customer returns...

said this didn't fit and was wrong.

After he beat the snot out of it I am sure it didn't fit. And no, I did not give him his money back.

Anyone else have anything interesting to share?

In reply to noddaz:

what exactly did that used to be?

it's fubar

It was a ball joint...

In reply to noddaz:

... not anymore

I get customers complaining that xyz is broken because their kid kicked it and it should be covered under warranty. Uh, no...

Conquest351 wrote: I get customers complaining that xyz is broken because their kid kicked it and it should be covered under warranty. Uh, no...

Which then means them bitching at the double sized XXL douchebag SM, which overrules you.....

We have a no return policy. That being said, I took back a holster yesterday.

I had a lady a few months back return two burnt out blast knuckle tazers. She said she had done it before and the manufacturer replaces them. This was true, so I put them behind the counter and told her the boss would give her a call. She was OK with this.

Now, I found the two burnt out tazers odd especially if she had done this before, so as she was browsing the store, I began questioning the use of them. Obviously the use is usually self defense.

Before long, she began picking up different articles of equipment asking if they would block a tazer. It then struck me. I asked if she was trying to test them and asked her method. She was trying to prevent shock via different equipment , using herself as the test dummy, "dummy" being redundant.

She keeps walking over with different equipment asking if it would stop the tazer. "Something has to stop it," she said. She picked up a Vietnam flack jacket. "What's this?"
I explained what it was.
"If it doesn't work, can I return it?"
"Excuse me?" I said.
"Well if it doesn't work, I should be able to return it."
"Absolutely not. Its job is to stop shrapnel and other flying debris."
"Will it stop a tazer?"
"No! I wouldn't suggest trying either."

She began questioning other customers then, which pissed me off. Needles to say, she didn't buy the flack jacket, mainly because it was $100 and I told her I wouldn't sell it to her anyway.

I told the boss what was up and explained I refuse to sell any weapons to her and suggested he go the same route. Last I checked, the old tazers were either thrown away or given back to her, so we don't have to be the middle-men to her hazardous obsession.

Nutcase...

^ WTMcF . . .

Nutcase indeed . . .

Imagine a nice steak. Now eat all but the gristle. Return gristle for a 200% money back guarantee with a note on it saying, "Steak was too fatty."

Really? Too fatty? Were's the rest of the meat, shiny happy person?

I work at Sam's Club.

A few years ago,my son's company was installing a video system at a large condo in Boca Raton. His BIL was putting up a very expensive Pan-Tilt-Zoom camera off the roof, 12 stories up. Dropped it, with the expected disastrous results. Sent it back to mfg, claiming bad out of box. Gee, they did not believe him. Still can't believe he tried that.

I worked retail in my college years. One family would periodically come in on Friday to buy a lawnmower which would be returned on Monday, loaded with grass and dirt. "It wasn't what we wanted."

I wonder how many lawns they mowed on those weekends.

Had somebody try to bring back a used chain tool yesterday. We have a strict "you use it you keep it" tool policy. We are not in the business of renting tools.

I used to work at sears. Sears will take back anything. We routinely accepted returns on lawnmowers and chainsaws that the consumer had ripped the "fill with oil before using" tag off of and proceeded to use without oil. Eventually we made a policy about that and each salesman had to explain the need for oil to the consumer and offer to fill the oil (which was always included in the box) outside before loading the item into the consumers car.
We also sold a ton of big screen TV's before the superbowl, about half of which were returned the next week.
I worked at the tool counter, so I saw a few tradesmen and mechanics on a weekly basis that would bring in buckets full of broken tools and exchange them. Corporate obviously was getting stricter and stricter and finally I had to start telling these guys bringing in 20 tools at a time, or an entire bent/stripped screwdriver set every 2 weeks, wearing "Al's garage" coveralls that the warranty excluded commercial use and that I couldn't exchange more than 3 tools per customer per day. These guys went ballistic and typically would complain to the GM, who would override and allow the exchange. I was also amazed at the people that would proudly relate to me their tales of using a 3 foot cheater on a 3/4 breaker bar using a craftsman adaptor on a 1/2 socket before finally breaking it, 'since you all got that warranty.' It was a sad day for those fellas when we stopped opening socket kits to replace broken sockets, since we had very limited stock of loose sockets on hand.
My favorite story is that someone brought back a new craftsman drill box for one of our top of the line drills. Inside was a black craftsman plastic cordless drill case of a style we hadn't sold in years. Inside the black plastic case was a very old drill of non craftsman origin. A salesman I worked with authorized the return. I saw the case in the return pile, picked up, quickly got the story from the sales guy, called the GM of the store, who called loss prevention. The customer was still in the store. Loss prevention took her to the back, where she was asked to give the refund back and was given her pos drill back.
She came back the next day when the hardware manager was in and apparently raised a huge fuss and he authorized the return and gave her her money back. I thought maybe she had wisened up and at least put the craftsman drill back in the box. When I went back to work I checked the return pile in the box: same non craftsman drill.

