Nordstrom and Costco charge back a lot of returns to the vendor.
Bookstores are different - how they get/buy books from the publisher varies. They might not be able to return it to the publisher and if there was a new edition, the old one might be worthless. I know of horrid people who buy books, read them, and then return to the store.
At REI, customers would totally wear out purchases, then return them saying the product didn’t work out or some such thing. Often years later. In the past 2 years they’ve had to revise the policy because it was a money loser. Just go to one of the REI garage sales to see what people do.
One of my nieces worked for Home Depot. Expensive items would be stolen, then the thief would come right back in and “return” the stolen item for cash. There wasn’t a darn thing the clerks could do; they were under strict orders to not engage.
“Also at Costco, I’ve used my rebate check to buy something for far less than the value of the check and they’ve handed me the cash difference! Once it was for more than $75.”
You don’t even have to buy anything to cash your rebate at Costco. One year we had a mega rebate because Mr used it for his business travels etc. annoyed the heck out of me because his employer took forever to pay him back. So the rebate was at least something in return for paying those mega bills to avoid paying the interest. I needed some berries and decided to use our Amex check to pay for them. The cashier apologized that their policy was no cash refunds over a certain amount, and the manager gave me a check for $1300. Nice!
I saw a short TV show about Costco recently (while on an airplane no less) and it said that they price things so close to the bone that they make all their profit on membership fees and other extras.
That is true. Their margin is around 14%. If you check their SEC filings, they make most of their earnings off the membership fees. They also have comparatively small shrinkage because they pay their employees decently. The store I frequent has some folks who worked at Costco since 1989!
I tried to exchange some jeans at Target for my son a few months ago. His grandmother had just bought them but they were too short, so I explained to customer service that I wanted the same style and brand but in the larger size. My friends and I have always bought clothes and shoes there for our families if we happened to run across a sale when they weren’t with us, and we kept what fit and exchanged the ones that didn’t for the correct size within a few days of the original purchase. This time, they refused to do an even exchange because the jeans were on sale when my MIL bought them, but not when I went in to exchange them. I ended up having to pay the difference between the sale price and the regular price, even though the items hadn’t been on clearance and there were plenty of them left on the sales floor. If it’s a new policy, it’s going to cost them a lot of sales because it’s tough to get our husbands and children to the mall to try on clothes and shoes.
A policy I noticed recently at one of the stores my daughter shops at (Forever 21, I think) is a difference in price between sizes. A shirt in small might cost x, but if you want a medium it costs several dollars more. When we realized that, she put everything back on the racks and bought the outfits she was looking for elsewhere.
Thats awful, austinmshauri, especially since if the item goes on sale AFTER the item was purchased and you don’t have the receipt, they’ll only refund the current price.
Here’s my Walmart story: My church does this adopt-a-child-from-the Salvation-Army thing at Christmas where you purchase a gift for a child, according to the gift preference listed on a gift tag. The child on my “gift tag” wanted a gift card from Walmart - so okay, I go to Walmart to purchase a gift card. I never shop at Walmart, so I was surprised to learn that I couldn’t purchase a Walmart gift card using a credit card. I had to use cash or a debit card to buy the gift card.
Is this a Walmart policy or something unique to this store? I buy a lot of gift cards for other stores and have never had this happen before.
I have two rather interesting return stories. One, a woman returned a dog bowl. Used. Labels missing. It’s OK because she ran it through the dishwasher. Really.
Another story – my customer purchased an expensive lizard and set up, including a top with lighting. The “slider hood” was $279. Three years later he wanted to return the hood and get his money back (in cash) because he claimed the metal was melting from the heating bulbs. (What actually happened was that his kids dropped it and bent the corner.) He threw a huge hissy fit in the store – and admittedly he previously had been a really good customer, spending a good amount of money on various pets. I called both my distributor rep and my manufacturer rep, and they both agreed that (1) it was not possibly that any heating bulb would cause metal to melt, but (2) they would replace the damaged hood, even after three years. Replacement was NO GOOD, he wanted full cash value. After 3 happy years with the product. Long story short, he walked. And I let him. Maybe I shouldn’t have let him walk, but you can’t come in my store, insult me, call me stupid, refuse to work with me, insist that impossible has happened and then expect me to take a $279 hit. The item was not defective, and it was not resalable. For years after, when his wife came in to buy supplies, she paid cash so the charge wouldn’t show on his credit card.
scout, I don’t shop at Walmart but a Safeway cashier recently told me that the practice of buying gift cards using stolen credit cards has become a big problem. People steal credit cards, then quickly go buy a bunch of gift cards. When the credit card is canceled by the legitimate owner who has just “lost” it, the gift cards are still good. Maybe the Walmart policy has something to do with this issue.
The lizard was not dead! (But I could see how you might think that …) I think they are still buying crickets for it … along with stuff for the rest of the menagerie.
I went to a J Crew warehouse sale. It was run by a different vendor, not J Crew. I bought a pair of ballet flats for my daughter. They were given to me by a salesperson with shoes tied by a rubber band. The cashier checked the shoes before she rang it up. When D tried them on, we realized they were both left foot shoes. I tried to return them to J Crew, but they said they didn’t sell them to me. I tried to contact the vendor, but they didn’t have any contact number and it was a final sale. AmEx came to the rescue. They refunded the full amount to me.
Post #63
I would not assume that Costco has only a small problem with shrinkage because they pay their employees well. Shrinkage happens in stores everywhere because people are greedy. High end stores as well as discount places. Only policing and personal integrity will stop shrinkage.
I think that Costco has less of a problem with it because they ‘frisk’ every shopper as they leave the store. You have to surrender your receipt and they check it against the contents of your cart. You can not leave the store until they have completed this procedure.
“Only policing and personal integrity will stop shrinkage”
Not exactly. From the stuff I read, “personal integrity” is closely tied to employees being loyal to their employer, and that happens when the employees are being treated fairly. Employee theft is a bigger problem than shoplifters for retailers. For example, here is one article:
Nice!
Nice…