Just Your Average Romp Through Retail Returns

I am an assistant store manager for a popular plus-size brand in the USA. It is around the holidays, and we just had a great sale a week or so ago.

A woman comes in to return a pull-on romper. She’s pretty upset because it’s not her size and, therefore, it didn’t fit.

At my store, we have a loyalty program; if you buy an item with your account, the system logs all the information.

Me: “Do you have a loyalty account?”

Customer: “Yes.”

Me: “Okay, great. And do you have your receipt?”

Customer: “No, I don’t.”

I take a minute to scan the item to see if the price she paid pops up. No dice. I manually check her store purchases, and there it is.

Me: “Luckily, the computer stored your purchase and you will be getting $37.99 back.”

Customer: “Why am I not getting the full price back?”

I blink hard twice, hoping she says, “Haha! Just kidding! That sounds great.” Still looking me dead in the eye, she says:

Customer: “The ticket says $75.90. Why am I not getting back the ticketed price?”

I’m realizing that she is, in fact, very serious. I show her my screen, which has all the information about her purchase, including the price she paid for the romper, but she still wants the ticketed price. I try not to laugh in her face because of her audacity. She tries to threaten me with calling corporate.

Me: “I’m very sorry that I cannot give you the ticketed price. I can only give you the price you paid plus your sales tax back. Let me write down our customer service number, along with my name, so you can call corporate. They are not open right now, but they open at 9:00 am tomorrow.”

She grabbed the romper from my hands and stormed out.

About twenty minutes later, she came back in and I completed her return.

I still chuckle to myself when I think about this because if she had said she didn’t have a loyalty account and no receipt, the computer would have given her more money back. I also have no idea why she didn’t just go to one of our other five stores and try again. We have two locations that are about fifteen minutes from ours.