You're going over to the competitor's store instead? I'm deeply wounded now!

[mattm04]

I still get the occasional SC who wants us to match a price. Keep in mind I work at supermarket. We don't make a lot of money on each item and with higher fuel prices which caused our cost to rise, etc, we would go out of business if we listened to every SC made up price match demand.

[Snowbird]

WTF? You were actually IN that other shop that sells it cheaper, and deliberately came back here to make us do the damned paperwork to get a price below what we can profit on this item for because we don't have Argos's buying power - and you smile at us in triumph? You rotten git!

I'm guessing they didn't calculate in the cost of gas or the time wasted. Idiots.

I worked in a bookstore and most often we'd price match if they brought in a catalog, no big deal. For some repeat/big customers, we'd even go so far as to just call the other store.

We had a couple that insisted we should be able to sell them books at a mail order book club price and that didn't fly so well. Honestly, the product is inferior. It may be the same title by the same author, but the paper it's printed on is generally recycled or plain old newspaper filler, not to mention the spine and cover are made as cheaply as a copier can get them. It's -not- the same book, IMO.

My manager decided if they were going to be snotty about it that he'd let them get the same sale price with the catalog... plus the cost of shipping and handling the book club charged. Needless to say, there was huffing and puffing but the store and manager remained standing.

We had a few yokels return that sort of book as well, passing it off as an exchange without receipt rather than a return to some of the newer, younger employees that didn't know better. Bleh, I say.

[Estil]

Like I said before in a similar topic; if they think [insert competitor's name] is so great, then shop there and leave us alone about it! Sheesh...

[Boozy]

Of course lower level employees of chain stores don't care if someone goes elsewhere. What's interesting is the number of times I've heard business owners say they don't care.

I've worked for two small businesses in my life, where the owner worked in the store with me. There were a number of times at both places when someone asked for a discount and threatened to go elsewhere if we didn't give it to them.

Unfortunately for them, they didn't realize that the profit margins at independent stores are already razor-thin. We didn't get volume discounts like the major chains, so if we sold to you for any less than sticker price, my boss would be losing money.

These people were always told to go elsewhere if price was of the utmost importance to them. Just don't expect the same amount of service anywhere else.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Exactly. There are supermarkets that do sell stuff for cheaper, but the quality of the food is nowhere near as good as the quality of the food that you buy at this level of supermarket. Not my opinion, but the opinion I've heard from people who've bought food at this particular supermarket cheaply, only to find that it either doesn't taste as nice, or there's less of it; their canned tomatoes, for example, seem to consist of just one tomato and a load of juice. O.o So if a customer says "I'm going to Cheapo Supermarket next time!", fine; see if I care.

[DesignFox]

I love when people tell me they can get it cheaper elsewhere.

We will in some cases match pricing from the web- but rarely can we afford to. If the person causes a huge stink about it, I get to and show them the door.

For good measure I tell them that if they order their phone online- they aren't getting service for it in our store. They'll have to call the nice 800 number listed in the box when it comes.

I'm very pleasant and polite the entire time of course...but few things anger me more than when I have to answer a ton of questions, show a bunch of phones- only to find out the person is going to order it online. (and they always want a ridiculously cheap price that my company cannot match because they are going with the lowest rate plan available with no feature adds) I always get the reasoning that "well you can't really SEEE it online! I wanted to come SEEE it before I ordered it!".



Most people don't do this, thankfully.