Why Can’t Your Competitor Match Your Price? Answer Me!

I’ve been in retail long enough to be on the receiving end of my fair share of oddball complaints.  You know the ones.  The people who complain that you won’t give him or her a specific television even though you don’t have any in your store and there’s nothing you can do about it yourself.  The people who complain that the grapefruit your store received is of mediocre quality and want to know why you, personally, brought them in (despite having nothing to do with the shipments).  The people who complain just for the sake of complaining.  Kind of like bloggers!  (Hey, wait a second…)

A few days ago, during the winter storm that nearly three-fourths of the country went through, I was helping a woman with a television.  She was looking for the cheapest product you could find and despite finding a cheap television set, she wanted to “look around” just because we didn’t have that exact one in stock to give her.  I had to prevent myself from giving a dumbfounded glance outside the doors as the falling snow turned everything white outside.  Hey, if she wanted to drive around in THAT, be my guest.  She must’ve REALLY needed to watch TV.
I went back to helping the other people who were also crazy enough to go shopping for non-essentials during a winter storm.  Fast-forward several minutes when we received a phone call on the department phone.  I just happened to be the one nearby and reluctantly answered.  The same woman who was “just looking” was calling from a competitor of ours.  She wanted to know why the price of the television online was different from the price of the television in the store.  It happens.  I went online but noticed that she was wrong about the price being different – she was just looking at a different model.
For some reason, this wasn’t good enough because this competitor of ours had the TV in-stock and was going to match our price for the same model but because the website was supposedly not showing the right price – which it was – they weren’t going to give her the price.  Needless to say, at this point I was confused.  I apologized for the supposed lack of information needed for our competitor to steal our sale away but what else could I do?  Obviously, this apology was not enough for her.  It’s not like it was my responsibility for them to sell her a product at the price she wanted.
In all of my years, I’ve never had anyone complain that another company I didn’t even work for wouldn’t give the customer the price we were offering them.  Is that a thing?  Anyone out there have something similar happen to them?  Has anyone gone to a Ford dealership, asked for a product at a price, then gone to a VW dealership, asked for a product at a price, and then called the Ford dealership because the VW dealership wouldn’t give you the same price as the Ford dealership?  Are people really in need to bitch that much that they have nothing better to do than to complain when it won’t even solve a thing?
If any of the answers to those questions was a “yes”, then in the words of Bill Engvall, “Here’s your sign…”
Does anyone have a particularly amazing complaint that had nothing to do with anything you had control over?  Please, if you could top this, I’d love to hear how hilariously stupid it is.
More soon from the frontlines...

Why Show It Online When It's Not In Your Stores?

     This is a quick recap of an interaction I had the other day with a customer over the phone.  I hope you are as amused by this as I was.

     I received a call from a customer who was looking for a product he had seen online.  He wanted to come in and see the product before making a purchase.  We get these phone calls often and it’s typically no big deal.  He gave me the store’s special product number for the product he was looking for and I proceeded to look it up in our computer system.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t finding anything.  I figured that I had misheard him or he just gave me the wrong number.  That second option is a much more likely scenario:

     “Sorry, sir, that isn’t the model number.”

     “Are you sure?”

     “As sure as several years here can make me.”

     I asked for the model number as a second option but I still came up empty.  I asked him where he found the item that he wanted and he told me it was my store’s website.  I went online and sure enough it was right there when I typed in the model number.  There was just one problem.

     In big letters it said, “NEW ARRIVAL” and the “Add To Cart” button was blocked out.  Now, whenever a company is blocking you from purchasing something, you typically can’t buy the product because the manufacturer hasn’t released the product for sale yet.  Why would a retailer, in the business of making money off of the stupid shit people buy, want to withhold said stupid shit they could sell?

     I tried to explain to the customer the situation.

     “I’m sorry, it looks like we can’t order this product just yet because it’s not in stock at our warehouse yet.”

     “But it’s on your website.”

     “I know, but it just hasn’t arrived to our warehouse yet.  It’s a new product.”

     This is where most people would realize that it’s out of our control and they’ll just have to wait if they really want the product.  Most people.

     “Well, alright, I tried to make a sale with you but it’s your fault that I’ll have to go get it from somewhere else.”

     My fault?  I’m sorry, did any of you see the part where I was promoted to CEO of my company?  By the way, I can guarantee you all that that has not happened.  How can an hourly employee be in charge of who puts products up on our website or the time it takes manufacturers to send their products to our warehouses?  And the product he wanted wasn’t even more than $300.  My store was not going to close because we lost a $300 sale.  Had I been on commission, I wouldn’t be losing sleep over letting a big sale like that get away from me.  Don’t try to make it seem like you were doing me a favor by throwing me such a large sale.

     Don’t shoot the messenger, everyone.  I’m not paid enough to feel heartbroken because you couldn’t receive your Snuggie and have to trudge to another store for it.  I have no special powers that can make something you want appear out of thin air.  If something can’t be gotten, it can’t be gotten.  Simple as that.
     More soon from the frontlines...