Serial Returners: SC returning stuff drama

[flyonthewall]

Like serial killers but with returns! I just thought of the term. *is proud of clever self*


Anyway, the end of the month is approaching and one kind of serial returner is soon to be out and about. The "I spent too much money this month and Visa is about to send me to collections so Ima return all this stuff for monies at your inconvenience, mmkay?"



Fly-on-the-Wall Serial Returner SC story #1:
One time, I experienced this in the extreme. Someone returned $600+ of USED merchandise and had pathetic excuses like "The kids don't like them". Oh? So did your kids like them before they vandalized our soon to be property? What's worse, they made these purchases from another one of our stores- so our most rival sister store got the money and we got the loss. FUUUUUUUUUUUU SC! FU! I had a senior member of management approve the return before I touched the stuff because I thought it was sketchy from the start. And then after we bought the vandalized merchandise back from the SCs- we had to destroy it because it was no longer sellable. The products were just trashed! Also, the people had four kids so every item returned was x4. x4the vandalism

Fly-on-the-Wall Return story #2:
Day after Christmas. Family comes in with products grandpa bought that they already had. Our products have the price on the item. So they added it up, and thought they had about $100 of store credits. What they didn't realize, was that grandpa had purchased everything on sale. Oops. So they come up to my register with gift receipts. They've already picked out the times they want instead. I do the return part first and it goes something like this:

Me:You have a credit of $40.
Mom: WHAT?
Me:The items returned are valued at $40.
*blink blink*
Kid: But I added up the prices on the boxes and got $100!
Me: The items were purchased during one of our AWESOME sales. Grandpa got some good deals.
*blink blink*

*I had to print out the receipts from our company's "cloud" to prove that grandpa had only spent a certain amount but they believed me after seeing proof. Before that, the mom thought I was scamming her or something*

Mom: *to me* Figures, it's my father-in-law. *to kid* Well, I guess you are going to have to put some things back.
*Kid decides which item they are getting. I complete transaction.*
The mom and kids weren't really SCs though, they took is pretty well. It must've been embarrassing for grandpa though.
The moral of the story: Gift cards are your friends.


Where I work there's a group of the "usual suspects" who are constantly returning stuff. I had no idea a single person could make so many returns but these people manage to exceed my wildest expectations!


Do YOU have any SC return stories? Or any serial returners at your fine establishment of trade? Are you beholden to corporate's ridiculous return policies like I am?

[workerbee222]

My sister used to work in returns and resolutions during the Christmas season at the mail order vendor she worked for. The return policy is very generous at KK Lentils, so many people would purchased branded items at Salvation Army or yard sales, and request a refund because they claimed to be dissatisfied with the product. Red flag #1 would be no history of buying anything at KK Lentils, and returning lots. I wondered if she caught lots of flack in this assignment, but she said no, she was just the one to compile the information. It was someone else's job to deliver the bad news.

I used to work at a middle of the road department store. One January 6th, a customer came in with a special occasion dress that was wrinkled, stained, and smelled of cigarettes. If she'd noticed the condition it was in, she'd never have bought it! She tried to bully the sales person, who called in the department manager. DM said she'd have to take it back to the location where she'd purchased it. She wasn't taking anything back that wasn't in salable condition. Customer was indignant, but Department manager figured the SC thought the staff at our smaller, less cosmopolitan store would be easily bamboozled.

The city did have a serial returner: she returned things, not just to us, but everyone. I remembered her unusual name from the fabric store where I'd worked years earlier. (Purchased lots of rose decals, returned them weeks later.) She was keen on buying enough skin care products to get a free gift: usually a full sized bar of soap, vat of moisturizer, whatever. When the special was over, she'd return all the products, including the free one, to maximize the return. I overheard two employees discussing her, and a third said her husband worked at the grocery store, and you should see what she does *there.* I asked, what does she do, return meat? Yes, she said, the woman returned anything that went bad before she ate it.

[notalwaysright]

Introducing Pattern Lady, serial returner. She supposedly sews clothes for other people. So what she does is find out what her customer wants made (shirt, dress, etc) and then buys a selection of patterns, and the customer chooses which style they want. Then she returns the unwanted patterns. This has been going on for years. We can find no evidence that she opens and traces the patterns. She never, ever buys fabric, and we are the only apparel fabric store in town. It's certainly possible that she buys all the fabric online or drives south. What's more likely is that she's a crazy pants.

