TLDR: I was prepared to pay $XXX up front for a four-week spa treatment. “Oh, no. You pay as you go.” Okay, but how do they know I won’t rip them off?
There’s a spa I go to sometimes, and recently I had a facial and liked the results so much I booked a four-week treatment. Of course, if you get the treatment, the full amount is enough less that the fourth session is free. The week before the first session, I was thinking, “That’s quite a lot of money at one go; they probably want it up front,” so I made sure to have that amount available. The exact words were, Me: “I’m prepared to pay up front.” Receptionist: “You can’t do that.” So I gave them the first of four payments of $XX instead of the full amount of $XXX.
And yes, it was kind of a relief. But I’m wondering, how do they know I’m good for it? Someone’s got to have pulled that sometime, booking a four-week treatment at the reduced rate and only showing up for the first session. Can’t do it more than once at the same place, but scammers tend to stay on the move. OTOH, this is a spa. And the ladies and gentlemen who work there are ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Rilch and I are more guarded where money is concerned; not aggressive, but we’re used to “Hey, I hate to ask this but you know how it is…” Whereas the spa staff probably want to avoid anything that sounds like “We don’t trust you.” And I think I answered my own question, but what do y’all think?
I tend to view businesses that demand cash up front as sketchy. And in my experience, I’ve been right more often than not.
I went to a new dentist once. They wanted cash up front. I walked right out of that office when they said that.
And sure enough, on their Yelp reviews, there’s person after person complaining how they were ripped off. And the dentist didn’t know what the hell he was doing.
A simpler approach was taken by the Spa Bandit, who would receive one expensive spa treatment and then flee without paying. He did this numerous times at different spas. But crime doesn’t pay (he was caught).
I think you did. There are certain types of business and levels of service where there is a calculation that being trusting towards your customers gets you more in the long run even if you factor in the times that you get ripped off.
Wal-Mart is a perfect example. Many unscrupulous people will buy an item at Wal-Mart for their planned one time use, clean it up, and return it. Wal-Mart knows this. But the increased business that they get from people who buy stuff there because they know that if they don’t like it, it will be a hassle-free return process more than makes up for the bad apples.
Many common business practices fail against someone who intends to defraud, but they’re still worth doing because the percentage of not-honest people is small enough that it doesn’t matter. They might change their policies if they started having a lot of people “book” an extended treatment for the discount without intending to use all of them. Or… they might not. There aren’t really per-customer economies of scale for spa treatments, so if they can make money on a 4-week treatment for $x, then they can also make money on a 1-week treatment for $x/4.
I expect that there are accounting complications to receiving payment in advance for services not yet rendered.
I don’t see the problem here. Suppose you show up for only the first treatment, and you paid the $XX that they asked. You got one week’s worth of spa, and you paid what they wanted. I don’t get it.
Is the problem that they offered a discount for four weeks up front and then refused to honor that offer? Or did you merely imagine that they would give you a discount, and then they told you that their policy is “a la carte” only?
I think the point is that they gave her the discounted price up front. Like, let’s say the service is normally $30, but you get five for $100. She expected to pay the $100 up front. Instead, they charged her $20.
Another thought is that processing returns is a PITA. If someone pays the $100 and then can’t complete all 5 visits, you’ve got to process the refund. Suddenly you have to have a discussion about “good enough” reason to cancel. There are transaction costs to refunds, in terms of time. You also have to keep track of how many visits they’ve come for and how many they paid for. As long as the lower price is still profitable, I can see not wanting to bother. Even if they get scammed, they still made money. Just not quite as much.