Readers Digest Flimming Jixed Me!!!!

[sweetj82]

I will admit that my mom and I could be considered "those coupon ladies" as we do quite a bit of couponing. As in, buying 6 newspapers if the coupons are good.

Let's also add that we have a large family, and let's face it, it gets expensive to feed so many mouths.

However, not all "coupon ladies" are SCs.

1. We keep within the store limits for doubling/tripling and know the rules for both by heart.
2. We have our coupons out and ready. Rarely, if ever, do we have an expired coupon in our hand. If we do, then it's an honest mistake, and we apologize for it.
3. We usually go during the day when everyone else is usually at work (my mother has a stay-at-home job) so that we don't tie up lines during peak hours. We also warn people behind us that we do have coupons and it might take awhile.
4. My mother makes a point to get to know the managers and the day shift cashiers. By now, the managers know that my mother knows what she's doing and often congratulate her on her deals. We also make a point to write in positive comments every time we get a survey on our receipts as well as letting the managers know every time we get great service.
5. Yes, we do double up on coupons when its allowed. (See #1)

As for the spending 6 hours in the store, we usually do all our pre-work (matching sales with coupons) at home before we head out. And while my mother has yet to get a deal like JustaCashier mentioned, we have saved over $5000 this year alone thanks to sales and coupons.

Now if our behavior is sucky, please do tell me.

i need to learn what you do

[Catwoman2965]

I cringe too whenever I see a new story or read an article about this practice. yes, in some instances if you ask nicely, you might get a discount, but many times, as in my store, as an associate, we are NOT ALLOWED to give any discounts that are not already in place. We could be fired

What I have done, sometimes, is if a customer is nice, or spending quite a bit, and we have a coupon already out there, which normally they must present, but we don't have to scan, is give them the discount that is given with the coupon. But if they're nasty, no way. they get nothing and like it.

I myself once got a nice discount simply by being polite. When I moved into my apt, i needed to buy a thru-the-wall ac for my bedroom. The store that rhymes with "fears" is the only one who had it. So i toddled in, having already done my homework, and ordered one. I had a choice of the previous year's model or the new one. Last year's was about $30 cheaper, with no difference, so I opted for that one. After two cancelled deliveries, i concluded it was probably not available, even though it showed it was. Also, it had been discounted another $30-40, so it was now quite a bit less than the newer model.

So I called the salesman, intending to order the new model, and was planning on asking for it, at the price I had paid. He went one better. He gave me the new model, at the further marked-down price of the old one. So essentially, the delivery was free!

[Justsomegirl]

Oh where I work if the SC grips and conplans they some times will get what they want. If they don't want something hard it is just earsyer to give in that way you can get rid of them.

And when we can't they want to speek with a superviser. So I tell them that I will get them over to customer service. There like NO I want a superviser.. um customer service is basicly the same thing!!

I heard this one women was talking with a supervier and she was told I can do this for you. She is like NO I want you to do this. The sup said I can't she said fine I want to speack with your Supervier.. I am it there is no one heir!!! HA HA

[JustaCashier]

Oooops!

Sorry, Indigo! I meant to put in a disclaimer that I have no problem with anyone trying to save money, I try to do so as well. Just forgot to say so after typing out my rather long post.

My main issue, in the scenario I described, are the types of customer behavior we have all dealt with, where a customer will take the advice of the consumer expert or whomever, which probably isn't sucky behavior in and of itself, but there are those select few EW's that push for discounts or special offers, beyond which is currently advertised, or beyond store policy.

Then, when they can't take "sorry, no" as an answer, they demand to talk to a manager, thus wasting the time of employees and other customers. Or the ones that are terribly disorganized, that they waste a bunch of time. (probably the same ones that dig for the checkbook after their cartload of stuff has been rung up.)

Plus, I was kinda exxagerating too.

So, really, in a nutshell, my comments were about those with the worst behavior.

I'd be willing to bet that competitor's store employees and managers would be willing to clobber with a salmon the staff at the store your family shops at to steal you away from them!

I'll do an ETA on my above post with a disclamier.

Mike

[aurelemsrealm]

Actually the place I used to work at did just that. We'd shift a trouble person around until they finally shut up.

Too bad we couldn't do that with customers in person. I wonder how many rounds some SCs would make before they finally gave up...?

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

That, plus the "coupon ladies"some of the newscasts feature, that spend six hours clipping and/or printing out coupons, put them in their little organizer, and then spend another six hours at the grocery store comparing sale prices to coupon prices.

Then they get to the register, and tie up one cashier for an hour, pulling out the appropriate coupons, that no matter how well organized she has them, still take forever to process.

Of course, she'll also boast that on such and such product(s), she has a store coupon, a mfr coupon, plus it's already on sale, and she gets it for one tenth of the regular price!

Ummmm.....what is she gonna do on the occasions a store does not offer doubling on coupons, and/or combining coupons with items that are already on sale?

Well! She's gonna nicely, (yeah right, or even if, how long will being nice last if she doesn't get her way?) ask for a manager! (Not to mention yet more employee and other customers' time wasted).

So, once all of her 137 items are rung up, she beams while proudly proclaiming that she just got $1,468.97 worth of groceries for $0.34!!