Its really no wonder sears loses so much money every year. You can return anything if you just shout about how many thousands of dollars you spend at sears every year and if they don't take this back you'll never shop there again and you'll tell your friends not to as well. So sears notices this and makes these blanket policies where we don't accept returns in certain situations, and yet still idiot managers cave in and accept the returns, until finally, now if you go to sears all the stuff is cheap dispoable crap made in china and they stopped selling folding measure sticks and carpentry hammers and other "high loss" items (bought once and returned several times a year for the life of the product under the warranty) because their associates wouldn't stop exchanging and returning them.

I spent 5-years in the Customer Returns department for Schumacher Electric - yeah, the battery charger people(you do NOT want to hear my stories/thoughts about that place).

Every time we got a shipment in from one of the large retailer's distribution centers it was always fun. Plenty of bricks/rocks in the box in place of the chargers, or inside the cases of the large wheeled chargers, in place of the transformer. Ones from the south often had those little lizards inside(sometimes petrified, sometimes alive), others had mud wasp nests(also sometimes alive!).

Then there was all the things we received which were not battery chargers: car stereos, tool kits, electric heaters, Walkmans, etc. I still have tons of the crap 15-years later. Ironically, most of it worked fine.

My son works at Target. They take back all food items and proceed to tag every item and then toss it. They take no chances with food - even cans of soup all sealed up.

Don't get me started about people who tear crap up then bring it back with the whole 'I spend a lot here so you better replace it' thing which is generally a flat out lie.

My favorite: plastic covers missing from seat belt buckles. One was found in the car with teeth marks on it which turned out to be from the customer's dog. When asked, it was first denial (a lie) then was told 'it's a safety item and should have a lifetime warranty' (coercion and threat), then 'I have bought a bunch of Buicks and this will be my last if you don't cover it' (theft).

Opposite problem at a place I worked. The customers rarely tried to return busted stuff, but we sure sent out plenty of it. If something got damaged in shipping, the owner would put it in stock anyway. He'd get one of the warehouse guys to spray paint the part black and toss it on the shelf. Customer buys it, then returns it for being broken, and gets nicked with a restocking fee. Then they send him another one. Sometimes it was the SAME ONE THEY HAD RETURNED!

One poor bastard got the same bent steering wheel four times! They'd send it out, he'd return it, the order would go on backorder since it was a rare piece, the owner would demand it be put back in stock, the item would show as being back in stock and off backorder, then get pulled AGAIN to be shipped to same customer...again.

Companies need to be stricter on their return policies. They make it way too easy for scumbags to pull one over on someone. But the customer is always right.

One of my favorites was when they'd argue with you because they couldn't return something from Advance at an Autozone, even with the Advance receipt in hand. You know, when you look around the inside of those stores if you can read English you know where you are since the name is plastered everywhere.

We get a lot of "broken" stuff from the big distributors. I would say we issue credit about half the time. Most of the time when they say it's broken it just means a customer bought it for the wrong application and returned it saying there was something wrong with it. The big distributors have wide open return policies so they end up eating a lot of the cost when we don't end up issuing credit.

