Yesterday I was at the register when this person came up with a lot of price matches. All she was doing was price matches. I don't care about those too much, I mean, I do them too, but what I didn't like is that most of them were invalid.
The first thing wrong was that she showed me an ad for salad tomatoes for .59/lb. that was on sale at another store. We don't carry loose salad tomatoes like they do, just a three pack, but we'll usually substitute another, cheap kind of tomato.
She had a bag of expensive, on the vine tomatoes, which added up to a three or four dollar difference between the varieties. I told her we couldn't give her those tomatoes but I could get someone to go get her some of the less expensive tomatoes and I could do the price match on those. I think she was trying to pull a fast one on me because she had pulled them off the vine, but they still had the 4664 stickers on them! I told her the tomatoes she needed to get were the larger ones with the 3151 stickers on them. She was a little bit frustrated but she agreed to that. My manager went and got her about the same amount of the cheaper tomatoes.
The next thing she wanted was a deal on sodas. The other store had something like, buy 4, get one free. I explained to her we didn't do get one free deals, but that I could give her their sale price. The flyer does the math for the customer, so in smaller print they had the sale price, 4 for 10, and in large print they had the final price when you factor in the free item, which was 5 for 10. I explained to her that I couldn't give them to her for $2.00, but I would give them to her for $2.50 because that was a legitimate sales price that didn't involve the free item. She didn't even have five of them anyway! She wanted me to ask the manager about that one so I left them aside as I was trying to work my way through the rest of her price matches.
You can probably see in all this that I was trying to be as accommodating as possible and tried to find ways to still let her get price matches, even if it wasn't exactly what she had wanted.
She also brought up three gallons of Schepp's milk, which is an expensive milk that sells for around $5.00 a gallon, and she claimed that Walgreens had it on sale for $2.49. I didn't know at the time whether she was lying or not, but I suspected it for two reasons:
1. She had the ads for the other deals she was trying to get, even if she was misreading them or misinterpreting them.
2. No other customers had asked for this deal, which would have been the cheapest milk.
The cheapest milk at other grocery stores were store brands at $3.50, which we could have substituted our store brand for, but not Schepps.
We had heard earlier in the week (several times from many customers) that CVS was selling Schepp's milk for $2.79, so I offered to give her two of the gallons for $2.79 since I was fairly sure that it was on sale at CVS for that. I also informed her that she needed to bring in the ads for drug stores because we didn't have them at the store. We have a limit of two on milk price matches, so she could only match two of the milks. She wasn't happy with that either and so I had to call the manager to answer the question about the cokes and about the milk.
He told her no on both of them, because we don't do free items and you need your ads with you to price match stores we don't have the ads for (we only carry ads for other grocery stores, because the drug stores have a different sales week schedule than we do.
She lost it and demanded his name. This part was a little bit hilarious to me because not only did he have a name tag with his first name on it, but not very far away from us at all, there was a sign on the wall with his picture and his full name and job title underneath it.
He knows at this point that she's going to call corporate, get a 50 dollar gift card for her trouble, and he's probably going to get chewed out for doing his job and protecting the store assets. Even though he's acted like a total idiot to me a couple of times, and I don't really like this manager, I felt sorry for him right then.
He said "Ma'am before you get too upset will you at least let me explain why we can't do those kinds of price matches and why we have that policy?" She shrieked "I don't have time for that!" He said "Well then I don't have time to give you my name then." Then he walked away. I knew he felt like saying a lot more, but he was holding it in, and I could tell by his posture that he was just livid.
He fumbled through the ads after she left trying to find out which (bad) price matches she was attempting to get to help him when corporate called him, but he couldn't, so I took the time to help find the ads for him.
Today is a day off, and I have a Walgreens flyer. It started being effective yesterday. I looked through it about three times, and no, there is no milk on sale for $2.49 there, much less a premium brand like Schepps. The mean woman was just making it up. That would have been about a 7 1/2 dollar difference in price if we had given her all three gallons she wanted, and it would have been stolen money because she was lying.
