The Old Switcheroo

[Clintmax]

This happened a few years ago, but I will never forget it.

I was assisting a young guy (early 20's) with CD burners. He looked at several, asked me a few questions, then decided on the most expensive HP we had. I rang him up and out the door he went.

An hour goes by and here he comes again with the burner in tow.

SC: "I found this at Best Buy for cheaper, so I bought it there and I want to return this one I bought earlier."

OK. So, we go to the customer service counter. I check out the seal on the box, it's still intact, so I process the return and give him his cash back. Out the door he goes again, and I put the burner back in lockup.

Next day...
A couple come in and want the same burner, so I go into lockup, pick up the one the younger guy returned, sell it to them and away THEY go. Thirty minutes later, here they come again, the burner in tow. The guy lays it on the counter and just says; "Look inside."

OK...so I open the box, and there, all wrapped up in paper towels, is the oldest 3.5" floppy disk drive I think I've ever seen!

The guy says when he opened the seal and then the box and saw paper towels, he knew something was wrong. Of course, I apologized and got him a new one, and I *knew* what had happened. You see, the box the burner came in had flaps on the bottom that fold together. The stupid SC had opened the box from the bottom by unfolding the flaps, took out the burner and placed his old 3.5" in there and then refolded the flaps back together, leaving the seal on the box completely untouched!

Of course all the information he gave for the return was fake. Fake name, fake address, fake phone number, etc. So the SOB got away with it, and I was one pissed off individual. I guess that's why I'm so tough with returns now.

[Enjis]

The worst switcheroo I ever had was in the pen department of our area. I was new to the department, and did not know all the tricks. A man comes to our display, and looks over the Mont Blanc pens (the most expensive ones we carry)
He points to the sterling silver fountain pen (again, the most expensive, at almost 700 dollars.)
So, I get one out from stock, open the box, show him the nice shiny pen, no dents or scratches. He says it is for his father, and his brother is upstairs, shopping. Brother will decide if they will give the pen to Dad. If not, it can be returned, right?
Of course, with receipt.
So, just before closing time, he comes back. He wants to return the pen. Not being a total fool, I open the box, just to make sure there was a pen in it. There was, and it also had the gold sticker on it...but it was dull...not shiny at all. I was suspicious. I was too new, and too afraid to do any accusing, or calling security or a manager...so I processed the return. (voiding out his charge slip, instead of giving a credit.)
After he left, I looked more closely at the pen. I unscrewed the cap. There was still ink in the ink well, and there was a big dent on one side. The sticker easily came off.
The man just wanted to exchange his old (same pen) one for a new, undented one. I was SO mad, I fumed about it for WEEKS. Security said they could do nothing about it at that point....sadly. It NEVER happened to me that way again, you can bet, not in the eight years I worked in that department.

[booger]

I had a lady yell at me because I opened her box to check it this morning. "I just bought it, you don't need to check it, I never opened it, you're wasting my time!!!"
I said, "I'm sorry, I have to check every box," and continued with the return. She suddenly had a change of heart and apologized to me, saying she was just grumpy because she was running late for work.
But I make sure to check boxes because I don't want to take back boxes filled with rocks or anything.

...oh, one time this guy returned a big cooler, said it was brand new so no one bothered to check the inside. Boy were the next customers upset when they found old smelly blood from the first customer's recent hunting trip. That happened before I worked for the customer service counter but it's a story I've heard from others who have worked there for a long time.

[batmoody]

These are perfect examples of why returns are becoming more and more of a hassle for customers. You get the few who are low life scammers and it ruins it for everyone else. And everyone else can never seem to understand why we are so picky when it comes to returns. Its because of the low life scammers who ruin for everyone else!!!!!
Scammers me off!

[Amalthea]

Oh, man, don't get me STARTED on returns. I won't go off on a rant, I'll just share a story with you from last week. This is an example of why my manager is way nicer than me.

Lady brings in an audio book. Opened, no receipt. Our policy is with audio materials we will only exchange for same if opened. (Everyone has a burner these days). She doesn't even have a receipt. She's upset because it's an audio book, and not a movie. It's the audio book "Flags of Our Fathers". That movie isn't even out in THEATERS yet, why does she think we'd have the movie? Especially since our store doesn't even SELL movies! And the box looks nothing LIKE a movie. I mean, if you've seen the boxes for these books on CDs, the're not plastic like DVD cases, they're cardboard, they're about 4 times thicker than a DVD case, and shorter, closer to a cube shape. But she insists that one of our employees told her it was the movie, and now she wants to return it cuz it's not. I'm gonna take a wild guess that if any sort of conversation actually happened (which I doubt. I think she's making it up to cover her own stupidity.) the customer asked it in some wildly unintelligible way that made the employee think she was asking "Is this the book that's been made into a movie?" Anyway, if it was me, I'd be like, I'm sorry there was a misunderstanding, but you don't even have a receipt, so I can't process a return for you. But my manager was nice and disregarded the standard policy and gave her store credit. Now you know why I would not make a good manager. I wouldn't let anyone return ANYTHING without a receipt for ANY reason.

