Fresh Suckage: S.C.ale man

[Mara-chan]

Gotta love my manager, he'll hand me a crappy situation to handle, but he'll back me up at least. This happened just over an hour ago (as I begin typing that is).


A man comes in and talks to my manager while he's trying to get ready to close the store. We close out some of the registers about 20 mins before closing time since we don't need all 4 up. The man asks if he can return a scale that his wife bought from our store as an Xmas gift; no receipt.

A postage scale.

A LARGE postage scale.

As a gift.

WTF?

The manager, being suspicious tells him to bring it in so I can check what's going on with it. He tells me to look up the history to see when it was bought. Any electronics have a 14 day return policy and this was a $130 electronic scale. The manager took the other drawers upstairs to the moneyroom. Then the customer brings up the scale and I check the last date we sold one.

July 2008.

Then his story changes. Oh, NOW it could have been purchased at one of the two stores south of us. So I check the dates they sold the scales.

August 2008
September 2008.

WELL outside the 30 day return. I call the manager to make sure and he says "Nope, past 14 days with no receipt, sorry." So I tell the customer nope.

The customer then starts to get a little hostile and entitle-bitchy. He name drops, says

<SC> I work for <company I've never heard of> and we spend thousands of dollars here...
<me> Sorry.
<SC> If I take it to Office Depot they'd return it.
<me> They may, but we can't.
<SC> *fans out a pile of $100 bills* We do all our business here.
<me> I'm sorry. He said no.

Then he started to get very loud. A cashier at another register started to listen in, and one of our machines guys came up to act as 'security'.

<SC> GET YOUR MANAGER ON THE PHONE! HE *WILL* RETURN IT!
<me> *calm* No, he said no, I'm not going to call him again.
<SC> Fourteen days is rediculous!
<me> I'm sorry, electronics any high-risk items have to be returned within 14 days with a receipt...
<SC> THIS ISN'T HIGH RISK, IT'S $130!
<me> That makes it high risk. People steal...
<SC> *screaming* OH! NOW YOU'RE SAYING I STOLE IT!?!
<me> *still calm* No, I did NOT say that. I said...
<SC> YOU DID! YOU'RE CALLING ME A THEIF!
<me> No, I'm not. But I am asking you to leave.
<SC> GIVE ME YOUR CORPORATE NUMBER!
<me> No, you can look it up online or in the book. Goodday.
<SC> YOU'RE NOT GONNA GIVE ME YOUR CORPORATE NUMBER?!?!
<me> *still calm* Nope. You need to leave. Now.
<SC> I'LL GET YOUR NAME...
<me> Ohkay. Goodbye.
<SC> *grumble*
<me> Leave. Now. Goodbye.


The cashier turned to me and said that she heard it all, that I never called him a theif. The machines guy said he stayed up there because he knew he'd be trouble. And when I told the manager that the SC was gonna call corporate, he said "Let him. I'll stand behind you."


Ahhh... It's good to have support.

[fireheart]

What a douchewaffle. I would've banned his ass from the store if I could.

[StanFlouride]

Yeah, right. The SC with a pocket full of C-notes just happened to have a 'postage' scale with no paper work.
One of his clients swiped him a scale, traded it for some sort of powdered product but when the guy discovered it would not register anything under a gram he had no use for it so he tried to scam it back to you folks.
*all the above is ALLEGED and is not meant to accuse the douchewaffle of any illegal or nefarious activities*

[Chromatix]

I've seen the small scales that druggies use to weigh their stuff (on a police programme, I hasten to add). They're not postal scales, they're a heck of a lot smaller than that. They'd have to be, to measure to effectively pharmaceutical accuracy.

[prb]

Staples Corporate? 1-888-STAPLES. Simple. I call it maybe once a year and I have it memorized.

[cinema guy]

I read the title, read the post and said to myself, 'Where's the ale, there was no beer involved?' and then Doh!

[Mara-chan]

Over the years we had to change out our scales and how we sell them.

We used to have a small hand scale. Basically you held it up and cliped a letter to it to determine if it was overweight for a stamp. Of course druggies ended up using it as a pocket scale to divide out their crap.

We used to have many scales on display, now most of them are locked up. Some of the digital ones are accurate to 1gram and show not only postage but also the weight. Yup, those got used for drugs.

And now if a scale gets returned, we actually are supposed to check for 'residue'... just in case.

I've had customers claim they needed the 1 gram accuracy because they were MEASURING NUTS AND BOLTS. Ok, I can possibly see using an accurate scale to measure SMALL items like that, assuming you know the weight of individual bolts and such... but A) this person held their fingers an inch apart describing the bolt and B) they looked incapable of the math involved.

The scale this guy wanted to return was a heavy duty one. Used for boxes not letters. I think it was 10gram accuracy or worse.



And I wasn't about to give this assmunch a minute more of my time to tell him the corporate number. He's making a scene in front of my store, he's gone.

[wagegoth]

Yeah, right. The SC with a pocket full of C-notes just happened to have a 'postage' scale with no paper work.
One of his clients swiped him a scale, traded it for some sort of powdered product but when the guy discovered it would not register anything under a gram he had no use for it so he tried to scam it back to you folks.
*all the above is ALLEGED and is not meant to accuse the douchewaffle of any illegal or nefarious activities*

I thought exactly the same thing.

[Nashida]

I read the title, read the post and said to myself, 'Where's the ale, there was no beer involved?' and then Doh!

You did the same thing as me. Where's the beer? Not here.

S.C.ale...sc...ah. Scale. I gets it, I gets it.

[Pagan]

They'd have to be, to measure to effectively pharmaceutical accuracy.

Gah, torsion scales. The bane of my existence in lab. Although I got pretty fast at balancing the damn things.

I read the title, read the post and said to myself, 'Where's the ale, there was no beer involved?' and then Doh!

You did the same thing as me. Where's the beer? Not here.

S.C.ale...sc...ah. Scale. I gets it, I gets it.

Glad I'm not the only one. >.>

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Staples Corporate? 1-888-STAPLES. That Was Easy.

Fixed that for ya.

[Danno]

Yeah, I'm gonna lay the odds of the guy actually calling corporate as being similar to the odds of spontaneous human combustion. Not that I'm accusing him of anything, of course.