Is this Barnes & Noble crazy or am I?

[Little Nemo]

If you tried pulling this on me at Barnes & Noble, I'd not only tell you no, but using my charisma I'd charm you into buying 5 more DVDs and a couple of paperweights and have you leaving thinking you got the deal of a lifetime.

Really? Because I was under the impression charisma was your dump stat.

As for your other questions, the people I was talking to asked me if I wanted them to call their manger. I didn't make the suggestion. And I didn't hold anyone up, much less the whole store. This was the CD/DVD department and there were no other customers waiting.

 

[AClockworkMelon]

Worked at Gamestop for a year and I did this sort of thing all the time. B&N is wrong. Anyone who thinks you're scamming or cheap or crazy is wrong.

I've done this as a customer and as an employee. Never heard of a store refusing to do it.

 

[Guinastasia]

Still, was it possible to "hold up the entire store"? With potentially two registers right there and probably four more at the "main" checkout, I doubt it would have been a real huge inconvenience to anyone else.

Probably not the "entire store", but depending on how busy it is and how many staff are scheduled, you can indeed create a hold up. (And yes, some items can only be purchased at a certain area, depending on what store you're at)

 

[Little Nemo]

ONe of my favs was the lady who showed up to buy a computer when we first opened. We had just recieved notice that the ad was an error and the price was $50 below the real sale price, {which was pretty good} Since I hadn't posted the correction yet I gave her the advertised price. She got an excellent deal.
She called a couple of hours later and asked me if she got any extra discount because we had made a mistake. {you know., like at the grocery store}

She wanted to get a discount because you erroneously undercharged her?

I can see why store employees become suspicious of customers.

 

[Little Nemo]

A price adjustment policy is different and you know it.

How so?

 

[Rumor_Watkins]

Let me understand that retail is different where you are. If an item goes on sale within the return period and you can save (say) 20 euros by getting the difference back, that people where you live will not do that?

yeah, I raised the eybrow at this too, but just chalked it up to the morally superior puffery that I note goes on ad nauseum from Oceania.

 

[Little Nemo]

hahaha, because this is the Dope, home of many skeptics, and the story is unusual. I've worked in the music department of a B&N for six years, and the behavior of the employees you describe (especially the managers) just doesn't make sense. Forgive my obvious bias, but generally it's the customer who does crazy inexplicable shit, not the employees. Simply put, they can get away with it; we cannot.

If you had your receipt and the DVDs weren't damaged in any way, I just cannot imagine a manager refusing to sell you the DVDs at the lower price after refunding the original purchase. Even though accepting a return from the Buy 2 Get 1 Free sale is against stated policy, managers routinely make the exception in the interest of keeping you as a customer. And the idea that they would then refuse a sale, especially at this time of the year, especially in this economy, is utterly bizarre behavior unless there was some kind of extenuating circumstance.

And yet that's exactly what happened.

Maybe the problem is that I didn't lie. They may have been assuming, like some people here apparently do, that every transaction involves deceit. So when I walked in and told them openly what I was doing, they couldn't accept it. If you follow the premise that everyone is trying a scam then your reaction to somebody who's telling the truth will be think they must have a really good scam - one so subtle you can't figure out where the trick is.

So maybe I should have made up some lie. Then they could have spotted the lie and figured out, "What he's really trying to do is return these movies so he can buy them back them back at the sale price." Then having satisfied their sense of how the world works, they would have gone ahead and done it. After which they could have hung around the break room saying "Why do customers act like that? Why don't they just tell us the truth? It's like they feel they have to make us work to figure out what they really want."

 

[Apollyon]

Still, was it possible to "hold up the entire store"? With potentially two registers right there and probably four more at the "main" checkout, I doubt it would have been a real huge inconvenience to anyone else.

Tangential anecdote -- but it does have the "crazy policies" angle...

A while back a local chain bookseller (Whitcoulls, for fellow NZers) was having a 50% off sale on paperbacks.