Several times we've had our competitors products returned to us through the big distributors. Our theory is that someone didn't like our competitors, bought ours and sent our competitors back in our box and the big distributors just sent it back to us because it had our name on the box.

My wife has similar horror stories from when she worked at Walgreen's.

The customer would rant and eventually the manager would cave, and a refund would be given for K-Mart branded VHS tapes.

My wife has worked at Costco for 15 years, half of that in management.

I've heard some pretty insane return stories.

Used socks (with holes and dirt) that were a year old

Kids clothes that were old/used/holes in them

Washer and dryer sets that were 10-15 years old

Rotisserie chicken boxes with just the bones left

Lots and lots of computers and TVs, usually under a year old and they just want to buy the latest/greatest (which is why electronics only have a 90 day return policy now)

Curmudgeon wrote: Don't get me started about people who tear crap up then bring it back with the whole 'I spend a lot here so you better replace it' thing which is generally a flat out lie.

Yep. As a general rule, the more they mention how much they spend, the less they actually spend/the more trouble they are.

People who DO actually spend a lot of money don't complain about freebies, their main concern is time. There is always more money but you don't get more time.

And if you don't meet their expectations, they don't waste any of their precious time bitching to you, they just find someone else to give their money to.

Knurled wrote:

Curmudgeon wrote: Don't get me started about people who tear crap up then bring it back with the whole 'I spend a lot here so you better replace it' thing which is generally a flat out lie.

Yep. As a general rule, the more they mention how much they spend, the less they actually spend/the more trouble they are. People who DO actually spend a lot of money don't complain about freebies, their main concern is *time*. There is always more money but you don't get more time. And if you don't meet their expectations, they don't waste any of their precious time bitching to you, they just find someone else to give their money to.

This. The ones that don't bitch but never come back are the ones you do NOT want to lose.

One other war story: there used to be converter 'test pipes'. I had a guy bring one back that 'didn't fit', it had gasket residue on the flanges and when I stuck my fingers inside they came out covered with exhaust soot. I allowed as how it wasn't possible to get soot inside if it didn't fit, it escalated to the store owner/manager who gave him his money back but told him not to return. The guy looks at me with the money in his hand and goes 'HAH!', all proud of himself for getting away with thievery. I wished him a nice day.

I worked at Advance for two and a half years, I've got some stories. However, my favorite isn't a return story, but a lost sale story.

Guy comes in late with a heater core. He's dirty, tired, still pissed off, and a little desperate. The vehicle is a late 70s Ford pickup. No reason this should be a rare part. I go and get the box, and he's devastated. The box is sort of flat, not square like most truck heater core boxes. I open it and he says "That's the same one O'reilly had, I've been all over looking for this thing."

I then grab the pipes, and turn them up. He had never seen hinged pipes I guess. He looks up at me thrilled and surprised. He then picks up his old core, and says "I have a charge account at O'reilly, I'll just go there, thanks for the help!"

I stand there stunned. I didn't lose a huge sale, but it's the principal of the matter. Sometimes being a good parts guy, winds up helping the competition.

We do track our customers and if we notice someone who used to spend a lot of money with us suddenly drops off, we call them up and see if everything's okay. Sometimes their business just slows down/they buy new trucks but sometimes they're upset with something, and we either try to work with them or accept that they're just going to be unhappy.

Like the company with the Ford V10 fan that started eating coils. General rule is that one coil fails, the others will follow suit in short order, so replace them all. 10 coils was way too expensive, just replace the failed one. Week later, a different coil fails. 9 coils is too expensive, just replace the failed one. 3 weeks later, another coil fails. 8 coils is too expensive, etc. At this point they have way overspent the price of the nine extra coils they should have got the first time with the labor involved with two extra drivability diagnoses and the PITA factor in accessing the coils in a loaded van. (all the interior stuff that needs to get out of the way to pull the doghouse off - time's not free) Not to mention the lost profits on their end from not being able to use their truck.

Then they stopped coming to us because we were unable to adequately keep their truck on the road instead of in service bays. Well, we tried....