This is precisely why I try to be very friendly and playful with retail workers, I know so many people treat them like something smelly they just stepped in. Maria who is on the safeway checkout every monday now beams at me when I walk in knowing we will have a laugh when on my way out. It doesn’t take much to brighten someone’s day and it makes shopping fun. It also generally means discounts are offered on big ticket items without me asking for them 
Oh, that behavior predates teh Intrawebs. When I started in retail sales*, the policy** was that if the customer kicked up enough fuss, the manager would try to placate him/her. This trained the customer to be belligerent and unreasonable. The customer would tell his/her friends, and the behavior spread. Customers who were nice and polite would accept a refusal of a refund, whereas assholes would get their used goods refunded, for example. Clearly, it doesn’t pay for a customer to be nice under this policy. Retailers, or at least retail management, has only itself to blame for this.
I’m not saying that retailers shouldn’t give refunds, or make adjustments, or try to please customers. I just think that assholes shouldn’t be rewarded for being assholes.
*About 32 years ago.
**The policy was in several different stores and cinemas, not just one.
Oh, the doof in the suit knows that - give him some credit for being able to do simple logic (that much was required for the MBA - even from correspondence school). The doof in the suit is yelling at Virgin to increase their allocation. Virgin is yelling at its Chinese supplier to get more units out. And the Chinese supplier is constrained because a transistor factory in Mexico burned down and Motorola will spend .000004 cents more for the part and therefore are not constrained in their supply chain.
What the doof in the suit can be blamed for is advertising product that is constrained. However, the doof in the suit believes this creates the magical “traffic” which will have customers come into the store, and while they may not leave with what they came in for (and some of them will take that out on you) a good percentage of them leave with something.
In addition to what the others said, many sales are planned long in advance, in hopes of product arriving to fill shelves timed to the sale. Any glitch in production or transportation, and the product isn’t on the shelf when the sale has been advertised.
The logical question then would be, “Why not stock the item before the sale is planned?” Inventory is expensive and shelf space is limited. Most managers (not the store managers, but the ones higher up) want the stuff out the sales door as soon as it arrives. It’s especially bad when its late, as now the store will have excess unsold inventory that they’ll have to plan another sale to unload.
DrDeth, while the sales manager did screw the pooch, and Cazzle admitted that, the rant was that given the no-longer virginal pooch, the customer preferred to bitch, moan, shout, and lie rather than let the store try to make it right. Just because the sales manager fucked up doesn’t mean the customer has the right to stop treating Cazzle et al as adult human beings. Same with #1.
Not only is it illegal to advertise a product and then not supply it, but we wouldn’t achieve anything by this - our store will order the product in and honour the sale price even if it doesn’t arrive until after the sale ends. It was simply a very popular item, and as a small country branch of a large chain, we’re often supplied less stock than our larger city counterparts.
While you’re right, it wasn’t possible to “make it right”. The only outcome the customer would accept was to walk away with her printer that night, and we had no stock to give her. I normally wouldn’t have argued about “he said/she said”, but the immediate accusation that we were hiding stock to avoid price-matching was so unexpected and ludicrous and I was anxious to assure her that this wasn’t the case. My mistake - she didn’t want to hear it. I believe her rejection of Head Office’s offer shows she wasn’t looking for a resolution, she just wants to believe she’s being persecuted and was looking for a fight.
I don’t think I explained this adequately. The customer is able to return his purchase to any of our stores - if he’s due a refund, he’ll get a refund, otherwise any of our locations can and will arrange repairs, etc. The issue we couldn’t deal with was what he was saying the salesman had told him regarding the extended warranty. He claimed he was told that if anything went wrong with the computer it would be replaced outright and that he was covered from day one. The extended warranty period doesn’t actually start until the manufacturer’s 12 month warranty runs out, and doesn’t automatically qualify the customer for a brand new laptop though the “No Lemon” clause means he’d get one if it had to be repaired three times.
While we appreciate that the salesperson may have bungled the pitch or deliberately lied, that’s not really something we can deal with because the person is at another store. We can take the details and pass it along to his manager and that manager can try to get to the bottom of it, but since the salesman doesn’t work in our store, we can’t just speak to him and ask what happened. If the original sale had occurred in our store, the duty manager would have been tracking down the person who sold the unit to find out what they recall telling the customer initially and to make sure they aren’t in need of additional training with regard to the warranty policy so they don’t mislead another customer in future. I don’t think this is unreasonable - if a customer complained about me at another store, I’d expect my manager to be contacted and to decide how to address the issue with me. If another store manager called up and raked me over the coals for something a customer said I’d done, I would be very upset because how could s/he know what I’m like or how I usually deal with people or whether or not the scenario described is far-fetched or likely? The bottom line is that we’re not just going to hand over a brand new laptop because you say a salesman at another store 100 miles away told you the extended warranty entitled you to one.