I selected a total of 9 books and walked to the checkout. Three checkouts were open and ready, and no other customers in sight. Put the 9 books on the counter and was told by the pleasant and slightly embarrassed looking assistant that they had strict orders that during the sale period they could only process 3 books at a time, and that I'd then have to go to the back of the (non-existent) queue for the next 3.

After a moment of looking like a concussed fish and trying to wrap my head around the Dilbert-esque policy I plonked 3 books in front of each of the 3 checkout operators who happily each processed a sale... and they even passed a bag from one to the other so that all 9 novels ended up in a single container.

 

[Hilarity N. Suze]

Most major retailers have a policy of not telling the customers that a specifc item will be on sale next week. We want to sell it today.

Macy's has one that's just the opposite, and it annoyed me as a customer and really annoyed me as a sales associate on commission. It is the pre-sale.

The item is going on sale next week. You can buy it now, they will box/sack/package it, and then not give it to you--you have to come back next week, during the actual sale. Show your receipt, and they hand it over.

Gah, I hate that. I know I lost sales because of it.

I made up for some of them by telling the customer, "Or...you can buy it now, at the full price, and next week when it goes on sale come back and we'll do a price adjustment."

In theory, whoever did the price adjustment the next week would put in the original associate's sales number, so you'd still get your commish. In practice, there were a couple of people in my department who only did that if somebody else was watching them.

I also have failed to buy things because of it. Last year I needed a comforter. The ones at Macy's were going to be half-price the next week, and they offered it as a presale item. Problem: It was very cold and I needed the comforter immediately. So I went to Target, where I got approximately the same product for the approximate sale price, but I got to take it right home and sleep under it that night.

 

[Rumor_Watkins]

who gives a shit if the entire store is held up? it's their rank stupidity and misapplication/misunderstanding of their own policies that is causing the back-up (if any) anyways. if anything, it would incentivize them away from their own incompetence.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

If you tried doing this to me as a customer, you would be threatened with a lawsuit for violating the terms of the sales contract you had with me, a call to the State Attorney General's office, and a letter to your corporate office detailing the above which would probably yield me a coupon or trinket gift card (no comment on these special provisions that apparently no one knew of in this particular transaction, and that were apparently verbally modified by the clerk in the first transaction when he said that they could be returned)

SUUUUUUUURE you would, tough guy.

 

[pmh]

"There, you didn't sell them to me for a third off. You didn't sell them to me at a half off. You didn't sell them at all."[/I]

This is what should happen.

Granted, it's a small, futile gesture, but you should NOT let them profit from this behaviour. Even if it ends up costing you a bit more in the end.
You should return the DVDs, and make sure the manager knows *exactly* why they lost the sale. (And bonus points if you can tell him you're spending your money with their nemesis Amazon instead.)

 

[spark240]

I'd rather pay a cheaper price as well. But if I buy something one week, and then next week its on special, the last thing on my mind would be to use a company return policy to get a discount.

This practice has indeed become more common here. I too find it strange. We see it often in ads for travel booking services (plane tickets, hotel rooms), where people are assured by various means that somebody else won't be able to get a better price--if the price drops, the difference will be refunded, sometimes automatically without further action on the first customer's part.

It is as if we saw shopping as a competitive sport between ourselves and other shoppers. The important thing is not the actual price paid (we were happy with that, to make the purchase in the first place) but where we stand relative to other buyers. If somebody else gets a better deal, by god we want it too. Even retroactively.

I wonder how far out this feeling is now expected to extend. Suppose the product goes on "sale" six weeks later rather than one. Should we still feel like losers (or whatever it is), that other people are now getting a better price? Where is the line? How does it make sense to draw this line of expectations at any arbitrary point, other than the moment of the transaction that we chose to make in the first place?

 

[Little Nemo]

Granted, it's a small, futile gesture, but you should NOT let them profit from this behaviour. Even if it ends up costing you a bit more in the end.

