We have one problem customer who in the past has “returned” items claiming that the box he took home was empty. He has tried this at different stores in our state, so we didn’t make the connection straight away until our regional manager recognized him from another store.

He stands next to me at my checkout and opens the box for the item being sold after the customer has bought it.

Customer: “What are you doing?!”

Regional Manager: “I’m checking to make sure all the items are in the box.”

Customer: “Why?”

Regional Manager: “All part of the service! We’d hate for our customers to get home and find that they’re missing some vital component.”

He then takes a photo of the inside of the box while holding up the store copy of the receipt next to it.

Customer: *Apparently angry* “Now what are you doing?!”

Regional Manager: “Just documenting for our records.”

Customer: “You’ve never done this before!”

Regional Manager: “Sadly, some customers try to scam us by buying the goods and then claiming a refund on an empty box, claiming it came that way.”

The customer is silent and goes a shade of red.

Regional Manager: “Always that one customer that ruins it for the rest of us, eh?”

The silence continues.

Regional Manager: “Anyway, everything here seems to be present and accounted for, and we have this photo linked with your receipt, so you should have zero problems with this transaction.”

He adds a psycho smile for the finish:

Regional Manager: “Have a nice day!”

His face and the transaction details were sent to every store manager in the state and surrounding states. That b*****d actually tried to return the empty box one state over. The store manager there had been sent the picture of the receipt and the full box and simply showed it to the customer saying, “This you?”

I wish I could have seen the look on his face.

Customer: “You got any external memory things?”

Me: “You mean hard drives?”

Customer: “Yes, those.”

Me: “Yes, we have lots! How much capacity were you looking for?”

Customer: “Ooh, I’d say a million terabytes.”

Me: “Uh… we don’t have anything near that, ma’am. In fact, I don’t think anyone does outside of large server farms. The largest hard drive we carry is ten terabytes.”

Customer: “Well, I don’t know how much I need, really. I just wanted to say something that sounded big because I wanted to store all my photos! My grandson said his was terabytes!”

Me: “Uh… how many photos, roughly?”

Customer: “Ooh, lots! At least fifty!” 

Related:
My Head Megahertz, Part 2
My Head Megahertz

Customer: “I have a computer, but the keyboard is just so huge and ungainly. I want to reduce the number of buttons.”

Me: “Well, we do sell a variety of keyboards in different sizes and styles.”

I show him the range.

Customer: “Hmm, some are smaller, but they all have the same useless layout.”

Me: “That is a pretty standard layout for modern keyboards. Unless you have accessibility issues, most customers use one of these.”

Customer: “Well, I’d like to remove some of these useless buttons to shrink it down. Start taking notes for your designer.”

Me: “Sir, we don’t have—”

Customer: “I never understood why all these keyboards have two buttons for ‘O’. Let’s get rid of one of those. And this backspace button, lose it. I don’t make errors…”

I’ve just sold a laptop to an older male customer.

Me: “If there are any problems with your laptop within the first thirty days, you can bring it back.”

Customer: *Out of nowhere* “You know, if you just reduce your portions, you can lose a lot of weight. You should also reduce your meat intake.”

Me: “Um… thanks for your advice, but I’ve actually been a vegetarian for around fifteen years.”

Customer: “Oh, um… maybe just cut out the cake, then.”

Me: “Thank-you-have-a-nice-day-don’t-come-back!”

Customer: “You’re welc— What?”

Me: “Bye!”

It is back in 2012, and we sold prepaid phones. A customer wanted an iPhone 4. He was a unicorn customer that day — a customer who buys the most expensive phone, and buys nearly every conceivable accessory for the phone. Case, car charger, screen protection, headset, AppleCare, you name it, he probably bought it.

We activated it, made d***ed sure the thing worked, and put the case and screen protection on it. Even though that phone was a bit dated, he walked out with a bag full of stuff, having spent almost $500 in one shot, and my day, week, and probably month was made. It was a small electronics shop, so not much was expected of us then.

The commission wasn’t to be. Within about two weeks, this guy was returning the phone and everything but AppleCare to different stores

A couple of months later, who showed up? He needed a prepaid phone. I helped him again. If you guessed that I got another unicorn purchase with the same end result as the last one, you’d be right.

A month later, he showed up again, and guess who was the only guy there to help him again? Yep, same results.

After the third time, I told the boss:

Me: “I’m not dealing with this idiot. He pushes me above my line at the end of the month, and then, at the beginning of the next month, I’m having to dig myself out of a hole. It’s stupid.”

My boss agreed.

Over time, this guy came back time and again, but we were running out of phones. We couldn’t send these phones back for credit, he was creating a huge issue just “renting” phones. We informed district management about what was going on, and they still wanted us to help him.

He did the same thing to every employee in the store until my manager put his foot down with our new district manager.

[District Manager], who was at the store that day, was taken by surprise. He had been unaware of any of this stuff.

District Manager: “Had it been me, I wouldn’t have allowed it after the third time.”

He went back through our months and figured that we would have profited way more had it not been for just that one customer.

The day [District Manager] was in, talking with us on the floor, guess who blew into the store like a bad tumbleweed?

District Manager: “Watch this, guys. I’m going to show you how this is done!”

Keep in mind, he came dressed like one of us, not in a suit and tie. He only wore suits and ties on days he was in the office. It’s what we liked about him. He was a Trench Guy.

He went up to the customer, did everything I’d done from day one, and got “The Unicorn Purchase”, but he rang it up under my boss’s name. He set it all up, put it all together, thanked the guy, and sent him on his way. Then, he reprinted two copies of the receipt. He wrote something on one of them and put it in his briefcase, and he put the other in the lock box with our paperwork.

Then, he took a pool to guess how long it would take for the guy to return everything.

I won that pool. A week and a half later, he returned it all to our store.

We reported it to [District Manager], who then took a few days and called the customer. He called us back and said that this customer was getting phones because he had a “side chick”, and he was returning them because it was the best way to not get caught.

Meanwhile, our store was being mired down in a sales muck because of this guy. [District Manager] told him we wouldn’t be selling him any more phones company-wide. His information was sent to every store via email and posted right next to where we keep our phones with clear instructions to inform him that we could not help him.

I’ll never forget the last time we saw the guy. By then, the only OG member of that store left was me. He came in on a day when he didn’t know I was there. As he was in the middle of talking with our new manager, I popped out, walked up, and shook his hand.

Me: *Super loudly* “Hey, [Customer]! How ya been? Back to rent another phone?”

He looked at me in shock.

Customer: “Know what? Hang on. I’ll be back… I forgot my wallet.”

Sure, ya did!

I pointed him out to my new manager and showed him the email that had been posted about him.

New Manager: “That’s him? Oh, s***. I thought he hit another store somewhere else. Okay. I was pissed when you did that, but I’m glad you told me.”

Related:
Returner Burner, Part 9
Returner Burner, Part 8
Returner Burner, Part 7
Returner Burner, Part 6
Returner Burner, Part 5