#retail sucks

“Yes, we can ship your order to your house.”

“Is the shipping free?”

“No, there is a shipping fee, which is determined based on purchase amount. Since your order is under $40, shipping will be $5.99.”

“YOU DON’T SHIP FOR FREE?!”

“N… no… it’ll be $5.99 to ship your order.”

“But LL Bean and Amazon Prime ship for free! Why don’t you ship for free?!”

“Because we don’t.” We don’t build shipping costs into the costs of our products, nor do we charge you a monthly fee so you can get free shipping… in all these situations, you’re still paying for shipping. It’s just a matter of how you’re paying for that shipping…

“Well, how can I get you to ship this for free? Don’t you have a first time customer waiver or something?“

“Are you a first time customer?”

“No.”

“Then no. No, there’s nothing I can do. You’ll have to pay the $5.99 to ship this to your home on the other side of the country.

Happy Memorial Day, everybody!

While you enjoy your discount shopping, barbequing, camping, and whatever else it is normal people do on long holiday weekends, I’ll simply be waiting for my chance to go home and collapse.

Now if only my sleep wasn’t interrupted by the weird retail anxiety dreams I have.

I’m not even kidding… we’ve been getting phone calls since February from customers who live across the country saying, “I’ve shopped at your store for years. When are you having that big Big BIG sale that you have every year? I want to schedule some time off so I can come shop. What’s the first day of your sale? When does your store open?” The sale isn’t until mid-summer…

There’s usually a tent in our parking lot with a ton of super discounted merchandise normally sold in our employee store. People go crazy on that first day. It’s like the Black Friday of luxury bedding sales. I’ve had customers complain to me about how there aren’t enough employees on staff for the weekend to serve all the customers in their needy fashions. My general response is, “Ma’am, our store only employs ten associates. We’re all working today.” Please excuse the fact that we can’t wait on you hand and foot for several hours because we’re limited staff and must serve you and the other several hundred customers who will pass through our doors today… and tomorrow… and the next day.

We also only have three registers, so it’s always super fun to explain to demanding customers that yes, they too have to wait in line to have their purchases rung up. Had one woman straight up say, “But I have more stuff than some of these other people. I should get to go before them!”

“You’ll have to wait your turn. It’s only fair.”

Picked up a phone call yesterday from a customer who claims she was sent the wrong items. I pull up her receipt and state, “It seems we sent you a pair of standard/queen and two pairs of king size pillowcases in our Hummingbird Percale pattern.”

“Yes, you did. I wanted the embroidered hummingbird pillowcases. You sent me the wrong items! How am I supposed to go about returning these? You didn’t send me a return label, which should have been sent with the order.”

“Ma'am, we don’t send out return labels from the outlet store. If you look at the bottom of your receipt you’ll find our return address. Just pack up the pillowcases in the original packaging if you still have it, and mail the return to the address on the bottom of the receipt through whichever mailing venue is most convenient for you.”

I already knew what the issue with her order was. We had several customers call the same day as she looking to buy the same product. All those customers gave us the item numbers for the printed hummingbird pillowcases instead of the embroidered style number, which we didn’t have stock of anyway. Catalog customer service didn’t have stock of either, so they sent the customers to us based on the incorrect item numbers they saw we had stock of. Most of the customers we explained the situation to declined purchasing the printed pillowcases before even finalizing their orders.

“But because you sent me the wrong items,” the woman yelled at me, “I shouldn’t HAVE to pay to ship it back to you. You should be refunding my original purchase total with original shipping charge AND I shouldn’t have to pay for the return shipping. I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO PAY…”

“Ma'am…”

“I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO PAY…” she was exhausting herself.

“Excuse me, Ma'am.”

“I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO PAY FOR THE RETURN SHIPPING. You charged me THIRTEEN DOLLARS for shipping. YOU SHOULD REFUND ME FOR EVERYTHI-”

“EXCUSE ME, MA'AM. If you’ll listen to me for a moment…”
(She paused in mid scream.)
“We’ll send you a call tag for the package.”

“What does THAT mean?!” she inquires breathlessly.

“That means I’ll request a return label for FedEx to pick up your return directly from your house. All you have to do is pack up the pillowcases and leave them at your door tomorrow when FedEx makes their first pick up attempt. They’ll make three attempts to pick up the package, and we’ll refund your purchase and original shipping when we receive the return.”

The woman suddenly becomes pleasant and sighs happily through the phone, “Oh. Okay, so I can just stick them back in the original envelope they came in and put them at my door?”
“Yes. FedEx will make three attempts to pick up the package. They’ll make their first attempt tomorrow.”
“Okay. Thank you… you have a nice weekend.”

My supervisor looks at me after hearing my side of the conversation and says, “Did you research what happened with that order? You know we shouldn’t give out call tags to people.”

…because what I need right now is my supervisor getting on my case about technicalities…

“I know we’re not supposed to. I tried to get her to just return the package, but she was screaming at me. What else could I do? She wasn’t listening to anything I was saying. She was just screaming at me the entire time.” I picked through our folder of phone order paper files and found the woman’s original order. The associate who took her order had the printed design’s item number listed, so it was a mistake on the customer’s side in giving us the incorrect number for the item she wanted. I knew this is what happened. There was still nothing I could do other than what I did to make the woman stop yelling at me.

I’d also just had an in store customer debate with me over our policy on checking IDs for unsigned credit cards. I’d asked to confirm her mailing address after entering her order (to log it in her customer profile history), and when I asked to see her driver’s license upon noticing her card was unsigned she became all defensive as if I were trying to suggest I was questioning her identity. “Do you want to see my PASSPORT, too?!”
I looked at her shocked, “This is just standard proceedure-”
“OH NO… IT IS NOT! I just…”
“This is just standard store policy, Ma'am. If a card is unsigned, we are required to ask for identification.”
She looks at me with a mix of anger and confusion. “The card is unsigned?”
“Yes,” I show her the back of the card bearing no signature.“
"Oh, I know why that is. I recently made a purchase in England and my bank made me get a new card… blah blah blah” and she trudges off with her package in mid thought.

Seriously, how did I end up with all the grumpy customers in one day?