The first thing wrong was that she showed me an ad for salad tomatoes for .59/lb. that was on sale at another store. We don't carry loose salad tomatoes like they do, just a three pack, but we'll usually substitute another, cheap kind of tomato.
She had a bag of expensive, on the vine tomatoes, which added up to a three or four dollar difference between the varieties. I told her we couldn't give her those tomatoes but I could get someone to go get her some of the less expensive tomatoes and I could do the price match on those. I think she was trying to pull a fast one on me because she had pulled them off the vine, but they still had the 4664 stickers on them! I told her the tomatoes she needed to get were the larger ones with the 3151 stickers on them. She was a little bit frustrated but she agreed to that. My manager went and got her about the same amount of the cheaper tomatoes.
The next thing she wanted was a deal on sodas. The other store had something like, buy 4, get one free. I explained to her we didn't do get one free deals, but that I could give her their sale price. The flyer does the math for the customer, so in smaller print they had the sale price, 4 for 10, and in large print they had the final price when you factor in the free item, which was 5 for 10. I explained to her that I couldn't give them to her for $2.00, but I would give them to her for $2.50 because that was a legitimate sales price that didn't involve the free item. She didn't even have five of them anyway! She wanted me to ask the manager about that one so I left them aside as I was trying to work my way through the rest of her price matches.
You can probably see in all this that I was trying to be as accommodating as possible and tried to find ways to still let her get price matches, even if it wasn't exactly what she had wanted.
She also brought up three gallons of Schepp's milk, which is an expensive milk that sells for around $5.00 a gallon, and she claimed that Walgreens had it on sale for $2.49. I didn't know at the time whether she was lying or not, but I suspected it for two reasons:
1. She had the ads for the other deals she was trying to get, even if she was misreading them or misinterpreting them.
2. No other customers had asked for this deal, which would have been the cheapest milk.
The cheapest milk at other grocery stores were store brands at $3.50, which we could have substituted our store brand for, but not Schepps.
We had heard earlier in the week (several times from many customers) that CVS was selling Schepp's milk for $2.79, so I offered to give her two of the gallons for $2.79 since I was fairly sure that it was on sale at CVS for that. I also informed her that she needed to bring in the ads for drug stores because we didn't have them at the store. We have a limit of two on milk price matches, so she could only match two of the milks. She wasn't happy with that either and so I had to call the manager to answer the question about the cokes and about the milk.
He told her no on both of them, because we don't do free items and you need your ads with you to price match stores we don't have the ads for (we only carry ads for other grocery stores, because the drug stores have a different sales week schedule than we do.
She lost it and demanded his name. This part was a little bit hilarious to me because not only did he have a name tag with his first name on it, but not very far away from us at all, there was a sign on the wall with his picture and his full name and job title underneath it.
He knows at this point that she's going to call corporate, get a 50 dollar gift card for her trouble, and he's probably going to get chewed out for doing his job and protecting the store assets. Even though he's acted like a total idiot to me a couple of times, and I don't really like this manager, I felt sorry for him right then.
He said "Ma'am before you get too upset will you at least let me explain why we can't do those kinds of price matches and why we have that policy?" She shrieked "I don't have time for that!" He said "Well then I don't have time to give you my name then." Then he walked away. I knew he felt like saying a lot more, but he was holding it in, and I could tell by his posture that he was just livid.
He fumbled through the ads after she left trying to find out which (bad) price matches she was attempting to get to help him when corporate called him, but he couldn't, so I took the time to help find the ads for him.
Today is a day off, and I have a Walgreens flyer. It started being effective yesterday. I looked through it about three times, and no, there is no milk on sale for $2.49 there, much less a premium brand like Schepps. The mean woman was just making it up. That would have been about a 7 1/2 dollar difference in price if we had given her all three gallons she wanted, and it would have been stolen money because she was lying.
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