, the store may find that it gains more from these impulse purchases than it loses from actual returns.
Some grocery stores offer some extra discount if they make a mistake, or they used to. That’s the kind of thing she was asking about, but holy shit. It’s a computer not a can of tuna. You asked , you were politely told no. Then you think a threat of returning it will work. Bring it on you foolish woman.
Definitely not intentional. I thought I had answered the question which is why I didn’t understand why you asked it again. So apparently I’m misunderstanding the question. Let me try again.
As far as I know, there was no special refund policy over the sales item. I wasn’t aware of any at the time I purchased the items. When I returned the items, the fact that they had been bought during a sale that was over was mentioned during the conversation (I raised the issue myself). But there was no indication that this fact affected the refund.
Have I answered your question or am I still not seeing what it is you are asking?
I think so. Unless there was a specifc “no returns” policy concerning that 3 for the price of 2 sale then I stand by my first post. They were wrong and stupid and I’m mystified that any retailer would do that. Either somebody there wanted them , or they git some unreasonable attitude over the fact they had been on when you first bought them.
Sadly, I don’t think this is true anymore ( although I suspect it was in the past) I’ve heard too many people talk about getting that TV ,camera etc and returning it after the event ( and while those same people complain about restocking fees, they would also never pay full price for an open box). They’re not really impulse buyers who might keep the item- they have absolutely no intention of keeping it. It’s even moved into clothing- now, when I buy a dress the tags are deliberately placed in such a way that the dress cannot be worn with the tags still attached.
The rent for free ractice has been around for a long time. Stores tolerated it becaise it was a small percentage of customers. Over time , probably a couple of decades, it became so widespread that they knew it was really hurting them. You can look at specific products and see the spiike in returns coorelate to certain dates , or the retirns are abnormally high on a specifc product and word comes up from employees that it’s a rent for free deal.
Working in retail since the mid eighties I’ve seen shifts in customer practices. We even had charts on it in sales meetings
That would be nice but I think the reality of it would be adversely weighted in the other direction.
When you sell something with a profit margin of 20% and somebody returns it and now you have to discount it 20% because it is open, well now you’re bascially making -0- on the transaction.
Not to mention the people who would honestly use the “try-it-before-you-buy-it” method would again abuse it by trying 5 different models before settling on one.
I could share plenty of stories (as well as anyone who has worked retail) where customers cost stores a lot of money.
Customers have very little realisitic grasp of profit margin and the expenses of running an operation. Sure some items have a big mark up and by itself it looks like greed, but other items have very little profit and many items are eventually sold below cost. Those few that have a little or a lot of mark up have to make up all the exspense of operation and loss. It ain’t easy.
We sold LCD TV wall mounts for $29.99 which is ridiculously cheap if you’ve shopped for them. One older gent asked for a little discount and I politely said no. He was offended.
Is that *the store’s *policy, or were you off following your own? Because I have received price adjustments at many stores like Best Buy, Wal Mart, Target, Kohl’s, Penney’s, Menard’s, Home Depot and no doubt others. If it’s not their official “policy” to grant price adjustments you’d never know it because I’ve not been denied an adjustment, nor been given any grief about it at any of those places.
Did you miss the part where the OP stated the clerk TOLD him (Nemo, just assuming, my apologies if I assumed incorrectly) after the sale the DVD’s were going to be at an even better price the next week? Simply because you have a hard-on for people wanting to get the best value for their dollar, that doesn’t make it wrong.
Perhaps you are making so much money that you can afford to give it away, and congratulations if that’s the case, but keep in mind not everyone is so fortunate.
And if I can’t find it and don’t buy it, does that mean the store won?
That’s the part I don’t understand. Maybe I’m misunderstanding the retail trade but I thought the store wanted to sell its products. So when it had a customer who was holding DVD’s in his hand at a cash register and wanted to buy them, why were the store’s employees saying they couldn’t sell them to me?
It may be a fact that the store was going from some profit to zero profit by going from 33% off to 50% off but that’s beside the point. They should follow their own policies with a smile and a thank you because good customer service and good PR are worth something. Customers relate retail bad experiences more often than they do good ones. You may save the store a few bucks by drawing a hard line but you’ve probably cost them more in future sales.
In this case there was no policy to override. They decided to refuse to sell an item to a customer willing to buy it for reasons we don’t know.
OTOH it’s reasonable to have 1 day hold on returns to discourage this type of return if you really think it helps the bottem line, but none was reproted here and I don’t know of anybody who has a policy like that.
But how does a hold benefit the store? They could sell it to me today or put a one day hold on it and hope I come back tomorrow and buy it. (I’m asking you rhetorically. I realize you’re just mentioning this policy as a possibility not actually advocating it.)
I’ll admit (before others point it out) that selling it to me might appear to have its uncertainties - the store could say they sold it to me once and I returned it so selling it to me is not a sure thing. But I think the circumstances made it clear that was an unusual situation and was not going to happen again. So why would the store want to forego a certain sale today for a possible sale tomorrow?
Because like it or not, by doing this for you and others it encourages the behavior. It becomes one of the little loopholes customers exploit until it becomes a big loophole. Why bother selling DVDs at 30% off when all our customers that buy them bring them back when we run a 50% off sale to rebuy them? Solution, don’t honor the sale on previous purchases.
I doubt this scenario is going to present a rampant problem. More often than not, when someone buys a DVD they’re going to watch it within a few days. I suspect the crowd that is holding on to them, unopened, until the end of the return period, hoping for a payday via a better sale price, is a very small group.
I find this thread fascinating. I skipped the last page, but did anyone point out that if the OP was trying to scam BN, that giving a full refund benefits the scammer NOT BN?
A scammer would be doing something like swapping the disks for fakes or whatever, by allowing the price adjustment, BN would insulate themselves from a scam. In other words the disks stay bought. By insisting on a return only policy, they are giving away MORE MONEY.
That’s the key right there. If there was a “scam” involved then the doors should close on the return period. It baffles me. I see no method by which the OP could benefit more by being allowed to buy the DVDs. In fact, the correct policy should be adjustment only (no returns outright)!
So to those who are tossing around the word “scam,” I’d like to know the details of this scam and how it would work – specifically, how allowing the return but not allowing the sale prevents loss in some way.
Yes there was. And hazel-rah was right about it being fourteen days. Here’s the entire notice:
As I’ve stated none of these restrictions applied to me. The DVD’s I was returning were all unopened, I had the original receipt, I had not paid by check, and it was within fourteen days (and still is).
All DVDs purchased as part of the Buy 2 Get 1 Free promotion are nonrefundable. That won’t be printed on the back of the receipt, but it’s posted on signage in the department during the sale, and all the music employees are well aware of the policy. Exceptions are frequently made, however, as in your case. It’s important to note here that allowing refunds in cases like yours is not an unofficial policy, it’s an exception that we make for customers on a case-by-case basis. Some managers, such as mine, will almost always do it. Other managers I have known will never do it.
The refusal to let you repurchase the returned DVDs at 50% off makes absolutely no sense, and is not official B&N policy or something that I’ve ever heard of occurring before. It’s inexplicable, and in my experience, stupid. I talked it over with my manager yesterday, in fact, and he thought it was stupid too.
It’s probably worth mentioning that if you wait until after the 14-day period to try and do the return again, your chances of success will drop considerably.