Thursday, February 12, 2009

Wal-Mart can kiss my shiny metal ass...



Yesterday afternoon I was in Wal Mart buying some french onion soup (for the tasty tasty london broil that I intend to make for dinner tomorrow night) and swiss cheese. I was in a hurry but decided to swing by the card section to see if there were any '09 UD cards. There weren't, so I decided to pick up some more Topps. Bought five packs. But it wasn't until I got home that I realized that one of them was open and a card was missing.

Fuck.

Victimized by pack searchers. Honestly, what the fuck are you going to get out of retail that you need to leave the open, raped pack on the shelf? Just steal the whole damn thing.

No big deal I guess, most of the remaining cards in the pack were ones that I needed, but just because I felt violated I decided I was going to take it back and get another one. So this evening I head to Wal Mart and go to the customer service desk and wait.

Did you know they actually have signs at the customer service center alerting customers that you cannot return any products covered with bodily fluids?

After standing in line I was very nice to the lady at the counter. "I bought this yesterday afternoon and it was open and missing a card." I handed her my receipt. In the past I've never had trouble returning anything to Wal Mart, usually without receipt (like the pool cue that I broke when I was drunk and pissed off... they exchanged that no questions asked, and I was still drunk when I took it back). But this time, with receipt in hand, the bitch said "no, can I help the next person?" Wait just a fucking second here... I'm still in line, you're not getting away with it that easily.

"Why can't I just exchange it?" They can just throw it in reclaim, the vendor can pick it up, write it off as theft and replace it to the store, no one loses... I worked in retail for five years, I know how it works.

"There's no proof it was open in the store." Uh. There's no proof that any of these people standing in line have a legitimate claim about any of the shit that they're returning. The lady behind me was trying to return a pillow... I have no doubts that that used pillow was going right back on the sales floor.

So I left. Ok, so I'm only out two bucks, but it's the principle of the thing. I'm gonna try again tomorrow. Demand a manager if I have to. I can be an ass if I have to be, so don't fuck with me.

Sometimes I kinda think the pack searchers are most likely the vendor. I doubt that in this case, but the vendor can just write off a pack or two here and there as reclaim (damage or theft) and no one is the wiser.

Oh well.

3 comments:

MMayes said...

Wal-Mart is touchier about baseball cards than other merchandise.

In the early 90's I represented a retail store on a small claims suit brought by a guy that had bought a bunch of boxes in April and then wanted to bring them back for a refund in September, suing them for not honoring his refund. I think he was disappointed the price didn't increase (it actually decreased). We ran records showing he'd pulled this scam in several other stores in the area and I let him know that he could dismiss the suit and retain his purchasing privileges at this store or go forward, lose, and not be welcome again.

It cost that store a lot more to retain me than to have paid the guy off, but they didn't want to give in to anyone.

Sorry about you losing out on a card. Maybe that's why I've only bought 1 pack of 09 cards so far this year.

Anonymous said...

I actually saw one of the vendor/distributor guys searching packs at my local Chinese-Goods-Mart.

I chatted him up, told him he must have a cool job, asked which Wal-Mart stores he covered, and who he worked for, etc.

Then I asked him if he ever gets anything cool out of the packs he searches.

I called the company he worked for.

The next time I saw a vendor type, it was a chick.

Anonymous said...

The worst thing about pack searchers is they diminish the joy of real collectors by setting up incidents like this. Target is more open to returns but the big retailers do nothing to prevent pack searching from happening in the first place. Grrr.