I’ve always been amazed at the lengths people will go to in order to scam us somehow. I’ve pretty much seen it all in terms of creativity, but last night I had one that is right up there with the classics.
A little background–often times a customer will come up to buy something and claim that the price is wrong, saying the tag or sign on the shelf was less. Our company policy is that if it’s just a dollar or two, we’re supposed to believe them and just give it to them without checking it to keep from holding up the line. Unfortunately, many of our customers know this, and will abuse the policy by just saying “No, the sign said $xxx” in the hopes we won’t check it. In addition, probably 90% of the time they were reading the sign wrong or looking at the wrong sign altogether. In the other 10%, we may have left an old ad sign up or stocked the item in the wrong place and we of course honor the price. Needless to say, we almost always go back to check it.
They will often say “It was in front of the sign that says 99c, so you have to give it to me.” Sorry, no we don’t. Legally, the price is what scans at the register and if an item has been moved into another spot we can inform the customer of the correct price at that time. This would prevent the obvious–customer takes a $50 bottle of wine, puts it in front of a $4.99 label, then claims that where they found it. Again, if it’s a buck or two I’ll let them have it, but if it’s a large discrepancy, a REASONABLE person would not expect to get it at the ridiculously low price.
Which brings me to my story. Earlier this week a lady brought up a curling iron which is in our As Seen on TV section and retails for $99.99. (How can a curling iron cost that much? No clue. Maybe it also colors your hair and makes it smell good all day.) When I scanned it, she said “No, it’s $40.99, says so on the shelf. She takes me back to our hair appliance aisle (not the ASTV aisle) and points to a tag for another curling iron and says that’s where she found it. I explained that someone put it in the wrong place and that I couldn’t give her $59 off on it, and she immediately starts arguing “You have to give it to me.” She then pulls out her phone and says “My friend got one here yesterday for that price and texted me this photo of the shelf tag to show me which one to get.” She shows me the photo and I reluctantly agree to give her the ludicrous discount. (FYI, if I said no and she calls corporate, I get chewed out.) And it is definitely not beyond the realm of possibility that it got stocked by someone in my store in the wrong place, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt.
She then asks if we have more because they are supposedly buying them for a school and need a bunch of them. I said no, that’s our last one, and you are not getting any more at that price, you got 2 of them and that’s all. So later that day I’m talking to another employee and she says something about a customer who had been taking photos in that aisle which made me think about it again, so I checked our sales and found that in the last 30 days we had only sold ONE of that curling iron, namely the one I sold her. So her story about the “friend” was pre-planned, evidently she took the photo and had the story ready in case I said no when we went to the aisle. Give her style points for saving $59.99.
And now, it gets better. Yesterday she returned the curling iron, in the morning before I got there. There was a different curling iron in the box and said “someone must have switched it before I bought it.” Since she had the receipt, of course they returned her $40.99 to her. I know the box was sealed when I sold it to her, so that was another lie–she took a cheap curling iron (possibly her old, broken one) and put it in the box and kept the $99.99 one.
So in other words, she wasn’t satisfied that she conned us into getting $59 off the curling iron, so she returned AGAIN to get the other $40.99 back as well. That is greed to the Nth degree. Well played lady, well played.
Oh and to my surprise, I just saw that $99.99 really isn’t that much for a nice curling iron! You can get this one on Amazon for the incredibly low price of just $999.00+ shipping. I sure hope that’s real gold.
