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This happened at work but isn't about my customers so I decided to put it in Sightings as it has to deal with another gas station.
BG: We have to go out and drive around and collect gas prices to give them to corporate. Every few days, once a week, we have a sale on gas and one of the rules is that we "match" the price of a neighboring gas station who also have their sale that day. GENERALLY SPEAKING the sale makes the price of gas lower by 5 or 6 cents.
One particular day the competitor gas station didn't have their prices changed by 5 cents. In fact, it was only 1 cent off. The other prices were anywhere between 6 or even 7 cents different (and I changed them accordingly). Confused, I decided that perhaps I hadn't checked late enough in the morning and they hadn't changed them yet. So I thought, I'll just call them later and ask what the prices would be.
Fast forward to about an hour later, plenty of time to have changed the prices:
Me: Hello, I was just wondering if I could get the price of your regular gas.
Employee: No. You can't. We don't discuss that type of thing over the phone.
Confused again, I hung up and then immediately called a different store of the same chain in a neighboring town. I was given their gas prices over the phone without any problems. When I related this to one of my regulars, she said that perhaps they saw my phone number and decided to mess with me since I had called from the store phone. She agreed to call them for me and she was told that it was "illegal" for them to tell her their gas prices over the phone.
Now. I dunno about the rest of you but I was giving some serious side-eye right there. I couldn't just go out and check the prices because I was alone in the store. Who would be running it? And, furthermore, I was pissed off. Well, so was the manager of our in-house restaurant and the woman practically BREATHES FIRE. She whips out her phone, calls the competitor, and asks them why they're "lying to customers" and tells them that she wants to speak to their manager and she's going to be calling corporate and la la la. She STILL doesn't manage to get them to tell her the regular price of gas but scares the ever-loving shit out of the lady who answered the phone.
Fast forward again and we've gotten a call from the District Manager who says she has a gas price change for me. I proceed to tell her the whole story of what happened and her response is:
"If they're going to play games with you, we're going to play them right back. Next time they want to come into the store for competitor pricing, tell them to get the hell out."
Well. Guess that takes care of that.
BG: We have to go out and drive around and collect gas prices to give them to corporate. Every few days, once a week, we have a sale on gas and one of the rules is that we "match" the price of a neighboring gas station who also have their sale that day. GENERALLY SPEAKING the sale makes the price of gas lower by 5 or 6 cents.
One particular day the competitor gas station didn't have their prices changed by 5 cents. In fact, it was only 1 cent off. The other prices were anywhere between 6 or even 7 cents different (and I changed them accordingly). Confused, I decided that perhaps I hadn't checked late enough in the morning and they hadn't changed them yet. So I thought, I'll just call them later and ask what the prices would be.
Fast forward to about an hour later, plenty of time to have changed the prices:
Me: Hello, I was just wondering if I could get the price of your regular gas.
Employee: No. You can't. We don't discuss that type of thing over the phone.
Confused again, I hung up and then immediately called a different store of the same chain in a neighboring town. I was given their gas prices over the phone without any problems. When I related this to one of my regulars, she said that perhaps they saw my phone number and decided to mess with me since I had called from the store phone. She agreed to call them for me and she was told that it was "illegal" for them to tell her their gas prices over the phone.
Now. I dunno about the rest of you but I was giving some serious side-eye right there. I couldn't just go out and check the prices because I was alone in the store. Who would be running it? And, furthermore, I was pissed off. Well, so was the manager of our in-house restaurant and the woman practically BREATHES FIRE. She whips out her phone, calls the competitor, and asks them why they're "lying to customers" and tells them that she wants to speak to their manager and she's going to be calling corporate and la la la. She STILL doesn't manage to get them to tell her the regular price of gas but scares the ever-loving shit out of the lady who answered the phone.
Fast forward again and we've gotten a call from the District Manager who says she has a gas price change for me. I proceed to tell her the whole story of what happened and her response is:
"If they're going to play games with you, we're going to play them right back. Next time they want to come into the store for competitor pricing, tell them to get the hell out."
Well. Guess that takes care of that.
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