Resellers...

[retailsweetie]

Apparently Bustice has no policy against this (according to my boss, anyways). But we have a woman who comes in every so often and buys everything in the larger half of our clearance section that costs $5 or less, then goes and sells it on eBay for twice what she paid. Which is fine, since goodness knows we're just gonna do the same thing to those Rugged-Warehouse-type-stores. The difference, of course, is that these stores don't hold up our lines. This one woman comes in, without fail, when the store is always super busy but we're staffed in a way that only one register is running. So this one woman's bajillion-item transaction takes about 10 minutes just to do... when there's a line of 4 other people... I don't actually know why this particular customer bothers me so much, just that she does.

[sirwired]

Maybe somebody can say to her something like... "If you come in at X time (insert time when you aren't busy), we'll be able to help you better with your large purchases." I dunno... you can offer to fold them, help her select items, provide boxes to stack them in, something...

[PepperElf]

only thing i can suggest is a limit on how much people can buy on clearance.

cos once it's hers there's no way to stop her from reselling them that I can see.

[emax4]

only thing i can suggest is a limit on how much people can buy on clearance.

cos once it's hers there's no way to stop her from reselling them that I can see.

That probably wouldn't fly, because you're limiting how much merchandise they can sell. They're clearance items too, not top of the line, brand new pieces.

If your cash registers allow it, see if you can start the returns then suspend the transaction in the middle. This way she can wait off to the side while you have cash/credit-paying customers to ring up. She's returning items, not buying them, so business should dictate that she can wait in order for the paying customers to get through faster.

[Teskeria]

She's returning items, not buying them, so business should dictate that she can wait in order for the paying customers to get through faster.

she's not returning them. she's just buying tons of items under $5.00 so it takes forever to ring them up.

she may be picking busy times figuring you wont give her a hassle them. Maybe you could nicely say something about how she is welcome to do her shopping at a less busy time when she wont feel so bad about making people wait so long for her to be checked out. (yeah she probably doesn't care about them, but that makes it seem like you think she's a really nice person who would care - it also makes it clear you don't give a hoot why she's buying the stuff)

[sstabeler]

or, I suppose if you think the only problem is she thinks she'll get a hassle over reselling the items, then be blunt about it, and tell her you don't care if she's reselling the items, but could she come in when you are less busy?

[Sapphire Silk]

or, I suppose if you think the only problem is she thinks she'll get a hassle over reselling the items, then be blunt about it, and tell her you don't care if she's reselling the items, but could she come in when you are less busy?

Good luck with that. Her response will be, "but then I'll miss the best stuff on sale."

And she'd have a point.

A better approach would be for a manager to agree to let her buy clearance items in large quantities before they go on sale, but at the same price that they would be on sale, to avoid the problems she creates for the staff and the other customers.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Wouldn't it be possible to pull one other person to cashier whenever she's checking out?

That way one person can be working on her large purchase and another person can keep the line moving for everybody else.

Other than that, I don't know if there's anything that can or should be done about this person. She's buying large amounts at a crack, and depending on pricing the store may still be making a profit. So management isn't going to mess with her much.

[Aethian]

We have a reseller on one of my routes. I brought up this thread to her and she laughed. She made a deal with a few managers that she's allowed to come in ten minuets before opening to get her items. The right when the first cashier is ready she can check out and most often misses every rush the store has. Then she only posts a few items at a time to stretch everything out over the week. I believe she said she has that setup at a couple different stores.