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Before the 'math' a little background info. Those familiar with Staples Rewards can skip the next paragraph.
At Staples we have 'Rewards Coupons'. Basically, when you buy ink, paper and copy center services you get 10% back and $3 for recycling some ink. You can use the coupons to purchase anything in the store EXCEPT gift cards since we want to keep the money in the store. Basically, we don't want to reward you by having you shop somewhere else.
On to the story.
A lady comes in Saturday night, about 8:30. We've got extended hours for the holidays until 10pm. She's in the store quite a while and we're being quite helpful to her since she's one of only two customers in the whole store. Since we're dead, we start putitng up the 500 price changes we have for the night. About 9:30 she comes up to the register and the manager notices she has 2 cases of paper that is on sale with a rebate the next day. Being nice we tell her about the sale. Stupid us.
Instead of taking the paper and coming back to get her rebates during the week she decides not to take it, she'll come back for it. That doesn't make sense to me, since either way she has to come back a second time. And since it's a rebate, she's not really saving any money by waiting. So we just roll our eyes and move on with the transaction.
She purchases about $25 worth of clearance Xmas stuff and $300 in gift cards. So her total is like $325 plus tax. She hands over a rewards coupon for $125.
Well, you can't buy gift checks with a coupon, so instead of her total being $200 (325 - 125), her total is $300 (25 in coupon-able items -125 in coupons + 300 non-coupon-able gift cards) and it would print out the remaining $100 as a new coupon.
It took 10 minutes to explain this. FINALLY she understood! And she told us to cancel everything, she'll come back tomorrow.
WTF?
The coupon STILL won't work tomorrow on the gift cards. The paper she could buy tonight with the other stuff and use up almost the whole coupon ($45 each case) and then pay for the other gift cards. And she would be coming back either way so why not just buy it since it's already in your cart and come back for the rebates?!? Why must they always do it the HARD way?
At Staples we have 'Rewards Coupons'. Basically, when you buy ink, paper and copy center services you get 10% back and $3 for recycling some ink. You can use the coupons to purchase anything in the store EXCEPT gift cards since we want to keep the money in the store. Basically, we don't want to reward you by having you shop somewhere else.
On to the story.
A lady comes in Saturday night, about 8:30. We've got extended hours for the holidays until 10pm. She's in the store quite a while and we're being quite helpful to her since she's one of only two customers in the whole store. Since we're dead, we start putitng up the 500 price changes we have for the night. About 9:30 she comes up to the register and the manager notices she has 2 cases of paper that is on sale with a rebate the next day. Being nice we tell her about the sale. Stupid us.
Instead of taking the paper and coming back to get her rebates during the week she decides not to take it, she'll come back for it. That doesn't make sense to me, since either way she has to come back a second time. And since it's a rebate, she's not really saving any money by waiting. So we just roll our eyes and move on with the transaction.
She purchases about $25 worth of clearance Xmas stuff and $300 in gift cards. So her total is like $325 plus tax. She hands over a rewards coupon for $125.
Well, you can't buy gift checks with a coupon, so instead of her total being $200 (325 - 125), her total is $300 (25 in coupon-able items -125 in coupons + 300 non-coupon-able gift cards) and it would print out the remaining $100 as a new coupon.
It took 10 minutes to explain this. FINALLY she understood! And she told us to cancel everything, she'll come back tomorrow.
WTF?
The coupon STILL won't work tomorrow on the gift cards. The paper she could buy tonight with the other stuff and use up almost the whole coupon ($45 each case) and then pay for the other gift cards. And she would be coming back either way so why not just buy it since it's already in your cart and come back for the rebates?!? Why must they always do it the HARD way?
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