GameSlop: The Series
A former video game store manager enlightens the public with tales of retail woe….
Well, actually, I was the manager, but it never seemed to matter when it came to customer disputes. My district manager believed in satisfying unruly, disrespectful, irresponsible customers with the hope that they would come back and buy stuff from us again. It apparently never occurred to her that this kind of relenting behavior would condition our clientele to be as underhanded as ever.
I'll be perfectly honest: most customers were completely ignorant of store policy when it came to returns, exchanges, trade-ins.....or anything else, for that matter. Regardless of how many policy signs we had posted on the windows or by the cash registers, people would never seem to grasp a simple concept like, "No receipt, no cash back." However, due to loopholes (i.e., my district manager), it wasn’t really necessary to understand our policy, because whatever customers wanted, customers were given, with cherries, whipped cream, and sprinkles on top. People could, for example, come into the store without a receipt for a new PS2 system that they had opened, played with, and decided that they didn't like, and they could get their money back. They didn't have to prove the system was defective. Hell, they didn’t even have to prove that they had bought it from us! My DM would happily order me to do the return. Now, that wasn't REALLY our policy, but as with any corporation, if the customer whined enough, they usually got what they wanted.
This lackadaisical approach to business caused a moose-load of problems. For instance, because this PS2 wasn't a defective system, I couldn't send it back to the warehouse as defective; and because the box had been opened, I couldn't technically resell it as new. It was indeed a used system by this point. My DM would come up with questionable tactics to sell the product, such as, "sell the system as new, but with ten percent off the price." Naturally, people would ask why a new system was ten percent off, and I would tell them that, well, it wasn’t actually new, because it had been used, but it wasn’t really a used system, either, because it had only been used for awhile. Of course, this just further complicated things because not only did this sort of bollocks idea confuse customers (and employees, I might add), it completely undermined the return policy that we had been trying so hard to enforce. After all, we had permitted someone to return a new system, so that provided an opportunity for anyone else to do the same thing.
I always refused to take back product if someone could not provide a receipt, but I would then receive scathing calls from my DM to give "good customer service" and allow this person to walk away with whatever they demanded. I wasn't allowed to enforce policy. In fact, I was chastised for it. So, I was stuck in a situation where the customer expected the unrealistic and my DM was overruling my authority to make decisions. I was amused that upper management would hide behind their convoluted idea of "customer service.” To me, customer service means being respectful and assisting customers with their purchases. It does NOT mean that employees should purposely break company policy to please their district managers.
Alas, this corporation is thoroughly money-hungry. As long as there is a possibility that customers will continue spending money at their stores, breaking the rules is highly recommended. Next time, enjoy a hearty rant about our trade-in policy….which I also was forbidden to enforce! Until then, stay away from corporate monkey shenanigans (or is it bananakins? Yeah. That was lame.)!
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If Rip Van Winkle were alive, he would be listening to: Franz Ferdinand's self-titled album!
It takes seventeen cars to create a traffic jam.
57% of Americans do not sign the back of their credit cards.
