Londo: But this - this, this, this is like being nibbled to death by... what are those Earth creatures called? Feathers, long bill, webbed feet... go 'quack'... Vir: Cats. Londo: Cats. Being nibbled to death by cats.
This quote
from Babylon 5 came to my wife's mind today when we were discussing the return policy of Target. With a baby coming soon, Terri was thrown two different baby showers by friends and coworkers. To give her friends and colleagues an idea of the kinds of things she needed, she registered for gifts at Target. So far, so good. The majority of her registry (hundreds of dollars worth), were purchased from Target for her and she's very thankful for all the gifts. Yet, there are inevitibly a few duplicate purchases or items bought that Terri either doesn't need, changed her mind on, or whatever. Therefore, she went to return some of these items. Rather than receive service, she was told that they had a strict limit on what could be returned and how. Please, let me tell you the rest of this story.
A few weeks ago, we went back the first time. First off, the service person was either tired or had a bad day because she was kind of rude. This can serve as an explanation for her rudeness, but does not excuse it. A customer service person does her company a disservice unless she's "always on." Next, when asking for help she had to concentrate real hard to remember the policies. This tells me that her training is either incomplete or not fresh in her mind, even if she's tired. She shouldn't be running the service desk by herself in such a condition and she still didn't need to be rude. We tried to return a few items, some Terri had registered for, at least one she had not. We were told that Target does not allow more than two (2) non-receipt returns per year. This has the following qualifications/implications:
- By "receipt" they mean that either the gift must have been marked off your registry and linked with a particular purchase. This way they can verify a record in their system that such an item was in fact purchased on your behalf. This may also include a regular receipt, a gift receipt, or a credit card number for the purchase, which they can use to look up the item.
- Simply having the item marked on your registry is not enough because they want circumstancial evidence that the purchase was actually made from a Target store.
- This is probably why Target prints out a gift receipt with almost every purchase (in my experience). However, they need to make this policy a little more pronounced because not everyone makes sure to get the gift receipt with the gift and sometimes the gift receipt is in a card and gets mixed up.
- Make sure if you buy a gift for someone at Target to tape the gift receipt to the item. Period. If they don't have the gift receipt, Target may not let them return it.
- Marking it off the registry is not something a lot of people do when they go through the line at Target. Target has not made this process very easy and should improve the process to make it easier. The last time we tried to buy someone something off the registry we handed the person behind the counter the 6 sheets of paper with the items listed (printed from the front of the store) and that person had to look through the list, find the item, and scan the bar code associated with that item. This is a hassle, and for some folks, embarrassing. The person should just be able to look at the list and scan the bar code. I say, that if the item isn't on the list a warning should be listed and then the person should be able to add the item to the registry as an extra receipt if Target is going to have such a limited return policy.
- The store provides one other way around the policy: you may exchange an item for another item in the store for equal or greater value from the same department.
Here's my problem. My wife entered their store and literally endorsed items in the store for purchase by her friends. The invitations for both showers noted that she was registered at Target, which is an invitation to go to that store and buy those items. Most of the registry has been purchased. My wife brought literally hundreds of dollars of purchases in to the store just for her items. Would you care to guess how many folks bought additional items for themselves while they were buying gifts for her? I'd be willing to bet that close to half, if not more, did buy more than just gifts for her while they were there.
In exchange for inviting this business into the door, they want to enforce a policy aimed at keeping folks from stealing from them. This seems like the pinacle of bad business practices to me. If they want to be nit-picky about this sort of thing to reduce losses, they should at least have the ability to recognize someone who's driving business into their store with some respect.
Finally, I sent an email to their corporate office explaining our experience and stated most of the above and got back an email saying, "Sorry, but that's our policy." This sounded to me like the rental employee's response to Steve Martin in Planes, Trains, and Automibiles, "Sorry, but your @#$%ed." Because of this experience Terri and I have greatly soured on Target and we don't intend on shopping their as much in the future.
Instead, I highly recommend Wal-Mart, where these store's inventories overlap. I've often heard Wal-Mart described as an "evil corporation" and that they destroy local business. No doubt they have made mistakes and have destroyed local business, but my experience has been very positive in the are of customer service. If a local business can't learn to compete, I tend to believe it's that business' fault, not Wal-Mart's.
First, their return policy is very liberal. Officially (from what is on their web site) they accept any return with a receipt within 90-days. In my experience, they'll take back anything that's currently on their shelves without a receipt and give you cash up to a certain limit and store credit for anything more. That's a perfectly reasonable policy, in my opinion.
In addition, I have twice sent email to Wal-Mart's corporate office. Once to complain about service I got from one department and once to ask for a discontinued item to be added back to their inventory. In both cases, I received a phone call from the store manager or the manager of that department. In both cases, they explained they would try to do what they could and explained the difficulties they faced in coping with their corporate policies. I've worked in a large organization and understand those difficulties. These phone calls convinced me that there was a human on the other side that was at least aware of the problem, even if the problem didn't get fixed. I didn't get the "@#$% you" response I got from Target.
Anyway, I thought that it might be fun to write a blog praising Wal-Mart, particularly after their recent blogging fiasco
.
Cheers.
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