Mike


ETA 7/23: I meant to add a disclaimer, when I originally typed this up last night, that I realize not all "coupon ladies" are sucky. I was just describing the worst type.

Sorry!

Please see my updated post below.

Even worse are the people who will rbeak their orders into several separate transactions just so they can use all their coupons.

This needs to die in a fire, and it will if I ever get in charge. Simply because it completely fucks store operations. So naturally the swamp says and does nothing whenever somebody tries this.

There's a coupon for 25 cents off a can of soup, and the coupon is good for a maximum of two cans per coupon. So here comes somebody with 20 cans of soup and 10 coupons, and by God they will use all their coupons if they have to carry their soup home in your skull, so they break it up into 10 transactions.

Which in turn causes the checkout lines to back up to Timbuktu, because it just takes a long time to scan, accept payment for, give change for, and give receipts for 2 cans of soup 10 times. And my store, like most others, has a rule stating that backup cashiers have to be called to run registers if the checkout lines become long enough.

And just because you call for backup cashiers doesn't mean they won't show up. The floor people may have customers of their own to help. So you're just hoping people show up to help get the lines down, so that people don't get frustrated and abandon their carts of merchandise and shop elsewhere.

And even if you do get people to help at the checkouts, now there's nobody on the floor to help customers, do carryouts, answer phone calls, and so on. So that results in people deciding the shop elsewhere.

Seriously, I'm not going to throw the store into total chaos and inconvenience many people just so one person can get a bargain.

I have no problem with people who play by the rules when using coupons. It's the abusers who give the good coupon users a bad name. Unfortunately many stores are just to spineless to tell these coupon abusers to shove off.

[The Electric Fetus]

i've seen that happen though.

at the call center i worked at, i did see at least two people on my lvl of the organizational chart [albeit with quite a bit of seniority] act as supervisors with customers with supe's approval as she was busy........ never say never.

[lordlundar]

A lot of times they can give the discount...Whether or not they keep their job afterward is another story.

Don't I know this one (not my doing)

A little background is needed here. To start off with, CDs are not sold in Audio, they are sold in Entertainment, a completely different department with completely different guidelines. We are also one of the lowest markup departments in the store, so we have to sell a LOT of merchandise to make up our numbers. Giveaways done improperly cause our numbers to plummet and it can get nearly impossible to offset it if it's priced high enough, otherwise it's just tough to do. Properly done in a package allows us to offset the costs by putting the loss onto the department it's packaged to.

It was Boxing Day and one of my duties that day (between going insane from customers) was to go through the list of sold items in my department for the past couple of hours to check for anything unusual and investigate them. Running through the list, I found something that would qualify. A $35 CD sold for a penny. (the lowest we could do and still sell it) Continuing through the list, I found several more like this, totaling over $300 lost.

Yeah, Me, good mood? Hell No!

I go to the first salesperson on the list and find out that the reason why he did it was because the CD wasn't counting for his numbers. I had to grab a supervisor to finish it, because at that point, I would have killed him. Supervisor talks to him, then talks to his manager and it turned out that he did not get approval for doing it at all. The other audio staff saw it and started to tell their customers to grab a CD and it would be sold for free. The audio manager had to tell them that no, it wasn't allowed without our permission and if we grant it, only if it's packaged in so they can take the hit as opposed to us.

I spent the next hour asking my sup if I could hang one of the audio guys on one of our sign pillars as an example. I was told no. But then, I had a dislike toward them as it was, bu that's a different story.

[Indigo]

Oooops!

Sorry, Indigo! I meant to put in a disclaimer that I have no problem with anyone trying to save money, I try to do so as well. Just forgot to say so after typing out my rather long post.

Not a problem - I know how frustrating it can be when people are EWs about saving money. There's saving money, and there's being a total PITA about it.

You don't want to know how many people my momma and I have almost smacked because they seem to think that it's perfectly okay to come and flip through our binders of coupons and bug us about them.

And my mom and I despise coupon abusers because then we have to go prove that not all of us who coupon are morons. But the managers have started a habit of giving us the new cashiers so they can learn the couponing rules - simply because my mother knows the rules better than most of the veteran cashiers.

[Exaspera]

You don't want to know how many people my momma and I have almost smacked because they seem to think that it's perfectly okay to come and flip through our binders of coupons and bug us about them.

You mean they rummage through stuff in your cart?! Do they try to get coupons from you?

[Ironclad Alibi]

I spent the next hour asking my sup if I could hang one of the audio guys on one of our sign pillars as an example. I was told no. But then, I had a dislike toward them as it was, bu that's a different story.

Will we be reading that story soon?

[Indigo]

You mean they rummage through stuff in your cart?! Do they try to get coupons from you?

They have asked us for "our extra coupons. Because after all, you two really aren't going to use them all." Cue us yanking away our coupon binders and growling. No one has rummaged through the stuff in our carts yet but we quickly learned to never leave our binders unattended. I have had people just walk up and flip through my binder, ignoring my protests until I say "EXCUSE ME" and slam the book shut on their hands.

