All this for a whopping 10 cents?

[FuzzyKitten99]

Last night, about 10 minutes to closing, I had a woman come through and buy a bunch of school supplies. Anyway, I finish ringing up, and I give her the receipt. She leaves.

She comes back, and says that there is a possible price discrepancy on a pack of markers.

I look, and it says the markers were rung up as $2.99. She insisted they were marked $2.89 on the shelf. So, I go over and look, and sure enough, the price tag hadn't been changed yet, and it read $2.89. Usually they get changed on Sundays, if any need to be done, and the tags that need to be changed for price automatically print out on our printer. Corporate does this for us. Looks like the markers were missed.

She wants her money back. We will price over-ride if a sign was up that advertised a lower price, but maybe forgotten to be taken down.

So, I can get her money back to her account. However, the only way I can do this, is to return the markers and repurchase them and manually override the price difference, and the whole 10 cents will be put back on her account. I also need the actual marker pack to scan as a return. If I don't scan it, the system won't allow the return.

Well, she left the bag in the car, and thought it was a HUGE problem to go out and get it again. I told her there was nothing I could do without the marker pack. So she huffed off and got them. I went ahead and did the whole procedure, all the while we had other customers waiting behind her and mine is the only register open. When it gets to 15-20 minutes to closing, the MOD will pull all but one front drawer.

So I went through all the trouble, spending almost 10 minutes just on her, to refund her a whopping 10 cents.

[Peppergirl]

God. Would you have been allowed to just give her the damned dime, and then slipit back into the till out of your purse so that you balanced? I think that's what I would have done.

Hell, even as a customer I've been known to dig in my purse for a quarter and offering it to an SC who is holding up the line for some miniscule amount.

[cravenmorhead]

She did have a valid claim here.

In Canada, there is a voluntary procedure that many major retailers adher to, the Code of Practice Scanner Price Accuracy. What it basically says is:

If the scanned price of an non-price ticketed item is higher than the shelf price or any other displayed price, the customer is entitled to receive the item free, up to a $10 maximum. When the item has a price tagged, the lowest price applies. When identical items are incorrectly priced, the second one will be sold at the correct price. Under this code you are eligible.

She could have gotten, and anyone else who was paying attention, those markers for free. It doesn't look like this establishment has implemented those codes though. It also doesn't excuse her behaviour by any stretch of the imagination.

[Anakah]

If the scanned price of an non-price ticketed item is higher than the shelf price or any other displayed price, the customer is entitled to receive the item free, up to a $10 maximum. When the item has a price tagged, the lowest price applies. When identical items are incorrectly priced, the second one will be sold at the correct price. Under this code you are eligible.
.

Was this in Canada?

I think that is really stupid. Why should they be entitled to something for free because of human error??? Yes, they would get the item for whatever price they saw it for but it why free?
I'm not trying to be mean to anybody but it just seems like the biggest bend over backwards and take it up the A$$ thing I've ever heard of. I understand there is a maximum of ten dollars but thats still something the store should not be loosing. Sometimes there just isn't time to change all the prices.

But anyway to the poster, yeah ten cents big deal! I'd understand if it were like five dollars and up but ten cents is pretty sad.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Was this in Canada?

I think that is really stupid. Why should they be entitled to something for free because of human error??? Yes, they would get the item for whatever price they saw it for but it why free?
.

My guess is to encourage the stores to make sure their items are signed with the correct prices every time.

I don't believe we have the same code here in Cheeseland, but we do have state pricing auditors who visit the store from time to time and can issue us penalties of some sort if we keep having items ring up at the wrong price. Plus local TV news departments who love to run exposes on stores whose prices are rigniong up wrong at the registers.

[cravenmorhead]

Was this in Canada?

Aye.

I think that is really stupid. Why should they be entitled to something for free because of human error??? Yes, they would get the item for whatever price they saw it for but it why free?
I'm not trying to be mean to anybody but it just seems like the biggest bend over backwards and take it up the A$$ thing I've ever heard of. I understand there is a maximum of ten dollars but thats still something the store should not be loosing. Sometimes there just isn't time to change all the prices.

