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Unfair, they are on sale now.

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  • Unfair, they are on sale now.

    Unfortunately it's too late now

    Background: Some of our catalogs will have a deferred billing offer--place order of $X before date-"Y" and your card will not be billed until date-"Z"

    A customer calls up and states that she placed an order online and used the keycode from her magazine for the free shipping and pay later offer, but was charged for her order right away. I ask for the info to look up her account/order, thinking that either she just placed the order and is seeing an authorization charge when on her card's website or that the keycode she used had expired/was not the deferred billing keycode. I pull up the info, nope neither of those. The order had shipped, so she was actually charged. The keycode was a deferred billing offer and still had almost two weeks at the time the order was placed. BUT, the order had been placed in the first half of January and it is now well into March. Crapola, either the website had an issue and did not ask if she wanted to take advantage of the deferred billing offer or (more likely) she just saw a pop up and clicked "no" out of habit without noticing that it was asking if she wanted to defer her charge until May. In either case, she ordered $300+ worth of wedding supplies, and was charged for the items she received...she was just charged sooner than expected. I apologized and offered her a $30 merchandise certificate for the inconvenience (certs are generally not supposed to be over $20...but we can make an exception if the reason is good enough and we write a note on the account saying why). This was not acceptable to her. She wanted me to credit all the money back to her card and set it back up for her to be charged in May like the offer said. Ended up speaking with a supervisor who also tried explaining that we could not retroactive apply a keycode to an order placed two months ago, and the customer insisting that we should be able to do just that since she "noticed it right away and called us". Sup finally said she would contact our accounting department and if they could do anything, they would get a hold of the customer.

    It wasn't sold out when I put it in my cart

    Guy calls in, tells me that he is having a problem with one of the items he placed in his cart online, and gives me the item number. I look the item up and it was a "porpoise party set" that had eight plates, cups, invites, etc. for under two dollars because that set was being discontinued (the items being sold together as a set, not the items themselves) and the quantity in stock was 0. I told him I was sorry, but it looks like we are now completely sold out of the porpoise party set, it was selling real fast since it was at such a low price. He said it should still be available since he had it in his cart. I explained that putting an item in the cart does not put a hold on the item in our system, and added that it looked like most of the items in the set are in stock to purchase separately but that would be more than $1.69 (the set of 8 plates alone are $3). Cue SC mode, demanding to speak with a manager. Flagged over sup K, and told her she was going to have fun. From what I could gather from her end of the conversation, the guy had tried earlier (five minutes? five hours??) to place his order over the phone but the promo code he had was only for web orders and the phone agent told him he would need to place his order online. K ended up offering him a 25% discount on the merchandise to balance out him needing to buy the components of the set separately. The guy got the better end of that deal, because his order ended up being just under two hundred dollars.

    Unfair, they are now on sale

    A woman calls up the other day because back in January (what is it about orders in January?) she had ordered ten cross wall decors for her daughter's first communion coming up in May for $8.99 because she thought shipping took two months and the crosses are on our website right now for $5.99. She wants me to credit her back the difference because if she knew they were going to go on sale, she would have waited to order them. I told her that I would not be able to do anything like that...*maybe* if the price had dropped a day or so after she placed the order I could adjust it but not two months later. However, I told her, I could give her a $15 merchandise certificate to use towards a future order. She did not like that solution and wanted to speak to a manager. So, up goes my paddle and sup K is the one again to come over to me. I brief her and she agrees that the merch cert I offered was fair and gets on the phone. The woman argues with K for over five minutes, but K stands firm and tells the woman that she could either have us set up the $15 cert or she could call back the next day and speak with our customer relations department, who were gone for the day, and see if they would offer her something different. She decided to take the merchandise certificate. (Which in all likelihood would have been the same as what they would have offered if she did call back)

    Bonus story suckage-I wasn't gave a delivery date

    I get a caller who is all upset that when she went to track her stuff online, it was showing a delivery date that is after when she needs it by. I get her information and check to see what might have delayed the order. After verifying the account I look at the order and see that when she placed it online she entered it with the standard ground delivery option selected, and that it is actually showing that it will arrive two days sooner than what the estimated delivery date was when the order was placed. I advised her if the order arrives after the day she needs it to refuse the package and it would come straight back to us and her card would be refunded, and if she was not home to refuse it to give us a call and we would get a return set up for her. She asked if she would need to pay the shipping for a return. I informed her that yes, since the package is arriving on time for the date quoted on the shipping method she chose, she is responsible for the return shipping. She goes on a rant on how she wouldn't have placed an order that arrived after the date she needed it by and blah, blah, blah. (and yet people do that quite often since the majority of orders arrive much sooner that the EDD) I told I would put in a note that as a one time courtesy we would set up a free return label if she was unable to refuse the package, but that in the future she will need to make sure to select a delivery method that will get it to her by the time she needs it. You would have thought I had instead told her "tough shit, get over it". For the next five minutes she went on and on saying that our website did not give her an estimated delivery date when she placed the order, and that neither the confirmation email nor the order shipped email gave a delivery date, and that somebody on our end should try placing an order online and they would see that it does not show a delivery date, etc. I told her I had placed an order on the web and that on step three it has the shipping options with the standard as the default and the delivery dates right next to all of them and even after that there is a summary on the last page that shows all the info including the delivery date that you can go back and change before placing the order. She still swore up and down that the website/emails never gave her a delivery information.

