Maybe the problem is that I didn’t lie. They may have been assuming, like some people here apparently do, that every transaction involves deceit. So when I walked in and told them openly what I was doing, they couldn’t accept it. If you follow the premise that everyone is trying a scam then your reaction to somebody who’s telling the truth will be think they must have a really good scam - one so subtle you can’t figure out where the trick is.
So maybe I should have made up some lie. Then they could have spotted the lie and figured out, “What he’s really trying to do is return these movies so he can buy them back them back at the sale price.” Then having satisfied their sense of how the world works, they would have gone ahead and done it. After which they could have hung around the break room saying “Why do customers act like that? Why don’t they just tell us the truth? It’s like they feel they have to make us work to figure out what they really want.”
[QUOTE=Little Nemo;12694339…
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.”[/QUOTE]
This is what should happen.
Granted, it’s a small, futile gesture, but you should NOT let them profit from this behaviour. Even if it ends up costing you a bit more in the end.
You should return the DVDs, and make sure the manager knows exactly why they lost the sale. (And bonus points if you can tell him you’re spending your money with their nemesis Amazon instead.)
Maybe. But I’d rather avoid this outcome if possible. I’d prefer that all of us learned to act rationally rather than demonstrating that I can act more irrationally than they can.
Speaking from experience, a sizable number of transactions involving returns or exchanges DO involve deceit. But I don’t recommend lying. First, because it’s generally not necessary. Managers will usually give you what you want whether you are lying, telling the truth, or so batshit crazy that you can’t tell the difference. It’s not your story that they are basing their managerial decision on, it’s what you are asking them to do and whether or not they are allowed to do it. Your lies are unlikely to help you, and they may hurt you.
And we can tell when people are lying. Not because we’re all gifted mentalists, but because A. most people are not very good liars B. everybody tells the same lies to us, making them even easier to spot and C. we have a lot of data at our disposal that the customer doesn’t to verify the details of their story.
That said, I don’t know why they refused your request. My managers would have done it, and I would have supported their decision. It’s a reasonable request, one that we see frequently, and you had your receipt. Again, I suspect there is some aspect of the story you left out. I’m not accusing you of lying, merely omitting a detail that would be significant to the employees and not to you. But I honestly can’t think of anything.
I’d offer to call up the store and ask them what happened, but they probably wouldn’t tell me and I’d almost certainly get in trouble if things went bad. Even posting here about this is enough to get me fired, to be honest. My advice is for you to go back to the store, ask to speak with the store manager, and be honest about what you want. If you are polite yet firm, they’ll probably help you. If they still refuse, well… 33% off Criterion DVDs is still a pretty good deal. It’s not worth stressing out over it.
Here’s my take on it and the only possible valid explanation I can think of.
B&N gets a bunch of criterion dvds to sell. Dozens of titles.
At first they sell them at full price. The popular and high demand ones sell first at full price. Once those are gone B&N now has some “second tier” (for lack of a better term) criterion titles that aren’t moving. To move these they run a buy-two-get-one sale on them. They sell a bunch of them and what’s left over are the “third tier” titles that nobody really wants. In a last ditch effort to move these they run a 50% off sale on them.
So now they have someone who bought some “second tier” titles during the previous sale wanting to get the new sale price of what the hard-to-move titles are going for.
Now the only way I can think if this was really what happened is if these titles were unavailable when you returned to the store. You’d have to supply that info.
It’d be similar to a farmer selling apples on day one for $1 an apple. People come and buy the nicest most perfect select ones first. On day two he has to drop the price to 50 cents since they’ve been pretty well picked over. By day three the price goes down to 25 cents cause all that’s left are the bruised ones nobody wants and he has to price them to move. A customer returns who bought yesterdays apples and wants to rebuy them for 25 cents a pop.
I don’t think we have B&N in Canada (at least I’ve never been in one) and I’m sort of glad because if this is their policy, it’s absurd.
Probably every store I shop at does a price difference refund within the return period. If a store has no return period (i.e. some small clothing shops will only allow exchanges) then not so much.
I can’t really imagine a CSR arguing the point, actually. Totally nuts!
And, uh, yah, EP, you’re a gem. Don’t you go changing.
There’s another option. Their DVD dealer for these movies is selling them to B&N at a discounted price of 1/3rd off (or whatever it works out to so they can sell them for 1/3rd off). These movies are B2G1. Later, said dealer sells more movies to B&N for half off and they run the new sale. So you wanting to get the refund is costing them money if they wind up selling them below cost. However, with the small amount of people that will ask for a refund compared to how many they sell, I’d be surprised if they would have a problem with it.
