Or any other store, for that matter. I’ll second the reccomendation to sell it on craigslist or ebay.
If you were my college roommate you’d be busy getting your hands on some shrink-wrap and a hair dryer.
Seriously, though, how did calling corporate work out?
I’m thirding the Craigslist idea if begging corporate doesn’t pan out.
Try calling the software publisher.
I remember EA used to offer a satisfaction guarantee on any of their products… just mail it in with proof of purchase and they’d give you a refund.
You should at least get the replacment guitar even if you are going to sell it. No need passing on bad merchandise.
I don’t see the problem. The policy is posted at the service desk for all the different kinds of returns, and probably in electronics too. I know your girlfriend bought it, but you can’t tell me you’ve NEVER shopped at Wal-Mart, ever.
It’s a legality issue (at least according to WM). They can’t return it because you might have gone home and made a copy of the disc and are trying to bring it back.
From what I understood of his experience, he couldn’t get the guitar exchaged because the package he had was no longer available in the electronics department. (Different guitar styles for different versions of GH.) Frankly, sounds like they were prepared to do the standard exchange-not-refund thing; since they didn’t have another copy to exchange, though, IMHO they should have gotten a manager to authorize a refund. (Lord knows, at my store we’ve had store managers authorize returns of glucometers, against the law and register restrictions… so they should be able to authorize that.)
Anyway; my supply o’ suggestions is kind of exhausted by this point-- the combination of hardware and software makes for a peculiar grey area in retail return policies. Most retail stores offer only exchanges for software, but offer exchanges for peripherals. When the two are combined in one package, though, what takes precedence? Me, I’d acknowledge the grey area and give the refund, but who knows what that particular location may prefer?
I wouldn’t be mad at the customer service desk associate, though-- if they’re not a manager, they risk a chewing-out by any number of people for giving a return on something that turns out to not be returnable to the distribution center (from the store manager, from assistant managers, from CSMs, from angry electronics department managers, from claims associates). A customer might chew them out, too, but the customer can’t write them up, while the store can.
Calling corporate is easy-- start with 1-800-WAL-MART. The fact that the store couldn’t do an even exchange could be in your favor, bring it up if the phone rep brings up the “software is exchange-only” rule.
As I said earlier, check your state’s consumer protection laws. Generally speaking, if you purchase an item that proves to be defective (and you can only open it to find out), you should be entitled to a refund, regardless of whether they stock the item or not any longer, and regardless of their own return policy.
I’ve seen anecdotes online indicating that the corporate # will occasionally authorize returns that would just seem silly to the average consumer or store staff.
It might be like Amazon, though: if you’re a good customer they’ll pretty much give away their merchandise to you a couple of times to keep you shopping there.
I thought it was worth a shot taking it to a different walmart on my route this morning.
They accepted the return for store credit and i’m content with that.
But, I got to thinking, would wal mart honor a gift card to pay for a money order?
(for the record, i don’t plan on it, but it would be rather humorous for someone to pull something like that.)
Apparently, not.
To echo Mr. Slant, no. It’s not even one of those things that you can bitch enough about or go to other stores to get around.
For gift cards, 99.8% of places want cash.
If they really, really trust you, perhaps 00.1% of places might let you pay with a check.
The other 00.1% of places will let you pay with a credit card. At those places, the staff are other trained improperly or violating their training.
If you were in the position of selling people cash and then giving a 2% [1] discount on that transaction, you’d understand why letting someone buy a gift card with a credit card is a bad idea.
[1] 2% is the approximate fee cost of a decent-sized credit card transaction. VISA and MC are ever so slightly lower, AMEX and Discover are slightly higher. % fee cost notably higher on very small transactions.
That’s nice. :rolleyes:
Now you’ve just created a problem for someone else. More than likely, your water-logged Nintendo will get put back in stock (I’ve worked retail; I know how things work), and then when another customer buys it, they’ll have to return it as well.
Two things here. One I didn’t do it myself. Really. Two, she told them that is was defective. So I doubt that they put it back on the shelf.
I actually bought a used DS Lite for myself from Game Stop so that we could all link to each other. It broke thru normal usage after 21 days and I returned it as well. Nintendo still made record profits last year, so I’m not feeling overly concerned about what my GF did. She just took advantage of a system that was set up to allow for this sort of stuff.
I’ve worked in several retail outlets and we sold gift cards to people paying with plastic and with checks. A credit card will be declined if it’s overdrawn. You can check the signature to avoid fraud. Check are somehow authorized through a system I never understood. When the weather was bad, we would lose our connection to it and not be able to accept checks.
Telling people that they can’t use plastic makes them unhappy and shop elsewhere. That’s to be avoided. Also, a large percentage of gift card/certificates are never redeemed. It’s the hope of corporate that you will take that gift card and loose it or forget about it. I’m sure the amount that are redeemed more than covers the 2% lost in service charges.
Also, to honor your vendor agreement with the credit card companies, you have to treat them like cash, in all transactions.
I have nothing to ad to the OP, other than I hated doing returns as a sales clerk and also hate returning things. It never goes as planned.
You know, I think I just confused pre-paid debit cards with store credit. My bad.
There’s an exception to the credit card vendor agreement wherein you don’t have to accept them for the sale of cash or cash equivalents.