Maybe. But I'd rather avoid this outcome if possible. I'd prefer that all of us learned to act rationally rather than demonstrating that I can act more irrationally than they can.

 

[Little Nemo]

See, the "rent it for free" policy of being able to return something post-use, within a certain amount of time, no-strings-attached, always seemed to me to be based on the philosophy that a certain percentage of people will decide, after getting the thing home, that their lives are so much easier/better with the wood chipper than without-- even if they came in fully intending to use it and return it. Like the magazine subscriptions where you get 3 months before they bill you. After reading something for three months, maybe you'll decide you love it, whereas, if you had to pay upfront and make a concrete commitment to cost, you'd never even consider it.

There's probably also an inertia factor. Some people who haven't completely decided whether or not they want to own an item might base their decison to buy on the logic, "Well, I'll take it home and try it out. If I don't like it I can return it." If the return option wasn't there, they might not make the purchase.

But once they've purchased the item, brought it home, and started using it, the inertia swings the other way. Now they'd have to make a conscious decision to return it. And many of them end up never getting around to returning the item.

Overall, the store may find that it gains more from these impulse purchases than it loses from actual returns.

 

[Rumor_Watkins]

SUUUUUUUURE you would, tough guy.

much charisma, yes.

care to take a stab at the substance of the post?


p.s. the amount of free stuff I have received from writing letters to companies that acted less-than-properly is decently high. Free cell phones, refunds on tickets, new pairs of shoes. To people that have bona fide griefs with asshat in-store personnel, I highly recommend writing letters to corporate.

 

[Stratocaster]

who gives a shit if the entire store is held up? it's their rank stupidity and misapplication/misunderstanding of their own policies that is causing the back-up (if any) anyways. if anything, it would incentivize them away from their own incompetence.

That's definitely how I would look at it--somebody created that problem, and it wasn't me.

 

[hazel-rah]

Maybe the problem is that I didn't lie. They may have been assuming, like some people here apparently do, that every transaction involves deceit.

Speaking from experience, a sizable number of transactions involving returns or exchanges DO involve deceit. But I don't recommend lying. First, because it's generally not necessary. Managers will usually give you what you want whether you are lying, telling the truth, or so batshit crazy that you can't tell the difference. It's not your story that they are basing their managerial decision on, it's what you are asking them to do and whether or not they are allowed to do it. Your lies are unlikely to help you, and they may hurt you.

And we can tell when people are lying. Not because we're all gifted mentalists, but because A. most people are not very good liars B. everybody tells the same lies to us, making them even easier to spot and C. we have a lot of data at our disposal that the customer doesn't to verify the details of their story.

That said, I don't know why they refused your request. My managers would have done it, and I would have supported their decision. It's a reasonable request, one that we see frequently, and you had your receipt. Again, I suspect there is some aspect of the story you left out. I'm not accusing you of lying, merely omitting a detail that would be significant to the employees and not to you. But I honestly can't think of anything.

I'd offer to call up the store and ask them what happened, but they probably wouldn't tell me and I'd almost certainly get in trouble if things went bad. Even posting here about this is enough to get me fired, to be honest. My advice is for you to go back to the store, ask to speak with the store manager, and be honest about what you want. If you are polite yet firm, they'll probably help you. If they still refuse, well... 33% off Criterion DVDs is still a pretty good deal. It's not worth stressing out over it.

 

[Guinastasia]

who gives a shit if the entire store is held up? it's their rank stupidity and misapplication/misunderstanding of their own policies that is causing the back-up (if any) anyways. if anything, it would incentivize them away from their own incompetence.

Because it's not affecting the store -- it's affecting the other customers?

(I'm talking in general, BTW, not specifically about Little Nemo's situation.)

 

[cosmosdan]

I was told I could return the DVD's.

That's not what I asked you is it? It's interesting that you seem to be avoiding the details of my question. Oversite or intentional?