There could also be a similar issue if their dealer works on a consignment basis and their inventory system can’t handle it easily. Again, I would assume the manager would have a way of making it happen.
At my store, from time to time (once a month or so) we’ll have a pallet of bananas ripen waaay to fast so we’ll sell them very cheap (10 pound bag for $1) just to get rid of them. We constantly have people asking if we have any over ripe bananas that they can buy at that price. I’ll always remember the person who asked that question and upon hearing that we didn’t have any asked us, in all seriousness, if we could put 10 pounds in a bag for him and then he could come back in a few days when they’re over ripe and buy them for $1. Ummm, no.
No, I don’t think it was anything unusual about the supply of DVD’s. It’s not like it’s a local sale - every Barnes and Noble in the country is having the same sales, including their online site.
I think it’s just part of their regular cycle of sales. They’ve had other buy 2, get 1 free sales and other half-off Criterion sales. I think it’s just something they do to move stock. And obviously it works - when they have these good sales I buy items I’ve been looking over. If it wasn’t for the sale, I’d have held off. And I’m sure this is true for lots of other people.
I may be wrong on this (hazel-rah could probably help on this one) but as I recall Barnes and Noble owns their distributor. A few years back they bought the world’s biggest book distributor, a formerly independent company that sold books, movies, and other products to bookstores like Barnes and Noble, Borders, and other bookstores. So when Barnes and Noble buys movies from its distributor, it’s buying them from itself (or at least it’s buying them from another division of the same corporation).
If it was my decision I wouldn’t have done the transaction for you.
You were happy with the price at purchase, you were happy with the product, you don’t get to return it just because we are selling later at a lower price.
Naturally, if we have a “no questions asked” return policy, I will return the things, and refund your money. You will then be welcome to repurchase them AFTER I put them back on the shelf to give other people “fair chance” to take advantage of the sale.
B&N uses multiple distributors, some of whom they own, some of whom they do not. DVDs come from both kinds of distributors. As for the speculation about pricing agreements with distributors having some bearing on the actions of managers regarding sale returns… no. If such agreements exist, management at the store level is unaware of them and thus it is not a factor in their decisions. We get the terms of the promotion, not the reasoning behind the terms.
Little Nemo is, broadly speaking, correct. These sales happen during periods when sales are traditionally low. Their purpose is not to clear stock, it’s just to generate sales at a time when sales are low.
I don’t fully understand the pile on here of El Presidente. Particularly that last post regarding masturbating, but I guess thats the pit.
But also I don’t understand that if you accept one sales deal which is a ‘special’ that is, the buy two get one free, can you then take advantage of another special, that is, the reduced price?
And if after that the unsold items in the sale end up in the 99 cent bin can you continue to nickel and dime them to that level. Note I am not commenting on whether its ‘ardent budgeting’ or penny pinching.
If you work in customer service and don’t understand why this customer is right, the store is wrong and was stupid to boot, then you must suck at your job. I worked retail for over 20 years. They were crazy and the customer was right. There was no scam.
How about a time limit on return policies and our any possible price matching policy which is pretty dam common. You sure you work in customer service because I’m thinking you’re making that up to jump n here and dump on someone
They were crazy, and stupid, and doing a bad job in terms of customer service and good will. You are correct. I have over 20 years experience in retail with some major retailers and this would be a bad call on thier part by any standard.
Couple of things
Some companies don’t have a price matching policy and some do and they very in details, but they need to understand that thier return policy becomes a default price matching poicy within the store as in the exact example you are giving.
The clerk made a mistake{even though well intentioned} by telling you about the sale. Stores want to make the most profit they can reasonably make today. In general you don’t avoid a sale for more money today by telling a customer it’s on sale next week when you’ll make less profit. If they find out you honor your store return policies with a smile, you thank them for thier patronage and you allow them to save a couple of bucks.
I can’t believe anyone with any retail sense or in upper management would encourage alienating a customer over a couple of bucks when they are making a perfectly reasonable request. I can’t imagine they have some official policy about not allowing customers to buy the the same item they just returned for less. Maybe they do, I’ve seen some stupid policies over the years.
I doubt it. Every POP software system I’ve ever used has a simple way to handle this type of transacction. even if you have to do two easy transactions . one a return and one a sale, it’s simple.
where are you from? Do they have return policies or price mtching? No doubt the American consumer is spolied rotten but the OP dod nothing wrong by taking advantage of a sale.
