From: mike wilson
On 20 May 2010 14:48, Christian Skofteland <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, May 19, 2010 at 08:13:43PM +0200, eckinator wrote:
>> 2010/5/19 Christian Skofteland <[email protected]>:
>> >
>> > I bought my G11 a few weeks ago at BestBuy in Virginia. ?While in New York
on business I accidentally spilled a collegues
>> > cocktail all over it. ?Needless to say it stopped working. ?I went back to
BestBuy on my return, after gathering the
>> > original receipt and packaging, and told the return clerk that the camera
"stopped working after a week."
>> > He appologized and replaced the camera without asking any further
questions.
>>
>> Can't believe you did that. Hate to step on your or anyone's toes but
>> instead of taking responsibility you ripped them off and knew so.
> No. I disagree. ?I was in customer service for a decade or so. ?The customer is always
right and you never say "no."
>
> There are stories of retail clothing stores taking snow tires in exchanges from customers. ?I
worked in the hotel business and never said "no" even though I knew the hotel guests were
full of shit and I pounded it into my employees head that they should never say "no."
>
> The guy at BestBuy could have asked what happened but as a good customer
service person he did not. ?I'm a terrible liar and I would have confessed if
asked if it got wet. ?I totally take responsibility for wrecking the camera as
I've admitted to what happened here and to all my friends and family. ?i made an
attempt to recover my loss and was successful. ?My conscience is clear.
Very interesting perspective. Is this common practice?
Not at Best Buy.
I've never been in there but there wasn't someone having a screaming fit
at the "customer service" desk because they bought something that won't
work and Best Buy won't honor the return.
But customers scamming retail stores on returns is fairly common. The
cocktail spilled on the camera is fairly benign as far as that goes.
Saw it all the time when was running the photo-lab at XXXXXX. I also had
to work the service desk. XXXXXX had a 90 day with receipt return
policy. We had regular customers, i.e. shopped there EVERY DAY, who
would come in and buy clothes for their kids. Kids wore them to school
for a week, and then mama would return the clothes for refund.
Nothing we could do about it. She kept the tags and had the receipts.
Management was aware of it and wouldn't do anything about it.
Another customer would buy clothes for her kids and transfer the tags to
old clothes of like kind that came from XXXXXX over 90 days old. Usually
it would be a similar item, but I noticed it once enough to compare the
item number barcode on the sales tag with the item number embedded in
the label and noticed the switch. I called the duty front end manager,
who completed the return & refund.
The biggest item was coupon/rebate fraud. I'm not sure the exact details
of how they made it work, but I think it has to do with how coupons are
scanned after all purchases are scanned.
Certain "customers" came in and purchased massive quantities of like
items, most often cosmetic & beauty (shampoo, toothpaste, OTC drugs &
vitamins, ...), using coupons to get them at a discount. The "customer"
always paid with a debit card. Apparently they could use the receipt to
claim mail-in rebates.
They would then "return" the items for refund at at different store.
XXXXXX's POS system allowed returns for refund to be accomplished by
credit card lookup. If you didn't have your receipt, the customer
service desk could process your credit or debit card to determine if the
item had been purchased at any XXXXXX store within the preceding 90
days. If so, XXXXXX would refund the purchase, and if the purchase was
made with a debit card the customer could get the refund in CASH.
And the kicker was, the debit card lookup didn't show the coupon
discount, the customer got the full retail price refunded. If the
customer bought 10 $3.00 tubes of toothpaste with a coupon that allowed
$1.00 off each tube, the customer paid $20.00, and then returned them
for $30.00 refund.
We had regular "customers" who did this. I mean two, three times a week
they would come into the store and return 10 toothpaste, 10 hairspray,
10 room freshners, 10 hair color, 10 of this, 10 of that, and 10 of the
other. Refund anywhere 50 to 100 dollars every time.
We all knew it was fraud, but there was nothing we could do about it.
Objecting to it would just get you written up for not being "customer
friendly". And I'm not talking about saying something to the customer,
I'm talking about saying something to management about it out of the
customer's presence.
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