Also, years ago there was this woman who apparently horded fabric really bad. Every few months her husband would discover all these purchases and make her return them. He came with her sometimes. At the time we had a rule that you could only return fabric if it was more than three yards. It was a very loose rule, (not even sure if was company wide or not) and we would just call for an MOD when it became an issue. This woman would routinely try to return half yards and quarter yards, so I would always have to call. I told her multiple times about the three yard policy, but obviously didn't care. Finally, Old Manager had enough. The woman had a large bag of dozens of fabrics, and about 6 different receipts, at least two were over 90 days which meant it was expired. I was having to go through and attempt to match fabric to receipts. Old Manager said that she had told her that she would not allow this any more, and refused to do any returns. I have never seen that woman again.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

And then there are the people who return things because they are obnoxiously cheap. They will buy something at the swamp, buy the exact same thing or something similar at another store for a lower price, and return the item they purchased from us. Or they take advantage of our way-too-generous price adjustment policy, which would be a return and repurchase.

Many of them then piss and moan that they can't find anybody to help them on the floor, or that the line at the one open checkout is too long and why don't you have more people working today?

Answer: because payroll is determined by our sales, not by our transaction counts, not by the number of people browsing at any particular time, or the number of people waiting in checkout lines. Our transaction counts are among the highest in the company, but there are many stores that do more sales than us in fewer transactions. So they get more payroll, and we get to run around like headless chickens serving our parsimonious yet entitled customer base.

[AnaKhouri]

Years ago when I worked at TJ Maxx there was a group of women who did this. Every single week they would purchase hundreds of dollars of merchandise and, like clockwork, return all or almost all of it within a week or two. And a lot of it was household goods too, so it wasn't like they were just wearing clothes for a week and returning them. I always wondered if it was some kind of psychological issue. Of course there were a load of scammers who tried to get one over the return desk too, but I never got that vibe from these women. Everyone groaned when they saw them coming with bags and bags of returns.

Once at the bookstore this woman brought back 5 or 6 hefty sacks of bargain books. She had 4 or 5 receipts as long as my arm to go with them. Luckily she left the tags on the books, or I don't even know if we could have done the return, but the remainder tags don't have the titles, just the bar code we use for bargain books (and they all start with BAR######). They were all paperback children's titles too. I had to manually go down every receipt until I found the right bar code number to cross off. It took me 90 minutes, and her standing there the whole time. But I took a certain savage glee in it- after all, I was being paid to be there. She wasn't. Since then we've gotten a new system that can scan codes on the receipts, and we've gotten MUCH stricter on return policies.

[workerbee222]

Introducing Pattern Lady, serial returner. She supposedly sews clothes for other people. So what she does is find out what her customer wants made (shirt, dress, etc) and then buys a selection of patterns, and the customer chooses which style they want. Then she returns the unwanted patterns.

I've sewn for longer than most of most of you have been alive, and I always thought there were no returns on patterns.Of course, when I started sewing,Vogue Patterns were $1.25 - not worth the trouble.

Why is the serial returner not exploring the pattern options with her customer, rather than running her car to the store twice? That's cutting into her profits, mightily. Seamstresses tend to be notoriously bad at business matters.

[flyonthewall]

The return policy is very generous at KK Lentils, so many people would purchased branded items at Salvation Army or yard sales, and request a refund because they claimed to be dissatisfied with the product. Red flag #1 would be no history of buying anything at KK Lentils, and returning lots. I wondered if she caught lots of flack in this assignment, but she said no, she was just the one to compile the information. It was someone else's job to deliver the bad news.

That happens where I work too! My favorite was a situation involving a smaller item that was clearly very old. I was told: "I purchased this only a few months ago!" NOTE: it has 1980s-esq primary colors and a tag that said "1991" on a tag somewhere on it. And I just have to go with it. The awesome thing is, because of inflation and price increases- they only got $15. "HUH?" They would've gotten more money if they sold it online as vintage. Oh, and the current version of the product they just returned is retailing from us at $75. MUAHAHAHAHA The sucky thing is I'd have to go dumpster diving in company records to get the price of an item that was discontinued decades ago. >.< But then I get to destroy the product in the back after I show the bit of company history to everyone. It relieves some anger.

