A lady comes in to cancel an item off her order since the delay is several months. I cancel it for her.

Customer: “Does this mean I lose my discount?”

At my store, we calculate discounts by taking the total amount of the discount and distributing it among all items.

Me: “No. You still get your discount on the other item. Canceling the one won’t affect the other.”

Except that wasn’t the question she was asking. This customer thought that we should give her the discount she received on the canceled item and apply it to the other one. No. Absolutely not. First, the second item was $70.00 (originally $130) and the discount for both items was $100.00 total, so she had already gotten it heavily discounted.

When I explained this, you would have thought I had cussed at her.

Customer: “You are robbing me of my money! You should give me the added discount since the delay was your fault!”

I said no again. She took her things, told me to keep the canceled item on the order since she didn’t want to lose her discount, and yelled that I was robbing her.

Yes… I am robbing you of $50.00 you didn’t pay. To top it off, she had gotten something else entirely free for the delay weeks prior.

Our store lets customers get up to $40 cashback on a check with a customer card.

We have a particular customer who is very loud and usually wrong. One evening, he comes through the line and gets $40 back. I hand him his cashback and his receipt and he leaves. I think it was an unusually smooth transaction for him, but of course, I was wrong.

About half an hour later, he’s back.

Customer: “You didn’t give me my cash or my receipt.”

Me: “I’m pretty sure I did, sir.”

Customer: “Well, I don’t have it. I always wrap the receipt around the cash and put it straight into my wallet, so I go home and enter it in my checkbook. Straight into my wallet.”

Me: “Well, all I can do is call a manager and have her count my drawer.”

Customer: “Call her, then. I need my cash and I’m in a hurry.”

I call the manager, but she is tied up with another customer and will be a few minutes before she gets there. The customer stands there grumbling, in a loud voice, about incompetence and how no one can do their job right.

Finally, the manager gets there and I fill her in.

Customer: “I got cashback and she didn’t give me my money. I can prove it, too.”

He then shoves his hand in his pocket and pulls out the receipt. The receipt he just told me he ALWAYS put back in his wallet and that I hadn’t given him in the first place. He then unfolds the receipt, and what is all wrapped up in it?

Two $20 bills.

He stands there for a moment with his jaw open.

Manager: “I guess I don’t have to count the drawer after all. Good thing, since you’re in such a hurry.”

The customer just shoves the receipt and cash into his pocket and practically runs out of the store. The manager apologizes to the customers who have been waiting to check out this whole time.

Other Customer: “Well, he did wrap the cash in the receipt. He wasn’t wrong about that.”

I got everyone through the line as quickly as I could, apologizing to them. The loud customer came back into the store on other occasions, and of course, he never apologized. But why should he? He was never wrong!

Related:
Cash Back Attack, Part 16
Cash Back Attack, Part 15
Cash Back Attack, Part 14
Cash Back Attack, Part 13
Cash Back Attack, Part 12

I work in a call center for a credit union.

Customer: “I’m trying to figure out how to make a cash deposit on your banking app.”

Me: “That’s not possible.”

Customer: “It works for a check, so why not cash? Bills have serial numbers on them. If I take a picture of the bills, front and back, that cash should be in my account and can’t be used anywhere else.”

I want to say that I don’t know how anyone will ever beat this level of stupid, but that’s just inviting trouble.

This happened years ago when you made car payments at the bank and dinosaurs roamed the earth. I deposited my paycheck, paid my car payment with the coupon, and collected cash back. The cash felt a little too heavy as I pulled away, so I stopped and counted it. It was exactly my car payment too much money, but my coupon was marked paid. I walked back to the window.

Me: “I think you made a mistake.”

Employee: *Quickly* “We can’t give you any additional money since you left the window.”

Me: “You gave me too much.”

She reached out and grabbed the envelope fast as lightning. Evidently, THAT they could do after you left the window. I didn’t even get a thank-you. But I figured I built up a little good Karma that day, and I do pride myself on being honest.

I’m feeling under the weather, and I go and see my doctor. My complaint is a simple one and all I need is a three-dose run of medication. I go in to the local major chain pharmacy and drop off my prescription. 

Later, I get a call telling me that they can’t run my script as it was rejected by the insurance company. 

Dang it.

I go in and find out that, while my condition is severe enough that I really need three doses to clear it up, the insurance company will only allow the more common two-dose run. Three, apparently, is right out and is an offense to the Insurance Deities. 

Me: “Okay, what if we don’t involve insurance? How much would this be if I just paid out of pocket?”

Pharmacy Tech: “You can’t do that. The insurance company rejected it.”

Me: “I understand that. What if we don’t submit it to insurance and I just pay cash?”

Pharmacy Tech: “You cannot do that. The insurance company denied it.”

Me: “If I didn’t have insurance, what would you have done?”

Pharmacy Tech: “We’d have just charged you the cost of the medication.”

Me: “Okay, how abo—”

Pharmacy Tech: *Cutting me off* “We cannot do that. The insurance company denied it. You cannot get your medication.”

Me: “F*** the insurance company! I want to run this as an out-of-pocket! How. Much. Is. It?”

Pharmacy Tech: “Sir! I am going to have to ask you to leave.”

At this point, I had to reach down deep and find my inner Entitled Jerk. I demanded the manager. 

Basically, what happened next was pretty much the conversation above but with a manager backing the pharmacy tech up. Eventually, I asked for the script back and was told that since it was denied and had been stamped as denied, they could not give it to me.

I started to get really annoyed and was about to really flip out, but then the police officer they called while we were going around tapped me on the shoulder and explained that I was being trespassed off of the grounds. 

The officer was polite about it, listened to my side of the story, and agreed that it was unfair and that I should have been able to get my meds or at least get my script back.

Eventually, I called my doctor back, they issued another script, and I went to a locally-owned pharmacy. I told them that insurance was not going to cover it and that I wanted to just pay for the medication if it wasn’t too expensive. They told me, it was reasonable (very reasonable), I paid, and I got my meds. 

The kicker? Without coupons or pharmacy discounts, the medication was only $8.34 a pill. I got banned from my pharmacy over a lousy nine bucks.