Idiots in Bliss

I was reading a story on the Consumerist website today about a store that sells DVDs and other electronic media, and the problem they keep having with people demanding that they adhere to the Wal-Mart returns policy – or more accurately, what the people believe Wal-Mart’s policy on returns is (e.g. take back any product whether they sell it or not, without a receipt, without a time limit or any other restriction). This causes problems for their company on two different dimensions: first, since they aren’t part of Wal-Mart, they don’t adhere to Wal-Mart policy; and second, even if Wal-Mart would give you a “refund” for something that you didn’t buy from them and that they do not, in fact, even sell, even Wal-Mart would have you thrown out of the store (or perhaps arrested) if you walked to the middle of the check-out counters and started screaming about racism and fraud. I was immediately transported back to another time, in another place…

I was standing behind the counter at the Manager’s Desk at the drugstore at Third and Fairfax in Los Angeles one afternoon in the fall, many years ago, when a woman in her 60’s came in with a large bag of things she wanted to return for cash. The company’s return policy was a bit loose at the time, with a great deal of discretion given to the general manager of each store; in general corporate headquarters didn’t care what happened at a local level so long as the store made more money each year. Our general manager held to the policy of “do whatever resolves the situation quickly and cheaply” – which generally meant doing returns of anything that could be returned and trying not to upset the other customers. But I could tell from the moment she walked in that this case was going to mean trouble…

Sure enough, our “customer” began by disputing the price that came up when I scanned her first item, insisting that she has paid more for it than the amount listed in the store’s computer. I pulled up the list of pricing on that item (the system store the last dozen or so price levels), showing that while it had never been sold for more than it was just then, it had often been on sale for less. That took some of the wind out of her sails; she tried to rally until I mentioned that corporate policy required me to assume that she had bought the product on sale, and give her the (even lower) price for it – unless she could show me the receipt…

It goes without saying that she didn’t have one, doesn’t it?

The rest of the items went much the same way; I’d scan it, she’d dispute the price, I’d look it up on the price history, and she’d back down from whatever she was claiming the price was. The real problems didn’t start until I found a product that we had never carried; there was no record of that item, or even of the company that had produced it, in the history of our store. The “customer” refused to believe me, and insisted she had purchased the item (and all of the others in her bag) from us that very week…

I turned the product over, revealing the price sticker from “Pick & Save” (the fore-runner of Big Lots) still stuck to the back. “No ma’am,” I replied. “You didn’t get this here.”

“Oh! That one must have fallen into the bag!” she exclaimed. “I had some items to return there, too.”

“That could be difficult,” I said, as kindly as I could. “Since the last Pick & Save in this part of California closed three years ago.” I started pulling out of the rest of her returns, and sure enough, all of them carried price stickers from Pick & Save, the 99 Cents Only store, the 98 Cents Only store (a competitor of the 99 Cents Only people, who where always trying to upstage them), and even cheaper places. Some were so old that the packaging had yellowed, the plastic blister packs were cracked, or the product inside had dried into powder…

Eventually we reached an understanding. I’d “refund” her money on anything we actually carried and had any chance of re-selling; she’d take all of her dollar-store merchandise back to where she got it (assuming that the relevant store still existed), and we’d throw away all of the opened packages and spoiled products before the Board of Health came to arrest both of us. I gave her the money and her remaining returns, and she left, presumably to go try her luck in some other retail store. I still couldn’t get our general manager to start requiring a receipt for refund – at least, not until the baby formula scam started up and we really were facing arrest for receiving stolen (fraudulently obtained) merchandise…

But that’s a story for another day…