Back to the store from which you came!

[Vickitoria]

So, tonight had been a rather slow night at work so far. Nothing major going on, just the regular returns. Then a woman comes up and tells me that she needs a price adjustment on a couple things she bought the week before that were on sale now. Not a big deal, it should only take a minute. Little did I know what was waiting for me in that purse of hers. She pulls out the receipt and I see long blocks of the same item and I hope and pray, but no. She needs a price adjustment on all of them.

Me: Ma'am, do you have any other shopping to do?
SC: I want to see if you have any more of those shirts.
Me: You should go check while I start on this, it's going to take awhile.

She leaves and while she's gone I check the slip and of course she didn't buy them from our store, meaning we're taking the hit in sales for the return while the store got the whole sale which totaled around $500.

I kid you not, it took me 20 minutes to do the entire thing.
Process: Type UPC code. Select option 4 [reason for return - price adjustment] Select option 6 [reason for price change - customer satisfaction] Hit 'enter' to accept original price. Type in 4.00 for the new price. Hit 'enter'. Wait at least 5 seconds after each item or the register will say system busy and you need to clear it and wait 10 seconds for it to calm down. It seemed as if the further I went, the longer I had to wait.

I had to do that individually for each item. After she left I counted and it was over 50. We lost out on $177.01 because she needed the price adjustments "I'm so glad my daughter noticed in the flier!". Now, I don't exactly blame her for wanting the money, because hey, that's a lot but while I was doing all of this after informing her it was going to take a while, she stood next to me, sighing, looking at her watch, and complaining on the phone that it was taking so long.

There were several other people in need of returns as well so I had to call another girl up there to help with those while I finished up hers and she had the nerve to shoot the other people dirty looks as they got taken care of faster than she was.

[ottid]

Lucky person. I will have to keep that in mind when I am in whereever you are from. Is there a certain time period that the customer is allowed to do the price adjustment for? I wouldn't do it to be SC, just more if something came on real special.

The way I see it, you pay the price that is advertised at the time. It is just your bad luck if you buy before or after the sale. I feel sorry for the people that miss Back to School specials tho, but I guess I shouldn't, they know it happens every year!

[Vickitoria]

Lucky person. I will have to keep that in mind when I am in whereever you are from. Is there a certain time period that the customer is allowed to do the price adjustment for? I wouldn't do it to be SC, just more if something came on real special.

The way I see it, you pay the price that is advertised at the time. It is just your bad luck if you buy before or after the sale. I feel sorry for the people that miss Back to School specials tho, but I guess I shouldn't, they know it happens every year!

I work at Mart of the K and there is a 7 day policy so you can't bring in crazy old receipts and expect adjustments. Of course, this then starts the bouts of "Well, can I return it and re-buy it?" Uhh...no, as that is still a price adjustment.

I generally don't mind doing them, but in massive orders like that, it's just irritating.

[PepperElf]

and in some states by law they have to tell you if an item is going on sale within x amount of days
and i think some states have a specific grace period for brinigng items back for the sale price too


but either way what an sc for giving you a list that long and expecting it to take 5 seconds
even after you told her it would be a while

[JustaCashier]

Oh god, I feel your pain...

That would come up, fortunately not too often, at my hardware store job. People would buy something three days before a storewide sale would come along. Even though it was clearly posted the the sale was not valid on previously purchased items, we'd get the occasional whiner, that management would bend for. It sounds like our sytem worked better for returns, than yours, but still...

The more common "killer return" for us were the plumbing ones. A contractor, or even homeowner, would overbuy on all of the fittings. Tees, elbows, couplings, nipples, etc and then return the extras. Understandable they'd purchase in that manner, that way they (hopefully) wouldn't have to make ten trips to the store for one project, and then could just make a single trip back for the return..

The most time consuming, were when they had multiple, long receipts. From either several jobs, or that occasion they did
have to make those ten trips.

For the most part, they were pretty understanding when I told them it would take awhile, because we had to locate each item on a reciept, and mark the quantity returned. But, of course, we'd occasionally get the ones that were in a hurry, and couldn't understand why we had to check each item off. Then of course there were the impatient ones waiting behind them in line.

When possible, most of the other "regular" cashiers would call a return customer to their register, or even come up to the return desk to help match up like parts, and count.

My favorite customers on those occasions were the ones that would highlight the applicable items on each receipt, provided they marked the correct item. The receipt format could be a bit confusing what with how the SKU #, item desc, and price would line up. But, even if they screwed up, I appreciated the effort.

My absolutely very most favorites, were the ones that marked the receipt correctly, and would make pleasant small talk with me, and would say "no hurry" (in a non-condescending tone, of course). Bonus points for them, if they had a part that was not on a receipt, and would say, "that's okay, I'll just keep that."

Oh, also when they would try to organize all the like parts together, from the mumbo-jumbo that was in their box or bag(s), and would pace it with me checking off the receipts, and entering the info into the POS. Not too fast and impatient-y like, nor not too slow and making the transaction longer-than-it-already-is like.

Mike

[Hobbs]

So glad we don't do that in my store. I'd probably kill half our customers for that crap.

[ottid]

and in some states by law they have to tell you if an item is going on sale within x amount of days
and i think some states have a specific grace period for brinigng items back for the sale price too

So what happened to, uh, I can't think of the term at the moment. But I guess you would just say such and such item is coming on sale and not how much the discount would be? In these cases is it likely to come up at the cash register and places like WalMart who I am guessing would have a large amount of items on sale at once, they would tell the customers when it came up on the register to say said item was going on sale? Ok I think I may be confusing people including myself, but if that makes sense to anyone, am I right? I would hate to have to memorize every item that was going to be on special...

[VComps]

Ye Gods, Vickitoria... that's craptacular. At our store we have insane coupon ladies, so I feel your pain.

Out of curiosity, does your till have a quantity key so you could do those returns en masse? I ask because ours does, but you need an override to actually use it.

For future reference, and to save your sanity, if you have any more of that item in stock, have someone grab you one and just scan the barcode.

[artifical sweetner]

if youre going to save almost 200 bucks i dont think its going to kill you to wait an extra 15 min of your life...

[Vickitoria]

Ye Gods, Vickitoria... that's craptacular. At our store we have insane coupon ladies, so I feel your pain.

Out of curiosity, does your till have a quantity key so you could do those returns en masse? I ask because ours does, but you need an override to actually use it.

For future reference, and to save your sanity, if you have any more of that item in stock, have someone grab you one and just scan the barcode.

If she had bought multiples of the same thing, I could use the quantity button, but sadly she either bought same thing in all different colors, resulting in different numbers, or the same thing in different sizes, also resulting in different numbers.

@Justa: We have a few people that thankfully understand it's going to take a while, and we really appreciate them. Those are the people that I go out of my way for to help. I'll check and see if anything on their receipt has gone on sale, etc.

[VComps]

If she had bought multiples of the same thing, I could use the quantity button, but sadly she either bought same thing in all different colors, resulting in different numbers, or the same thing in different sizes, also resulting in different numbers.

Ouch ouch ouch.