I am absolutely furious.
I work in retail, at the moment I'm the assistant manager at a bookstore. Which is all well and good, I love books, I love my co-workers (at least most of them) I get along really well with my boss (most of the time) and most of our customers are perfectly sweet people.
Tonight was one of the exceptions.
Harry Potter happens in about 11 minutes, of course since we work in a mall we can't open at midnight, which really isn't a bad thing. Because if we were to be open I'd still be there. At any rate, we've been pre-selling the book to make sure people get their copy tomorrow when the big rush is on.
Tonight I had a lady come in and pre-order the book, she then went across the street to the grocery store and found out that they were going to be selling it for a couple of dollars less. She then phoned over and made a big fuss.
I didn't answer the phone, Tara did. So, I only heard her half of the very short conversation. She told the lady that she couldn't refund a gift card, but that the lady could spend the money on anything else in any of our stores. Obviously that answer didn't satisfy her because the phone was handed to me.
I patiently explained over and over again that I could not refund a gift card, it was company policy, that she was free to spend it on anything in any of our stores. She then told me that she was told that it was refundable when she bought it, to which I asked her when she'd been in and she said that it was only about five minutes ago. So, I patiently explained again that there's no way that we'd told her that it was refundable, because we both know that gift cards are not refundable.
Then she got on my case for not telling her that it wasn't refundable when she bought the card. All I could say to that was that she didn't ask me if it was refundable when she bought it so I didn't mention it. Though, it does say quite plainly on the bottom of the gift card receipt that they are not refundable.
At any rate, she then said she was coming back in and was going to speak to the manager. To which I replied quite firmly "I am the manager." So she said that she didn't care she was coming in and I was going to find her someone higher up than me to speak with.
I offered to give her our customer service phone number so that she could file her complaint with them to which she muttered under her breath, 'damn right I'm going to file my complaint with them.' and then audibly 'give me that number'. So I read that off to her, and she continued to insist on her refund.
I was exceedingly polite and continued to explain that I was sorry but I was unable to give her a refund. She even accused me of knowing that the book was cheaper across the road. Which is totally ridiculous. Like I went around pricing the book everywhere and then came back with the express purpose of lying to people.
At any rate, she decided that since books were refundable she'd come right in, buy books, and then return them and get her money back. Which is a perfect plan, except that when a book is purchased with a gift card, we have to issue them a credit note if they return the books, which wouldn't have solved anything.
She did not come back to the store. I don't know if she thought about it and realized that she pitched a huge fit over $4. Or if she figured, she'd just call customer service and get me fired, or if she was just so angry that she didn't bother to come in. At any rate, she didn't show up, which I really think took all of the 'ooomph' out of her tantrum.
The moral of the story? I hate people, especially people who think that if they make enough noise they'll get what they want.
Posted by Michelle at June 20, 2003 05:59 PM