My take on this is that #1 overreacted, but was likely misled by the salesman in the first place, #2 was a total dick, and #3 overreacted, but the miscommunication could have been avoided by the sales manager.
I don’t know your shop, but I have heard utter lies from electronics salesmen many times that the warranty “covers everything” and that you just “get a replacement immediately.” They make the sale and pocket the commission, and when it comes time to make good on the warranty, they’re long gone and some other poor sucker bears the brunt of the customer’s rage. Yeah, the customer should read the fine print before buying something, but that doesn’t excuse outright lies on the part of the salesman.
In the case of #3, the sales manager on the phone should have answered “Will you price match this widget?” with “Let me check to see if we have widget in stock.” Technically, explaining the price matching policy in general terms includes the same information, but it’s really easy to anticipate confusion in that case. If someone asks about the price matching policy, explain it. If someone calls about a specific item, what they’re really asking is “Can I buy this from you for this price right now?”
None of that excuses the customers being jerks to you, but I can see why they feel mistreated.
Distinctly possible. Our branch is quite strict with us about being honest regarding what the warranty covers, and how it works, and I’d trust any of the people in our store to sell a warranty with full disclosure of how what it entitles you to. Other stores? I simply don’t know. This item was purchased from one of the largest stores in the state and I imagine they simply don’t have the kind of one-on-one contact that our store does between workers and management. It’s quite possible that they routinely lie to customers to sell more warranties, and it wouldn’t have the same detrimental effect on their business as it would on ours because they aren’t in a small town where word-of-mouth can kill a store or make it. We do not get commissions on sales or extended warranties so there’s no financial incentive to lie, but we do get judged on how many warranties we sell and it’s possible some salespeople in the city stores lie to get their figures up.
In the case of number 3, if I’d taken the call I’d have said “Yes, we do price-match but can I pop you on hold for a moment while I check to see if we have any left in stock?”. The sales manager did let the customer down by not doing that. She’s not usually one to drop the ball like that, and it’s unfortunate that her mistake inconvenienced a customer. We all agreed when the customer left that in normal circumstances we’d have felt sorry for her - but it’s hard to work up compassion for someone who’s screaming at you for conspiring to do them out of a $50 discount and won’t even let you speak to try to resolve their complaint.
Sure it was. See, you dudes got off into an argument, which is where it never should have gone. The argument was due to the Sales Manager not accepting blame- the SM’s 1st response shoudl have been “You are right, I should have checked whether or not it was in stock, and I failed to do so. My error. Now, what can we do to make it right?”
Instead, the SM got into a stupid fucking argument with the customer over “he said, she said” as the SM didn’t want to accept blame. That caused the customer to get irate, at which time nothing will please the customer, and the customer quite rightly looks upon whatever you say with suspicion.
The sales manager fucked up, and should have admitted that right off the bat.
Sorry about #1, yeah, you didn’t explain that very well. Well, I dunno.
The customer wouldn’t accept this. They insisted “You DID check, you DID say you have it in stock, we have 12 witnesses who were listening into the conversation on speaker phone. You’ve hidden the stock because you don’t want to honour the price-matching policy. We want our printer and we want it now”. This is what I was trying to tell them - I didn’t dispute that they asked the question (I only overheard one side of the conversation so I don’t know for sure what they asked, and I try not to get into pissing matches with customers as a general rule of thumb), I just tried to explain that the sales manager never actually checked - so even if she did say “Yes, we have them in stock”, she hadn’t actually checked to see if that was the case. They shouted me down every time I tried to say this, and insisted that she did. I know for a fact that she didn’t - even if I hadn’t overheard every word she said, I know she was nowhere near the only computer on the floor that she could check stock on. It was physically impossible for her to have checked the stock levels during that conversation. The customer refused to believe that we didn’t have stock, insisted she’d checked while she was on the phone to them and the only outcome they would accept was to leave with a printer that we didn’t have in stock. After they spoke to Head Office and were offered their chosen printer at the discounted price, they refused to accept that too. What more can you do? They’re determined that we’re conspiring against them to wiggle out of price-matching our competitor and they want to drag the Consumer Affairs watchdog into the mess. I dare say the orders we’d taken earlier in the day from other customers for that self-same printer will go a long way to testifying that we didn’t actually have any left long before she set foot in the store.
The answer at this point is, “Obviously we have made a horrific error and given you very poor service because of it, we completely understand it if you never wish to visit our store again.” “Now I need to help other customers, have a nice day.”
If they don’t head for the door, tell them to leave, if they do not, call the local law enforcement. This may seem harsh but this customer does not want satisfaction, they want a paranoid delusion justified. YMMV being in australia but here a civil matter involving a failure to honor a percieved deal from a phone call would not be enforced by the police who would be far more inclined to cite the customer for public disturbance/trespass type charges than the store for poor service which is unfortunately not against the law.
