Thursday, September 20, 2007

Who let the (dumb) dogs out?

OK. We all know how this one is going to roll. Somebody is going to do something stupid with a sketchy return and I'm going to bust them like a watermelon at a Gallagher concert.

For real people. Do you just not understand the concept that computers USE the information on the receipts to, I dunno, TRACK how many returns you have? Even the ancient computers at the House of Wal.

I mean, you're able to return something you outright stole without a receipt, but you sure as hell can't return something for cash once, then come in with ANOTHER USED ONE and try to use the same receipt. It's the greed that will get you every time. The register is going to tell me, make noise, blow bubbles, spit paper out and otherwise refuse to cooperate. Sort of like your girlfriend after the first two weeks of marriage.

Eeeen-e-waaaay. I'm sure we're all dying to hear the one about the sub-woofer and the stupid greasy rednecks at 10:30 p.m. on a Sunday night. As I live and breathe, my life was just so complete at this point. Sunday night I had to run Customer Service by myself from 3-11 p.m. I've got one 15 minute break and a 3o-minute lunch because they begged me not to take a full hour. My feet hurt and I was just not in the mood for this kind of stupidity. You know what, I got it anyway.

Two doods, one wearing - I swear to Shiva, overalls - bopped up at 10:30 p.m. One was carrying an out-of-the-box subwoofer. The other one stood around and adjusted himself for 15 minutes. Seriously. He could have taught a master class in Anatomical Ikebana.

I don't even get my standard "Can I help you?" greeting out before the greasier of the two launches into an explanation of how they bought this sub-woofer, how it won't install, how it isn't blown out (complete with demonstration) and all sorts of verbal diarrhea to try and distract me from the fact that this is a sketchy return.

It is a $68 sub-woofer. There's no box, no serial number, the receipt is from another store and I think they're just generally acting suspicious. I don't want to do the return, so I call my supervisor over and tell her that I have a problem and I need her to go see if we stock the item. She doesn't care, just wants to go home, and says "Just return it." Thus, we see how decisions are made in the House of Wal.

So I start the process. PS MERCH RETURN I print the defective slip and put APPROVED BY CSM XXXX on there. I'm not taking the hit for this one.

But when I try to cash out the transaction, the register hangs and gives me a message on the screen and then spits out a piece of paper.

TRANSACTION PREVIOUSLY REFUNDED FOR $XX.XX ON 9/16 STORE #XXXX and a few more lines with the specific register and whatnot the refund was on.

They already returned one sub-woofer using this receipt. At a different store than the one they bought it at.

Do we get the picture? Let me spell it out. Buy one *NEW* sub-woofer. Then return - or at least try to return - used sub-woofers using the new Wal-Mart receipt. I'd bet that some Wal-Mart somewhere has a used sub-woofer sitting on a shelf right now.

I tell them I can't process the return because they've already had the transaction refunded. They deny it. I'm like "No. Right here. You got a refund at XXX store three hours ago."

They deny it again and claim "this is the only receipt we have." I'm sure it is. And a well-traveled receipt too. It's been in three Wal-Marts in the past four hours. And on the garage floor by the looks of it.

I'm like "We're not going to take it back tonight. If you want to return that merchandise, you need to go back to the store you bought the merchandise at or the store where you returned it previously. We can't help you. Have a good night."

They stand around and gripe for a while, but eventually leave.

It was just the day for the basura blanca. Two hours earlier a meth addict in serious need of a fix had tried to cash a $4,000 check. *twitch & scratch* Do you *twitch & scratch* cash checks *twitch & scratch* here? *twitch & scratch* "I'm sorry, the most we cash is $1500." And he did not look like a Henrietta. Unless "Henrietta" was on some serious hormone replacement therapy.

PS: Neither of you were cute enough for me to care about, not even in that skanky, bad-boy, white trash sort of way!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Who said rednecks were smart? Been in retail many years and THAT scam is older than dirt!

Anonymous said...

Do you mean they tried to return the second sub woofer with the receipt for the first sub woofer (not the 'new receipt)? If they had tried to return the second sub woofer with the receipt from the second sub woofer, wouldn't that have been okay? Why not just explain the receipt didn't match the return? It is possible they didn't know they had the wrong receipt, after all, it's not like they tried to keep the merchaindise and get money back or return a five year old sub in hopes of getting a new one.

I'm not sure where the deceit was on this one but perhaps I don't understand your post (I'm sorry and I will re-read for clarity.) If Wal-Mart puts the used sub woofer back o the shelf, how is this the customer's fault?

Anonymous said...

"Anatomical Ikebana". Haha, priceless. (for those of you who shop at Wal-Mart, that's the Japanese art of flower arrangement)

Anonymous said...

@anonymous

At the start of the day, they owned 2 user subwoofers, subwooferA and subwooferB. 4 hours previous they bought a new subwoofer, that i'll call subwooferC.

An hour after that, they returned the used and old subwooferA using the receipt for the new subwoofer, subwooferC. Then, they went to Our Hero's House of Wal, and tried to return ANOTHER used old subwoofer, subwooferB, using the same receipt that was just used to return subwooferA.

Anonymous said...

Whoever processed that return at the other store wasn't doing their job. When I worked the service desk, we were trained to mark out and date the item on the receipt when it was returned. If they had done that at the first store, this wouldn't have happened. (But what else is new? We are talking about Wal-Mart here!)

Melissa Scott Sinclair said...

BBCAmerican,I'm sure you sometimes wonder "do people really want to keep hearing these stories of scams and stupidity?" and the answer is YES! you make my workday so much better. I hope you write a book.