[Clintmax]

I had a lady yell at me because I opened her box to check it this morning. "I just bought it, you don't need to check it, I never opened it, you're wasting my time!!!"

If someone said this to ME, it would make me all the more suspicious and I'd double lucky special check the contents. I might even take my own sweet time doing it too.

[Clintmax]

These are perfect examples of why returns are becoming more and more of a hassle for customers. You get the few who are low life scammers and it ruins it for everyone else.

You got it, Bat! That company now has a computer system that tracks returns. Once a customer reaches a certain dollar amount in returns, the system will decline any further returns for that person....forever! Not even management can override it either.

One of my customers told me yesterday that she had found out that if you do a lot of returns, it is impacting your credit rating now, and will lower your beacon score. Wow...I never imagined that. I wonder if it's true?

[CrazedClerk]

You got it, Bat! That company now has a computer system that tracks returns. Once a customer reaches a certain dollar amount in returns, the system will decline any further returns for that person....forever! Not even management can override it either.

One of my customers told me yesterday that she had found out that if you do a lot of returns, it is impacting your credit rating now, and will lower your beacon score. Wow...I never imagined that. I wonder if it's true?

I do know some businesses place limits on returns but as for the credit rating thing, who knows?

I ALWAYS check the contents on returns, no exceptions. I don't care how busy the store is or how angry the customer might be, I have to know that the product being returned is actually in the condition it's expected to be in.

[Becks]

Reminds me of a guy I once knew. He'd go to Wal-Mart, get some decent speakers, put the old ones in the box, and return them. I don't think Wal-Mart ever caught on.

[shenzee]

My aunt did this with a ceiling fan from Home Depot. But she was so audacious she bought the new fan, installed it and then put her old fan in the box and actually returned to the store and threw a fit about them selling her an old ceiling fan and demanded her money back. I tried explaining that she's one of the reasons why things are so expensive, but you know how those stupid customers are......

[Enjis]

I was talking to one of our managers about a return a few days ago. She said she was told by HER higher-ups in the company to 'make the customer happy, and get them out of there'.
She said it sadly, but what can you do. So, if the customer makes a fuss, we take it back. Old, worn, not our merchandise...makes no diff. I'm still calling a manager in those cases. I don't care if I've been there for 29 years...I'm not doing it myself.

[Sunsetsky]

I don't even want to work in the service desk at work. That's where most of our SCs go. I have heard stories though. Our managers take back ANYTHING from customers. A woman stole several bags of dirt (several hundred dollars) from our garden center and managed to return it to us.

[One-Fang]

You got it, Bat! That company now has a computer system that tracks returns. Once a customer reaches a certain dollar amount in returns, the system will decline any further returns for that person....forever! Not even management can override it either.

Sounds a bit harsh.

So the guy who returns the $1,400 ride-on mower because he'd had continual mechanical problems with and no longer trusts the brand is screwed from then on, while the woman who habitually gets in some free retail therapy by buying and then returning $5 items gets to carry on... (at least for a while).

I see the point of the concept, but think it'd make much more sense on number of returns than dollar value. You have to return 10 things you've bought from this shop? Either this store doesn't sell things you like and we should part company now or you are scamming ... and we should part company now.

[Spiffy McMoron]

So the guy who returns the $1,400 ride-on mower because he'd had continual mechanical problems with and no longer trusts the brand is screwed from then on, while the woman who habitually gets in some free retail therapy by buying and then returning $5 items gets to carry on... (at least for a while).

That's what happened at one of my old jobs-a guy who would come by often and get parts from us was a guy who ran a taxi company-and he got any part he could from us. However, when he would bring back a core (also known as a casting-a smaller refund for your used part, which would get refurbished and resold) the computer would read that as a return-pretty quickly, he hit his maximum limit. Fortunately, management could override it.

[Jester]

Another of the happy benefits of working food service: we don't have to deal with returns! Food being sent back, sure, but no one is going to come off the street and try to return a steak! They have their own ways of trying to scam us, but returns, thankfully, are not among them. Yay us!