And of course there's the jokers who constantly ask "Where did you get all those coupons? And don't tell me from the newspaper." Cue sarcastic replies about a mythical coupon fairy and rolled eyes.

[lordlundar]

Will we be reading that story soon?

Naturally. I might as well put it here.

So the lead up to this. I'm in Edmonton, and this was when the Oilers made it to the finals against the Hurricanes(hockey by the way). Needless to say, when the Oilers made it to the playoffs, the store tends to get quiet during game days, so every sale is damn near vital. Needless to say, we had a fair bit of downtime.

So, first day of the Oiler's playoff games, and we had almost the entire staff in home theater watching the game on the big screen. There is no embellishment, at least 20 staff in the store at the time, and the only ones not watching the game in HT was myself, one cashier, and one CSR. Everyone else was watching the game. Now, though we didn't have many customers come in, we were far from closed. So a customer would come in, ask for help in a department, and I had to go grab someone, who I had to practically drag over to the customer. And these were the times I actually managed to do it. Most of the time I had to help the customer out myself. I was pissed. Not helped by the fact that I had to work a morning shift the next day.

Morning meeting the next day, I found out I wasn't the only one pissed off. The store manager was practically screamed at by regional because our store had more complaints that prior night than it usually gets in a month. The SM asked who worked the prior night, I raised my hand and said I wasn't impressed, and relayed what had occurred. The order was simple. No playoff games in the store, period. The first two nights it was ignored and people got written up for it. They realized that if they wanted their jobs, they had to stay in their departments. A compromise was made in that every department was allowed one source that they could use to keep tabs on the games. Audio thought they had a brilliant idea though...

This was when satellite radio was taking off and we had a working demo in the audio department. This meant that they could play the game in their department. Slight problem, the speakers on the demo were low powered and the sound couldn't travel very far. So they decided to grab the aux input connector from the high powered stereo in the next aisle, plug it into the satellite unit and crank up the volume. Now they could hear it throughout their department. Smart plan, yes? Well, if they were sealed off, that would be true, but there were two problems:

1. The cord was blocking off an aisle in audio, which is not only a company problem, but a fire hazard and illegal.
2. Entertainment has all their big ticket sales items in close proximity of that setup, so our sales where we need to talk with the customer are going to be there.

After the second lost sale because the customer couldn't hear me (I couldn't hear myself as a matter of fact) I was pissed off. The Manager wouldn't do anything about it as he was in HT watching the game. Halfway through losing a third sale, I had enough, excused myself for a moment, and went over and unplugged the connection. I finished up the sale, the customer was happy and I made some money out of it. Audio was pissed and demanded that I not do it again. I told them that if they plug it in again, not only would I disconnect it, I would cut the connection outright. Cue the manager coming over to try and be diplomatic (HA!) then said I could be written up if I cut the wire. I told him fine, they plug it in again, I would phone regional and let them know what was happening, including the lost sales and that he was encouraging it. I would also make a call to the fire department and inform them of the fire hazard. Considering that regional orders to not have the game on in the store period was still supposed to be followed, there would be a massive shitstorm coming if I did so that would result in at least 2 managers losing their jobs. Manager thought I was bluffing, I told him I had the cell numbers of the three regional managers and was almost at the phone. Realizing that the only way he was going to keep his job was to shut down the radio, he did so.

Next day I found out that my estimate was accurate. Head office got more complaints about the volume and one mentioned how I resolved it. I got praised by HO, audio was told specifically that the next person to pull that stunt would be fired outright, and a final compromise was in place. Every department was allowed one device to play the game at a relatively low volume. As well, any staff putting priority on the game over customers would find themselves suspended until the playoffs were over. If that was ignored, then the store would be in a multimedia lockdown for the duration of the playoffs, where the store would lose it's cable signal, satellite signal, and the only audio would be the music that entertainment played. That finally brought some peace to the store and allowed us to actually get some sales. Audio never did forgive me for shutting down their little deafening broadcast though.

[Whiskey]

"nowadays even low-level employees have the power to discount 10 - 15%."

This is called "out of context." I can give a 20% discount if I feel the need. My manager, actually is the one who can, but she gives me her card so if I need to give it, I can.

Heres the context. Its a 20% employee discount.

It is, technically, a true fact I have the power to give a 20% discount. Because it was afforded to me and its only for employees are useless, un-needed points!

[Darkforge]

Oh I hate these articles with a burning passion. Particularly the few I've read that mention that asking for a supervisor is useless because "the next person you will speak to is simply another rep calling themselves a supervisor; they have no more power or seniority than the representative who transfered you to them". Whoever came up with that pile of steaming bull waste should have terrible, terrible things happen to them. That's not the way it works in the call center where I work, and I actually doubt any call center at all in the world works that way. A supervisor IS a supervisor.

actually that does happen in my place, but only in my department, which is a department of two. We are both skilled complaints handers and although I am the supervisor Iw ill sometimes pass calls to my collegue, not because they need to be escalated, but because quite often an irate customer will react differently to a different voice who comes at them from a different angle.

That said us two are the ONLY two in the entire company who can do this,a nd if a customer has a complaint that is in genuine need of escalation we do pass it on to our managers/ appropriate departments