unbelievable returns

[danegrous_21]

yesterday we had a woman come try to return a"damage" product to our store, i was a under amour hoodie. what was wrong with it. the drawstring came out in the washer . yes she wants a new one b/c it came out in the washer. well since we are in south texas winter is closing up quick here(though it still unusally cold still) and we dont have anymore or its on clearence, which means even if we had one she was goin to get clearence price i think. well we couldnt find one on the floor and not even sure what the item master book had to say. everyone knew this woman was out of her mind for asking this even our secruity gaurd for the company(the sometimes in store uniform or plain clothes one.) she didnt like this deal either but it if we had one we would have ahd to give it to her b/c of store policy even though no one like it. im glad we didnt find one and she said she would just keep it and she didnt have time for this. sigh, im tired of this.

[Spiffy McMoron]

I remember, back in the bad old days of Crappy Tire, a fairly elderly gentleman came in with an air pump that didn't work anymore. I thought that he wanted a new one, and he even said that he'd had it for nigh on 10 years or so. I dig one out that was similar to his (broken) one in features (It had a built in flashlight, I remember) and helped him up to customer service. The cashier rang it up and asked for his money.

Old guy: "What? No, no, no, I want a free one."
Cashier: "Why?"
Old guy: "'Cause this one is broken!"

Turns out the guy thought that the warrenty was still good. Even if it was, it wouldn't be much good, since the product was no longer in our system, and he didn't have a receipt of any kind. I can't remember how it all got sorted out, unfortunately.

[Worker-Intellectual]

I remember, back in the bad old days of Crappy Tire,

Gah! Don't remind me!

One of my jobs there would be to take all the crap people returned and put it back on the shelf or in the back (if it's not broken) or whatever... We have a 90 day return policy. One time I got a couple little plastic thingies. I could not for the life of me figure out what they were or what they were for for, so I went to the computer.

Turns out they were incative, and the last sale was 4 years ago and the last time we ordered them was in 1998... we wound up just writing them off because we didn't know what to do with them.

[Cia]

The tie string came out of the hoodie and she wanted a new hoodie? Was she frelling nuts?!

Give her a piece of paper with the following instructions and a diagram:
Place one end of the tie string under the clip of a pen, push pen into hole where string is supposed to be and push through to other end, remove pen.

[Kusanagi]

When I used to sell mattresses, we had one woman want to make a return on a bed she bought about two weeks previously.

Why? She bought the bed for her elderly mother in law and she, well...lost control of her bodily functions during the night and thought she was entitled to a free one.

Too bad for her, it's actually against federal regulations to take back stained mattresses due to the biohazard. The funny part, the salesman tried to sell her the mattress pad to protect it but she didn't want to spend the extra 50 on a 2000 dollar bed.

Not sure how it got sorted out but I think our manager told her to pound sand.

[MadMike]

The home improvements store where I worked had a bad habit of taking back stuff we didn't even sell. I remember having this conversation once with one of the office people:

"Where did that colored plexiglass come from?"

"A customer returned it."

"Uh... we don't sell colored plexiglass."

(Deer-in-headlights look)

Not surprisingly, they went out of business ages ago.

[Spiffy McMoron]

She bought the bed for her elderly mother in law and she, well...lost control of her bodily functions during the night and thought she was entitled to a free one.

Allow me to be the first one to say:

On a semi-related note, my buddy works at a Staples. He started there as a "Furniture Consultatant" or something like that, so he would naturally know product warrenties. Apparently, part of the extended warrenty covers stains made by fluids-coffee, pop, and also "bodily fluids". It doesn't specify which ones, though.

Also, according to him, part of the warrenty covers breakage due to sitting on the desk or what have you. We also took that to mean that you could get away with returning the desk after getting jiggy on it and breaking it--although you will probably get a few smirks from the return department. You might want to return it to a store where you don't know anyone, if that was the case.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Safety pins work well on the drawstrings, too.

I had a girl once return a book with a receipt that was 18 months old. Our return policy was 30 days, though if you have a receipt you can get store credit any time as long as the book is sellable (I've taken back perfectly sellable books with a 5 year old receipt ). This book was a study guide that was updated every year, so it was obviously out of date (and therefore out of print--we don't take back out of print books). She argued with me and I ended up giving it to her but I was sooo pissed off. I didn't hide it very well, either. Actually, I was thinking of posting that one under Oops....

[nick1091]

At the CD store I worked at in college, we sold several CDs on a consignment basis for local bands, rappers, etc.

One day someone returned a CD by an rapper whose name I can't recall. The CD was called "100% Gangsta S__t".

The reason for return was that one of the songs on the CD turned out to be sort of an r&b ballad. I refused the return, with the logic being that it was just the album's title, not the store's gaurantee of said s__t's gangsta quotient.

[thesusanturpin]

The tie string came out of the hoodie and she wanted a new hoodie? Was she frelling nuts?!

Yes. Yes, she was.

We get people like this all the time [I work with danegrous21] who return things we don't even buy. Our store managers let them walk all over us :[ We had some really random stuff in our returns after Christmas that we don't sell... things like brands we don't sell, items we don't carry, even stuff that doesn't even LOOK like it belongs at our store. Sigh, retail.

[zzapp the witch]

If I broke a desk by getting jiggy on it, and found out it was covered under warranty/returnable.......I would BRAG!

(I'm a bad person).

[Department stores *sigh*]

lol had a convo with some pals and a manager at work today without even thinking of this thread.

1. Woman calls in demanding replacement for her year and a half old water cooler. Proceeds to call back every hour to check our stock.

2. Individual returns camera. Camera box doesnt contain camera but a bag of sand instead.

3. PsP returned. Instead of PSP inside there is a bag of water being held together by ripped pages of the bible. Was 'sealed' (with homemade seal) so associate apparently didnt check. Had the same weight of a PSP. Kinda a thorough theif

[bigjimaz]

I won't go into any details but please imagine, if you will, the returns we used to get at the "adult toy store" I used to work at, and we got them, even though the 12 signs we had around the store said "ALL SALES FINAL."

SC...I need to return this.

Me...Sorry Sir no returns.

SC...but it's not big enough!

Nuff said.

I still wretch when I think of it.

[SCSlave]

1. Woman calls in demanding replacement for her year and a half old water cooler. Proceeds to call back every hour to check our stock.

People like that kill me. Do they not have anything better to do than sit around calling a store all day long? I would bet she got more irate with every call she made, too.
"WHY do I have to keep calling to check on this??"

"You don't....you just have a very sad, pitiful life. I weep for you."

[Polenicus]

This thread has given me a diseased idea for a case study, just to see how spineless returns managers are, on average.

We take someone trained in the way of Sucky Customers, someone who knows all the tricks and techniques to forcing their way on someone. Then we give them something completely inappropriate to return... say, a puppy. And a receipt from store said puppy was purchased from.

Then we send them everywhere BUT a pet store, and attempt to return the puppy. Hardware stores. Grocery stores. Clothing stores. Music stores. Furniture stores. Customer badgers until escorted off premises by security, or finally manages to return the puppy (After the return, store is contacted and the ruse is revealed, with appropriate compensation, return of the 'refund' and esnuring the puppy is properly taken care of)

How much you willing to bet our SC plant would actually manage it?