It’s Not The Customer’s Job To Read

I work at a massive big box retailer. A woman comes in with something that she has received from our online store that has all our logos on it.

Customer: “I want to return this. I have my confirmation code on my phone.”

Me: “Ma’am, that confirmation code came from eBay. Their seller information isn’t from our company.”

I explain everything to her, but it isn’t close to good enough. She wants me to look it up. That’s fine, and it only takes me a moment to find it. Awesome, I can do the return.

I go over the return with her, including how much will go back and to what card. She affirms everything to me, saying yes, that’s fine, over and over. I think everything is fine and perform the return. I ask her to sign it, and when she looks at the paperwork:

Customer: “This isn’t what I paid… and this isn’t my card! I don’t have an American Express card! I demand that you put the correct amount back to my card this instant!”

Well, the return was already in processing. In other words, the return was already going back to this other card, which seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Then, it finally hit me what had happened.

This customer went on eBay, found the item they wanted, and purchased it, and the seller went to our website, bought it at a much lower price, and just had it shipped to this woman! I heavily sighed as I realized I was about to get absolutely destroyed.

I explained what must have happened, and then I explained that the return had already been processed, and since she had verified all the information as true, there was nothing I could do.

Cue her yelling at me for ten minutes as I slowly lost my ability to care. I never found out what happened next, but I hope people start looking at what website they are ordering from.