Follow On TwitterCustomer Stories – Cheap Anniversary Gift Return
With every store, you’ll inevitably attract a certain class of customers that will only shop in your bargain bin. These people will skip all of your nicer merchandise and go straight for the cheapest stuff that you carry in your store. Often times, these people will also ask for a further discount as well on top of the already heavily reduced price.
We had one of these customers purchase the cheapest item in our store for $6.50 the other week. Quite frankly, the set of handkerchiefs he chose were kind of ugly. They were not selling well and we had marked them down 3 times already because we just wanted to clear them out of our store. All of our clearance items are for final sale only.
Anyways, this fellow received the handkerchiefs in the mail and called us up because his wife hated them to such a degree that they got into a huge fight over it. It turns out that this particular fellow bought these handkerchiefs as an anniversary gift for his wife.
Just as an aside, I went and asked my wife if she would have gotten mad if I only spent $6.50 and got the cheapest item possible from the clearance section of a store for an anniversary gift. Her reply
“Well Steve…let’s just say that your blog would be called MyWifeDivorcedMyAss.com instead of MyWifeQuitHerJob.com. “
This poor fellow was getting major heat from his wife so he called us up to complain.
Customer: I spent good money on these handkerchiefs, but they are ugly and poor quality and I want to return them.
Me: I apologize sir but those products are in our clearance section which means all sales are final.
Customer: I got these hankies for my wife for our anniversary. She absolutely hated them and I want my money back.
Me: Was there something physically wrong with the product? Was it damaged in any way? If so, you can send them back for a full refund. Otherwise, I apologize but all sales are final.
Customer: Yes. They are damaged. After we washed them, they shrank dramatically.
Me: I’m sorry sir, but the fact that you washed them voids the return policy.
Customer: What??? Why would washing them prevent them from being returnable??? I had very high expectations for these handkerchiefs and I was hoping to make our anniversary special. Now this has all been ruined.
This whole time I’m was thinking to myself…You bought the cheapest hankies from our store. Of the hundreds of hankies to choose from, you chose the ugliest ones from the clearance section, washed them and now you want a return??? What world am I living in?
Me: I apologize about your anniversary sir and I feel badly about it. Unfortunately our policy is stated very clearly on our terms and conditions.
Customer: So I can’t return them???
Me: I apologize sir, but we can not accept the return.
Customer: Fine!!!! If I get divorced, it will be because of you! ***click****
So there you have it. The divorce rate in the US is over 50% and our online store has contributed to that statistic. Oh well…
Did you like this article? There are many more articles like this on entrepreneurship, kids and money and how to open an online business on this website. Read about our journey how we went from earning 0 to 100 thousand dollars in 12 months with our online business. Looking for some laughs? Read about some of our crazy customer stories.
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That’s -awesome-! That’s is one nice thing about being a business owner – you can make the decisions, and laugh about them later.
(Whenever I get a difficult prospect, I just make sure I price my bid so that I’m perfectly happy putting up with the hassle. Maybe that’s double my normal price, or triple, but I’ll really enjoy working with them at that price.