A pattern is emerging...

[Hyndis]

What ever happened to "No receipt, no return?"

I read article after article about how higher prices are driven by shoplifting. Seems to me, cut the shoplifting, and losses from theft would bring down prices. QED.

Believe me, I wish we could do this. I work tech support myself, and we do offer warranties on products we make.

In theory you are required to have your receipt or invoice, not even the original, a copy is good enough, in order to do any warranty replacement or repair.


Problem is that upper management gets a stick up their arse whenever we deny someone their warranty because their receipt was written in crayon and then the person complains on other websites.

[Dreamstalker]

Fixing or replacing the printer would've been cheaper!

Believe me, I made multiple suggestions about that and the other stuff that was broken. Since my degree wasn't business-related, it was assumed that I didn't know what I was talking about

Agreed there, a new printer would have been cheaper...but then he wouldn't get the joy of yelling at the peons about assorted problems caused by the lack of a receipt printer.

I do have my own suspicions about the cameras...the same blind spots exist and I doubt the store was rewired in a day.

[PepperElf]

Well, that could actually happen, i.e. someone decides to be an ass and stash something inside another item, and another customer picks it up to buy, not knowing the other item was stashed there.

Back when I worked at Hills (it's out of business now, no surprise there), we had to specifically search items like that because some people would stuff other items inside. I found one once, but it was just some matching bedding stuffed into a larger comforter.

Couldn't accuse the woman of stealing in case she didn't know it had been stuffed, but I did have to ask if she wanted the other items.

[LadyAndreca]

Most of the time, I don't mind doing a return without a receipt. Sometimes, it's required, like when a customer buys multiple cases of flooring tile then has half a case extra to return--the individual tiles have different bar codes and wont' show up on the receipt. MOST customers are honest. We have a lot of regular contractors who don't bother with receipts because they know we know they spend more than they return.

It's just the scammers...there's two or three I know on sight, too.

One guy with a Washington state license (in NJ) who's very well-mannered and pleasant, but is NOT allowed to use a credit card or write a check in our store because he ran up huge debts on his wife's and brother's accounts, they claimed he wasn't authorized to do that and disputed the charges, and we lost all that money for letting him use the cards (yet he usually uses SCO and ID checking is not required in NJ). He always pays in cash or store credit now, and usually has a wad of receipts for returns but will be missing one receipt required for the return. Despite his poor history, he's a -major- contractor and still spends more money in the store than he's cost us, and he is unfailingly pleasant, so he is allowed to keep shopping with us.

Another is a guy who digs receipts out of the trash cans outside the store, looks for ones with debit or cash, then goes around the store and builds up a cart of the stuff on the receipts and tries to return it from the sales floor. He knows that we can give back cash for under $50 even without a receipt, too, and insists on it. He finally returned enough without a receipt to trigger a manager approval, so hopefully his days of abusing the system are limited.

Sometimes I miss the Bullseye, where I could call customers on BS like this and the managers had my back. At the Orange Apron, I have to take back anything and everything, and if I refuse a return the managers NEVER have my back. (Though I have, on occasion, when it is blatantly obvious a customer is doing something like trying to return 4' of a 10' pipe and they can't POSSIBLY win.)

[Mondestrucken]

My sister was guilty of this yesterday. We were at Whole Foods, and she fell in love with some of the totes, and then boxes to hold salads, and then wow! a set of bamboo eating utensils. She got so excited, and was figuring out how much stuff she could carry to work.

Except when we got to the checkout, the cashier is suddenly asking me of I was also buying the stuff inside the tote. I automatically said, "Of course." It was only when we were walking out that I realized how it probably looked to the cashier. My sister had not fastened the tote, and since I replied so quickly, that I hope the cashier realized that it was an honest mistake. I would have punched my sister in the arm, but she was busy playing with her tote.