I came in here just to post this very same thing. This issue is not with the internet, it’s with the corporate mentality, which is basically “If they yell loud enough, give them whatever they want because we cannot afford to lose them as a customer.”
This mentality is bullshit, and constantly marginalizes the value of employees by forcing them to put up with being screamed at and berated for things they are not responsible for, and then ultimately caving. This gives the asshole customer a smug sense of satisfaction, and that customer will from then on never fail to remind you of the day that He Won The Argument.
It really sickens me, to the point where I’ve stopped trying to do anything to keep asshole customers. Frankly I see a greater value in keeping your employees happy and productive at the expense of losing 5-10 complete douchebag customers that always cause problems every single time they come in. I feel that I’m in the minority here.
I have started doing my part by rewarding patient, helpful customers instead of rewarding the ones that come screaming at me about some random shit.
I’ve activated several gift cards for between $5-$15 to hand out to people who have been exceptionally patient while waiting for me to resolve some problem for them, or who were just understanding when somebody pushed their way to the front because they were “in a big hurry”.
I’m hoping somehow this will reverse the intense damage that the corporate mentality has done to people who were once normal and decent, but I can’t help but feel like I’m going against Goliath here.
See, this is why I like working in Canada, where there simply is no tradition of customer service and people are naturally polite. Your customers don’t expect much, and they’re happy to get it – or happy to let you fix any mistakes you make without a fuss. In a cumulative four months or so at a Tim Hortons, I’ve not had much (other than women who ignore you when you say “The bathroom is closed for cleaning”, and you have to retreat to the men’s room, paper towel and Vim in hand, muttering about how dumb some people are.) There’s been one guy who has (I’m pretty sure) scammed us when I’m working sandwich board – he likes to claim that he ordered things that don’t appear on our computer, knowing perfectly well that we don’t have the time during a rush to go to the cashier to work it out. But really, that’s not a problem for me, per se – I put him in the queue somewhere sensible and our owner loses the cost of the produce, which is standard procedure. I really hope that it’s been our mistake, not his dishonesty, but of course I have no way to know.
You seem to me to describe a perfect just-barely-legal-bait-and-switch, while stating that it’s not a bait-and-switch.
Threatening a lawsuit, A Current Affair and screaming because you can’t get the exact television you want IMMEDIATELY.
Yuhuh.
As to customer #2:
What happened to him has happened to me every fucking time I ever go into a fucking Best Buy or Circuit City to ever fucking purchase ANYTHING.
Lap top, Garmin, computer monitor. I shop around, see advertised prices, see website prices. Go into the store, and they’re out of it.
The entire company is set up as one giant bati and switch operation.
I can only order that kind of shit online anymore, because next time I might just fucking strangle the next Cazzle and pin a note to his chest with a fucking dagger just so the suits at Corporate get the fucking message.
I hate where those stores are located. I hate their parking lots. I hate being inside them. I hate my fellow customers. I hate the employees. And I only ever go in there out of “necessity”. When they don’t have what they’re advertising, I pretty much flip out. . .at least internally.
As inevitably as the sunrise, DrDeth comes along to let retail workers know the error of their ways.
Been there, done that. I’ve been threatened with physical violence, verbally abused; I even had to have my hard drive wiped due to a virus sent by an irate end user.
My favorite was a guy that purchased some of our products from one of our Dealers. Since we build to order, not to inventory, there’s a lag between ordering the product and receiving it. The customer felt that since he’d already paid up, the Dealer should magically whip his order out right then.
When the Dealer informed him that their magical powers were weak, the customer decided to take it upon himself to round up a Deputy Sheriff, and attempted to drive to our facility with said deputy to have me arrested.
Hear, hear! And Lynn Bodoni, too.
It’s a fact that some customers just cost more money than they make for you, and you are better off just cutting them out.
For example: I work for a distributor that sells to retail stores. We have a few fickle customers who order things and then send them back to us, as if we were a lending library of goods. My employer pays me to enter the order. They pay the warehouse pickers and shippers to pack & ship it. They pay a trucking company to bring it up from the US. They pay customs fees (tens of thousands of dollars PER DAY, btw) to bring it into Canada. They pay OUR shippers to break the pallets and sort the cartons, then we pay an outside carrier to deliver the merchandise. If the customer decides after a few days that the merch was for borrowing and not for keeping, we pay a carrier to pick it up and bring it back, where the warehouse workers are paid to verify it and make sure it is fit to be resold. All on a transaction that ends up being worth $0.00 to us after the offset.
Do this often enough, and we should ask you to either find a supplier who is more to your liking. But do we? Nope.
(what you lookin’ at?)
Do you really support the sale manager’s failure to check if they had any of that printer in stock? If the SM had checked, and found the answer was “no” the customer wouldn’t even have shown up, now would they?