  • #2
    Quoth Deevil View Post
    Unfair, they are now on sale
    I used to know a couple people who would not only try that, but they thought it was perfectly acceptable (I always vehemently disagreed with them). They would hold on to receipts for MONTHS, then try to get the price difference if they saw something go on sale. I'm not just talking about pricier items either (ipods, appliances, etc), but cheap ones (socks, t-shirts, canned goods). They would try to get discounts from $100 to $.10 long after any reasonable person would know that this sort of crap just doesn't fly.

    I don't talk to them any more...they just could never understand why it was so awful for them to do that...
    "That's too bad. Hospitals aren't fun to fight through."
    "What IS fun to fight through?"
    "Gardens. Electronics shops. Antique stores, but only if they're classy."

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    • #3
      It wasn't sold out when I put it in my cart
      I know of one website that advertises real-time inventory at the time you open the page. However they also point out on the main page that due to recent purchase surges the inventory numbers may probably will change, and suggested refreshing the page after a few minutes.

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      • #4
        I once had a customer demand that she be given a item at price she had bought it at month earlier. I told her that it was on special sale because of the holidays, and that unless there was a clear company error, which there wasn't. She started customer is always right crap. I transfered her and made it clear that she most likely won't get a $30 off the item. I think they offered free shipping on it.
        The angels have the phone box.

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        • #5
          Quoth Deevil View Post
          Unfair, they are now on sale
          Some business will give you some leeway on that. As in, you buy it now, it goes on sale a week later you can bring in your receipt to get the difference back. But anything longer than that, nope.

          At the wholesale club, we had someone wanting to put a hold on one of the TVs that was being advertised as having a big coupon deal for Black Friday Weekend. The store told that Sucktomer "Nope, we will not put holds on any Black Friday merchandise. You can buy it now for full price, or come back on Friday and buy it with the coupon then." "But what if you sell out of them before I get one?" "That's the risk you run. Your options are buy it now at full price, or wait till Friday and take your chances."

          I don't remember what that Sucktomer ended up doing, but I was glad that the managers weren't caving.
          PWNADE(TM) - Serve up a glass today! | PWNZER - An act of pwnage so awesome, it's like the victim got hit by a tank.

          There are only Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse because I choose to walk!

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          • #6
            Quoth Jay 2K Winger View Post
            Some business will give you some leeway on that. As in, you buy it now, it goes on sale a week later you can bring in your receipt to get the difference back. But anything longer than that, nope.
            Where I work does not have an official policy like that, but I probably would have done it if it had been a week or less. Close to two months later though...nope. Heck, even my offer of a merchandise certificate was generous. I could have just told the lady, "Sorry, but prices are subject to change" and left it at that.

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            • #7
              A woman would regularly come into my SAG and demmand we give her the difference between the carton price and packet price. The last time she came in, she claimed we owed her $4.60 because that's what she paid when she bought a carton of stock. If she'd bought the same number in packets, that was the cheraper price, and dammit! we were going to give it to her!

              I refused, and she claimed she was going to go up the food chain because we didn't let her know.

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              • #8
                We used to have folks put stuff on layaway, wait a while for everything to go on clearance (which it will because stock is constantly shifting and being replaced with newer items) and then cancel the layaway so they could buy everything at the "new" clearance price. It's one of the many reasons our store cancelled layaway. Sadly they brought it back, in an effort to market their store and gain attention thru the holidays.
                A lion however, will only devour your corpse, whereas an SC is not sated until they have destroyed your soul. (Quote per infinitemonkies)

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                • #9
                  When I worked in Retail and somebody came in asking for money back because something had been reduced, I used to ask if the price had gone up would they have bought me money in. That always shut them up.
                  Robert
                  Peterborough Cambridgeshire

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                  • #10
                    Quoth Jay 2K Winger View Post
                    Some business will give you some leeway on that. As in, you buy it now, it goes on sale a week later you can bring in your receipt to get the difference back. But anything longer than that, nope.
                    Personally I think any business should have a difference back guarantee that is as liberal as their return policy.

                    No returns for any reason? No difference back guarantee.

                    60 days money back no reason required return policy? 60 day price difference guarantee.

                    30 days on unopened/unused merchandise only return policy? 30 day price difference guarantee if they bring in the unopened, unused product with the receipt.

                    In the end it makes more sense for the store to provide the price difference than it does to have the customer return the item and buy a new one at the sale price.
                    You'll find a slight squeeze on the hooter an excellent safety precaution, Miss Scrumptious.

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