It closes the door for legitimate false advertising lawsuits. In this case that would be a completely valid reason to take that company to court. That being said any judge/lawyer would laugh in your face and tell you to go home and quit wasting your time. The purpose of it, based on the Retail Council of Canada website concerning this code is:

1. Visibly demonstrate retailer commitment to scanner price accuracy;
2. Provide retailers with a consistent national framework for dealing with scanner price accuracy issues; and
3. Provide the retail industry with a mechanism for consumer redress in scanner price accuracy cases, to be managed by the industry through an industry committee.

It is completely voluntary. Though in some places, such as wal-shart, getting such a value is like pulling teeth.

[FuzzyKitten99]

God. Would you have been allowed to just give her the damned dime, and then slipit back into the till out of your purse so that you balanced? I think that's what I would have done.

Hell, even as a customer I've been known to dig in my purse for a quarter and offering it to an SC who is holding up the line for some miniscule amount.

If I had a dime in my pocket, I would have. But I rarely carry cash, so it is even rarer to have any change on me.

[IvorTangrean]

When I worked at WM the customer had to ask to get the $10 off. The funny thing was that each till had a sign for it right next to the cashier. I know I was never asked to do it.

[Tito]

I think that I was caught behind that lady once in line. She was giving the cashier a hard time over a 10 cent coupon. It was very tempting to reach into my pocket, pull out a dime, and tell her 'here's your damn dime, now beat it!'

[marasbaras]

I would've been tempted to pull a dime from the till, give it to her, then make it up later when I was closing out the till .. nearly closing, people waiting ... geez.

Stupid SC. It's a DIME. Not even worth your time coming back from the car.

[Andara Bledin]

I know that one of the grocery stores I used to frequent had a policy that if you found a price discrepancy on your receipt and took it to the customer service desk, they'd give you that item (or up to $10) back. They did it as a service to reward customers for catching their mistakes, and so they could get them fixed in a timely manner.

But, still. I wouldn't have even bothered to walk back into the store for $0.10. My time is worth more than that.

^-.-^

[Listerfiend]

I'd be tempted to give her the dime out-of-pocket, but would probably do the return and re-purchase to waste her time and make her wait (I know it wouldn't teach her a lesson or anything, but I would enjoy pissing her off).

[mattm04]

MY store has a policy along the lines of if the price rings up wrong you get 1 free and the rest at the advertised price. I am happy as long as I get it at the correct price. I realize mistakes happen and NOBODY even SC's and store/corp managers are perfect.

[evilhomer]

If I catch that kind of thing as it's being rung up, I'll say something but there's no way I'm going back to the store, even from the parking lot for such a small amount.

I'm glad you went through the whole song and dance rather than giving in to temptation and giving her $0.12 (Canada, you have to add the tax ). It may have been annoying to all affected, but maybe she'll clue in to how much earning that whopping sum cost her in time spent.

[fish3k1]

She did have a valid claim here.

In Canada, there is a voluntary procedure that many major retailers adher to, the Code of Practice Scanner Price Accuracy. What it basically says is:

If the scanned price of an non-price ticketed item is higher than the shelf price or any other displayed price, the customer is entitled to receive the item free, up to a $10 maximum. When the item has a price tagged, the lowest price applies. When identical items are incorrectly priced, the second one will be sold at the correct price. Under this code you are eligible.

She could have gotten, and anyone else who was paying attention, those markers for free. It doesn't look like this establishment has implemented those codes though. It also doesn't excuse her behaviour by any stretch of the imagination.

I don't know too much about small-cost items, but I know over in the UK we have a system whereby if an item is incorrectly priced, the store is NOT required to honour the misprice, so long as they correct the displayed price within 24 hours of being made aware of the issue.

This has actually come up in my job, where something (like for example, a £200 mountain bike) was on half-price one week and back to full-price the next, and one or two of the sale-price self-service tickets have managed to go unnoticed (or more likely, the customer took it home with them the week before ¬_¬). We get people demanding we sell the item at sale price, insisting that we're obliged to do so.