You Disabled Your Service Yourself

I work as a personal shopper. We have this one customer who has lied and scammed us for nearly a year. She normally shops every other week, and she does this every time. We know she is doing it, too, but we cannot get her banned without corporate’s approval.

Our hours for pickup are between 10:00 am and 8:00 pm. When you place your order, you pick when you want to pick up your order. This customer purposefully comes in well after pickup hours — think 3:00 am — to try and pick up her order.

The store used to be a twenty-four-hour location. The official reason this stopped was that the cost of an overnight cashier was too much. Unofficially, our overnight stocking manager, who has no clue how our system works, was tired of dealing with this customer. Multiple times she has tried to pick her groceries up in the middle of the night, despite being told she has to come during the day when someone who knows how the system works is there.

If she does come during the day, she purposefully comes after our pickup window closes when all the shoppers are gone for the day. The customer service clerks may or may not know how to ring up an online shopping order, depending on how new they are. She does this so they have to ring everything up under the grocery key, which means she can use her EBT card to pay for everything. Almost half her order does not qualify for EBT and the shopping fee also does not qualify for EBT, but this way she can pay for everything with EBT.

She also waits days and days, sometimes more than a week, to pick her stuff up, meaning all the perishable fresh produce, fresh meats, and fresh-cut deli items go bad, and she demands replacements.

We have a policy that says if you do not come and pick your groceries up within twenty-four hours, we will put everything back on the shelves. The first time we enforce this policy, she complains to corporate and makes sure to mention how she is disabled and couldn’t pick her groceries up that day because, “I have a disability and I sleep all day and they’re just discriminating against me because I’m disabled.”

After that, we have to call her every day, and we cannot put her order back after twenty-four hours. Every day, she calls back hours later and swears up and down that she will be in to pick up her things before our department closes at 8:00. We sometimes call her before we shop to see if she will actually show up at her scheduled pickup time. Time and again, she swears she will be there on time. Half the time, she never shows up at all.

When the store stops operating twenty-four hours, she complains the first time she can’t get in, again claiming discrimination. Luckily, corporate tells her no, she can’t get in after closing. 

After months of begging and presenting evidence for our case, we finally get her banned from our location. We do not know she has been banned until she tries to place an order and can’t and she calls the store. Our lead shopper handles the call.

Customer: “Why can’t I place an order?”

Coworker: “It’s nothing personal, but because you never come to pick up your groceries on time, we lose money shopping for you. That’s why corporate put a block on your account.”

Customer: “But I love this service!”

Coworker: “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.”

Customer: “It’s because I’m disabled, isn’t it?”

Coworker: “No, it’s not.”

Customer: “Don’t lie.”

Coworker: “I’m not lying. Because you’ve proven over and over how unreliable you are, we can’t trust you to pick your stuff up. When you don’t pick it up, half your items go bad and we have to throw them away instead of reselling them. Again, it’s not personal; it was corporate’s decision.”

Customer: “It’s discrimination! I’ll complain to corporate!”

Coworker: “Okay, but they’re the ones who put the block on your account to begin with.”

Customer: “You’re the only store that doesn’t require people to pay in advance, which is why I can use this!”

Coworker: “Well, honestly, in about a month, that’s going to change, and we will require people to pay online before they can submit an order.”

Customer: “That’s not fair.”

Coworker: “I’m sorry you feel that way, but there’s nothing I can do.”

This circled around a few times, a manager had to get involved, and she did not like it when the manager backed us up and said we would no longer shop her orders. She did try to complain to corporate, but by this time, our regional manager was extremely familiar with her tricks and they did not back down.

We do not miss her as a customer.

This story is part of our crazy-online-shoppers roundup!

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