Posted on 01/10/2018 12:35:29 PM PST by simpson96
Wasn’t Robin Williams in a movie called...
Dead Parrots Society???
You’re correct. I did technical support for an adhesive company for many years. Once a guy called for advice on a fairly complex application.
My recommendation required several steps of scuffing the surface, cleaning the surface, priming it and then applying the actual adhesive.
He got mad at me because although the application was rather complex, I had complete confidence that if he followed my steps it would work. If he didn’t it would fail.
He actually said “What steps can I skip?” I said “None.”
He replied “Whatever happed to the Customer is Always Right.”
I said “There’s a proper way to tell a customer he’s wrong. I’m trying to do that now. You called me for advice on how to do your project. I’m an expert in my field. If you do it my way, it will work. If you skip a step, it will probably fail. Your choice.”
I’d rather disappoint a customer now that have him upset and possibly injured later.
Stores take things back to cultivate customer approval.
An old story tells about Nordstrom Dept store refunding the purchase price of tires....
...but Nordstrom’s DOES NOT EVEN SELL TIRES.
Makes for good publicity... well worth it.
YES!! In before the Dead Parrot picture!!!
Mine is great at her job. She has a very thick skin and really doesn’t care if customers don’t like her.
SEARS, if they’re still open near you, will still replace any Craftsman non-power tool, but good luck doing the same at somewhere else that sells Craftsman tools.
That's because they just pass the cost of the losses on to the rest of us.
Customers returning dead Christmas trees in January is the entirely predictable result of this policy. Next year, it'll be two customers returning dead trees. The year after that, it'll be 20.
I saw an older guy return a pair of shoes he bought from L.L. Bean. He purchased them in 1968.
She got her $60 back, but Costco got a lot of good publicity in return. Very few people are as shameless as that woman, but will now feel safe shopping at Costco knowing that they are not going to get stuck.
Exactly! There aren’t too many people (thankfully) that will return a dead Christmas tree after Christmas and it avoids having a scene if the woman was denied the return. Smart business.
During the days of “Walmart takes back everything”, people were returning Christmas decorations in Early December. It turned out to be a scam. People would advertise they didn’t have Christmas for their kids and people would donate stuff. They would take it to Walmart and return it for cash or in-store credit.
I was behind a group with mentally-handicapped people and they had three artificial Christmas trees in the boxes unopened.
I remember once at a department store where I worked several decades ago, they let a guy return a suit in which he had worn out the pants. I asked the department manager why she gave him a refund, and she said “I didn’t want to lose him as a customer”. I would have thought that deadbeat was precisely the sort of customer we would want to lose.
It was dead when she bought it.
She shouldn’t get the refund because nothing had changed.
“There is something not right about returning 10 year old pants.”
Yeah. Stores like Kohl’s seem to invite people to do things like that, though. I have known people who made a practice of returning clothing as it wore out.
Doesn’t seem right, but there’s nothing holding a person back but thin air and common sense.
Stupid headline, the tree was dead when she bought it, unless of course they sell live trees which I doubt.
Saw a story the other day about a women scamming Toy for Tots. The woman got the toys via TFT, but, she then returns the items for refunds.
My parents own a florist and we have had people return Poinsettias in January and them be black and dead as four o’clock because they either set them outside in the cold or over a heating vent and never watered them. My Dad will exam the plant and question them and if they were just stupid in their care he refuses to refund them. Each plant is sent out with how to care for instructions. A dufus returning a Christmas tree after Christmas for a refund, doesn’t surprise me one bit and yeah they have the audacity to ask for anything.
My Mom used to do alterations for Sears, back when they sold nice men’s clothes. One day some guy came in and wanted a refund for his old worn out pants because the zipper was broken. This so offended Mom that she replaced the zipper rather than allow the guy to abuse the store’s generous refund policy. The guy didn’t get what he clearly wanted, but couldn’t say much because his old pants were fixed and wearable again.
It’s a cost of doing business, but on the whole, not a big line item.
I’m surprised more stores don’t take the REI approach. They sell expensive stuff and have a very liberal return policy. Don’t like it, bring it back.
Then, every couple months, they announce a garage sale of returned items. Most of it is fine or has minor issues.
The sale starts at 9. Outdoor gear enthusiasts begin to line up around 6:30 am. I stood out in Michigan December 30 for 2 1/2 hours in 10 degree temps (properly attired of course)
REI customers retain quite a bit of loyalty to that store chain.
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