BIG pricing mistake

[Dreamstalker]

So I'm listing some of the new Warhammer stuff on ebay.

One box set was supposed to be $175 retail, our price gun sucks and can't do 3 digits (well, it can, just the first digit does not look like a digit at all). I listed the thing for $65

Of course, it was snapped up before I caught the error. Ooops.

I managed to email the buyer before they paid and explain. I'm worried that we'll be held to the BIN price even though it was obvious that it was priced way in error...I gave the option of paying the original amount (knocking a few bucks off for my dumbassness)--if Paypal will allow them to change the price--or mutually ending the transaction and I would relist.

[AKWalMartCartGuy]

you should sell it to them for $65 since it was your error, not theirs, don't expect a positive feedback

[Dreamstalker]

Bossman says we can't sell for that price...if it were my decision I'd do it and chalk the loss up to a learning experience (thanks for not telling me about the price gun problem)*.

I can kinda see where he's coming from as he wants to stay on good terms with the vendor (they're strict about pricing and I'm not sure what would happen if it became known that we undercut their site price on a new release--I have a feeling this buyer would brag about the great deal).

He emailed the buyer saying that he'd sell for $150 (still at a better price than we give in-store) with free shipping, or we would mutually agree not to complete and relist. In any case I expect a neg out of this...glad it's not my ebay account that's getting it.

* The price on the tag was "$'75"; I didn't know that the hashmark was meant to be a "1"

[Dreamstalker]

OK, the saga has ended with minimal bloodshed.

Mutual non-complete agreement, although the "buyer's" parting shot was a claim that he had been quoted two different prices ($140 and $150). I got a mini-lecture about being consistent (um, I did not offer $140, not sure where that figure came from). I think he thinks I can't do math

Store's gonna get a neg, that was boss' decision not mine. Hopefully we can quickly bury it with more sales (he wants me to respond to it explaining that an error was made on our part, compensation was offered and refused which is true).

(someone please explain to me the phenomenon of hordes watching fixed price listings but not actually buying? )

[Zeeko]

I had a similar issue a few days ago.

I was in a rather s**tty mood (leave that for another thread) and instead of typing $34.95 in the EFTPOS the 3 didnt press and I didnt check it. So the lucky customer got it for $4.95 and it was hours later when we found the error.

[Dreamstalker]

I once rang a CC through for $5 instead of $15...one would think that would be a great time to be shown how to do credit card refunds (our machine is amazingly counterintuitive when it comes to refunding)? Instead I get lectured (in front of a crowd...GRRRR) and told "I'll fix it later". To this day, I know not why he didn't just show me how to do it...I had the time, he didn't and it's something that I should have been taught anyway.

Our barcode scanner is notorious for not working if the sun is coming in at just the right angle through the front windows (there's no visible reflection on the counter, but somehow the scanner senses it and refuses to work).

[Linda]

I was the other way. Accidentally charged a customer £200,000 to clean their duvet instead of £20. Hit the 00 key 3 times instead of the 0 key.
The customer entered their PIN without checking the amount.
It went through no problems. Fair enough the customer banked with Coutts though. (minimum £5million net assets or £500,000 investible assets to even get in the lobby of the bank)

I then had to explain to my boss why I did a refund for £199,980. Oops!

[karma_gypsy]

Just recently, I did the same thing.

I had listed a ring (a rather hideous one at that) and accidently place the reserve for $100 less than what it was suppose. A customer, much to my surprised, actually met the "mispriced" reserve. To make matters worse, the mistake wasn't caught until close to auction's end. So we couldn't cancel the auction, only the bids and had to keep an eye on the auction and make sure no one else met the reserve.

Luckily, only one bid was placed and it didn't meet the reserve price.

And of course, I got the *very* obvious lecture of "make sure you check things twice."

[Aggravated Associate]

I didn't quite make such a major mistake, but I did make one recently that I still feel bad about.

I work in a retail store and was ringing up a young couple. The girl handed me a box of several heavy glass tea light holders, and it rung up at about $5. She said, "Wow, it's really that cheap?" I looked at the box, which only had one UPC to scan. I looked it over again. I said, "I guess so. There's nothing else that I should be scanning, and it did ring up, right?" She said, "Yeah, that's the only one. That's great, it's so cheap!" I thought it seemed pretty cheap, too, but against ALL of my better judgment, didn't call for a price check. Later, I was ringing up another one with my manager nearby and said, "Isn't this kind of low for this set?" She said, "Yes, that's because you ring them up individually." She then opened the box, took out EACH holder one at a time, and EACH was priced for $5.

Looking back, the girl probably knew I made a stupid mistake, but chose not to point it out (probably a smart choice). That sucks, and it was totally my fault, but it would have been nice if I had known beforehand that this was the one product in the store in which the box and its UPC are irrelevant.

[Shabo]

Shame on your store for putting a barcode outside a box that wasn't for the total amount! Poor planning on their part.

[JustaCashier]

Very simply said, and very well said, shabo.

We cashiers, are the ones you will find if you dig deep enough through the pile of shit that has accumulated on us, on the bottom of the hierarchy. We are not only responsible for the shit that is caused by our own mistakes, but also the shit caused by pricing errors caused by the departments, the pricing people/department, receiving dept, the warehouse, etc on up, even to the vendor/manufacturer.

By pricing errors, I don't mean only the ones such as marked 2.99, now in the POS is 3.79, it's those, plus the missing UPC/SKU stickers, and the UPC stickers/labels that have a blemish in them in the printing process, resulting in an entire lot of product not being able to be scanned. Bonus grumbles from me, if the blemish makes one of the numbers at the bottom of the UPC unreadable/unguessable. Where the hell is quality control?!?

It's understandable that there will be an occasional sticker missing, or damaged from being scraped against something else, but to, again, have the whole lot screwed up? Okay, so the warehouse might not be aware of any problems if the individual items ar boxed by the mfr/vendor, and the same goes for the store receiving dept, but the individual depts should notice as they are dumping the product in the bin, or hanging it on the peg.

It gets frustrating running back to the depts, with a long line at the registers, to find a SKU or price. Some days, it seems like we have to run back for every fifth or sixth customer. Each of us cashiers have some SKU's memorized, or at least know the name of some obscure item, so that we can search for it in the POS, but then sometimes typing the item name in results in "Nothing Found", due to some computer programming geeks (no offense meant to geeks here! ) misspelling, or very obscure abbreviation. or even more obscure description. With tens of thousands of items in our store, memorizing all of them is impossible for us, although some SC's will disagree, and many of them can't even remember their PIN!

Relating back to my first paragraph, we, at the bottom, are supposed to catch all of these errors, yet scan the items in a quick, efficient manner. This is expected of us by our customers, our store, corp, and ourselves. When a cashier is "speed scanning" a customer's order, it's hard enough to keep an eye on the POS monitor when it's damn near in front of your face, in relation to the counter and bagging rack, but then, in my store, there are a few register where the cashier is facing 90 degrees away from the screen when bagging.

Lotsa luck there, Buddy!

/

Mike