Thursday, November 30, 2006

If the shoe fits ...

There are always customers who will try the old "switch the tags" gambit. And it is becoming less and less doable, because so many items have barcodes right on the packaging, or inside the plastic or otherwise tamper-proof. And no, those little yellow and black things are NOT the barcodes. Those are the shipping labels. And if you start sticking those on things they're not meant to be on, we'll KNOW you're a crook. The key to this is to do something believable.

Two women made a good try Saturday night, but they let greed get the best of them.

All the summer beach shoes are on final clearance now. All the faux Crocs, flip-flops and sandals are marked down to $1 and $2 and are in big cardboard boxes back by layaway. (or what used to be layaway) All along the front of the boxes are the pale blue and bright yellow clearance tags with the brand name of the shoe in the box and the price.

Well, there was one box of flip-flops marked $2. What these two lovely ladies tried to do was to hunt through the shoe section for anything that could possibly look like it could go into the summer clearance section and toss it into the box. They were pretty good too. Everything in the box was either pink or red, so the box even had a color theme. With the exception that it was all full-price.

So when they got to the register, they tried to tell the girl - "All this stuff is mis-marked and it is all on sale for $2"- I guess they were praying that they got a dumb cashier (of which the registers of Wal-Mart are filled to the brim).

I guess it is just their luck they got one that was on the ball. She shut her register down and brought the box of shoes and the women up to me and asked "Is this right?"

I looked it over and knew right away it was a scam. In their haste to save a buck, they didn't look at the label quite close enough. As I told the women "This label says 'Yellow Thong Flip-Flop' — nothing in here is yellow or a flip-flop. So obviously the label on the box is wrong. I was putting the blame on the store, but there was no way I was letting them get away fifteen pairs of full-price shoes for $2.00.

One of the women asked "Well, if it your mistake, can we still get all the shoes for $2?"

"No ma'am. We can give you one pair for $3.00 off because they are marked wrong. The rest are going to be full price."

Boy, they went in a big huff and were all like "Oh, we don't want them now. We only wanted them because we thought they were on clearance. Oh that's too much money." Duh.

Oh, you're a scammer.
I want you in the slammer.
Judges bring the hammer ...
Down on you.

3 comments:

Larry Kollar said...

Hooray, you won one!

You've got to be the only Wal-Mart employee who's got a working give-a-damn — makes me wonder how the chain can stay in business with all the scammers out there.

Unknown said...

So what happens when the tags and the sale markers do not agree with the computer? I ask this because, one time, I spent 2 hours at a Steve and Barry's to choose the not-so-bad-looking items that are $7 only to find out from the staff (who were as confused as I was about the situation) and the manager that the price on the computer is higher and they just havent gotten around to changing the prices on the display shelves... So I had to pay $10 each for 15 items. I had to buy 'em because I did not want to end up wasting the 2 hours I spent thinking I saved $45 by being so good at hunting bargains.

Chris Silk said...

With Wal-Mart, the tag or the shelf label is what we would go with. Wal-Mart is so paranoid about losing customers now, they'd probably give away a register is someone asked for one!

What happened to you at Steve & Barry's would not have happened at Wal-Mart. If the items were marked $7 either on a tag or on the shelf, you would have gotten them for $7 at the register.