[flyonthewall]

Another return story: this one is notable not because of the return(not really sketchy or anything) but the actions of the person returning it.

Setting: It's the stroke of the hour and my shift has officially ended. I step away from the register and begin to make my way to safety(the employees only area) but before I get beyond the register area I hear "EXCUSE ME?!?!?!" You see, in our store we have a roped off line. And if someone is not in the line, they are not IN LINE. Special snowflake returner was not IN LINE. She was standing around cash wrap like a freaking moron. I shuffle back to a register and say "I'm sorry- I'll help you here." She comes up all hissy and drags her kid with her. The initial reason why I assumed she did not need my help: 1. She was not in line and 2. She had a bag with her so I assumed she'd already been helped. But how wrong I was! Because inside that bag was a product that mini special snowflake had just broken! YAY!!!!! She says something along the lines of "Cheap thing broke as we were getting into the car!" The item had been crushed. As in: someone or something crushed it. As our return policy is very nice, I had to go through it with a smile on my face.

ME: I'll take care of that for you right away. Would you like a new one, refund, or gift card?
SC: Just give me another. *Grabs replacement item quickly and smacks it on counter in huff*
ME: Okay then. Now, because this is a return I must ask for some information to attach a name to the transaction.
*I ask for information and she gives it to me. I hit "SEARCH" in our database and it couldn't find anything.(The system is always messing up.)*

So I have to ask Special Snowflake Returner for her information to create a new profile for our company database to forget. She flicks her hair and adjusts her purse.
Me: Is your city *name of county we are in*? (Most of our customers live here.)
SC: NO! I live in *name of pretentious suburb IN the county we live in*!!!!!!

At this point I'm trying not to laugh in her face. She reminds me of a comedy skit about snotty moms. I finish the return, she grabs the receipt and storms off. I clock out ten minutes late.

THE END!

[Dark Psion]

One of the biggest problems I have in Lawn & Garden is mower and weed trimmer returns. They always do the returns late in the evening when staff is shorthanded and managers are focused on the truck and little else.

Most fall into two categories;

Rentals: Where they buy a mower, use it and then return it. Sometimes they will loosen the blade or remove the air filter and complain "it was like that when I bought it." Once a power tool has had gas put into it, the rules for returning it get so complicated that management would rather sell it for $50 than deal with the paperwork. This has lead to another problem, people returning a $200 mower and coming back a day or two later to buy it for $50.

Artifacts: The other return is people bringing back trimmers a year or two old and completely worn out. Had one of those a week ago, no gas cap, no spark plug, no deflector and by the label, three years old.

[XCashier]

Why is the serial returner not exploring the pattern options with her customer, rather than running her car to the store twice? That's cutting into her profits, mightily. Seamstresses tend to be notoriously bad at business matters.

Especially since you can look at the patterns online and decide what you want before you go to the store. Yeah, that woman isn't very bright at all.

[Dreamstalker]

They always do the returns late in the evening when staff is shorthanded and managers are focused on the truck and little else.

Same with the returners, scammers and thieves at my store. Do you think management cares? Not as much as they should.

Mostly we get SCs returning stuff (likely stolen) from other stores; even if we don't carry it, it will scan at the registers so the poor sap later doing returns (usually me) gets to drive themselves crazy trying to locate it which will never happen. We will get the occasional SC who buys something to replace an expired item and uses the receipt to return the old one...I discovered that when I found some boxes of cereal in returns that had expired two years ago and connected the dots with an old lady that was in not ten minutes ago returning that same brand of cereal. We sell enough of that that rotation is not an issue.

[catcul]

We will get the occasional SC who buys something to replace an expired item and uses the receipt to return the old one...I discovered that when I found some boxes of cereal in returns that had expired two years ago and connected the dots with an old lady that was in not ten minutes ago returning that same brand of cereal. We sell enough of that that rotation is not an issue.

So, you're saying that she's a cereal returner?

[dalesys]

So, you're saying that she's a cereal returner?

No, just feeling her oats.

[catcul]

I think she's just being a flake.

We're going to be milking the cereal puns.

[Deevil]

We will get the occasional SC who buys something to replace an expired item and uses the receipt to return the old one...I discovered that when I found some boxes of cereal in returns that had expired two years ago and connected the dots with an old lady that was in not ten minutes ago returning that same brand of cereal.

I guess you could say, Gran(ny)-ola strikes again.