You Want This Discount Or Not?

Our store usually puts up our sale tags the night before a sale to keep us from staying late or having to come in early the next day and ruining payroll. This often causes some confusion at the register, but we always fix to the advertised price, even a day early. We also know full well what products are on sale and what their prices are. We’re preparing for our end-of-summer sale, which includes 10% off many of our higher-end brands of dog food, but none of them are anywhere near $100. A customer comes up to the till.

Me: “That’ll be [price].”

Customer: “What did [Expensive Food] ring up as?”

Me: “It rang up as originally being [price], but took [amount] off for this cycle’s sale.”

Customer: “The tag said [price $10 lower].”

Me: “Okay, let me check the price list.”

Customer: “It must for the sale you’ve got. You have to give it to me at that price.”

Me: “I understand that, but I need to check on the price. We have a list of the upcoming prices up here.”

After looking, I see that, while the product IS going to be on sale, the price difference is nowhere near the $10 and, in fact, the price from the current sale cycle is lower than that of the following cycle. I explain this to the customer, but he only insists further. I see the manager walk by and ask her what to do. In order to get the guy to shut up, she allows me to change the price to $6 below the original non-sale price, with the $4 from the current sale still being taken off.

Me: “Okay, that’ll now be [new price].”

Customer: *looking smug* “That’s better.”

The customer pays and starts on his way but looks at the receipt and sees what he feels to be an issue. To be fair, our receipts have a weird way of printing sales and discounts at the bottom of the receipt, rather than paired with the item itself, but they have the item number tagged along with the discount amount.

Customer: “This still isn’t right.”

I know exactly what the issue is.

Me: “Okay, let me take a look at it.”

Customer: “See? You charged me [price adjusted for discount]; it should be [lower price].”

Me: “Well, yes, I understand that, but it took that discount off down here; it shows at this black bar.”

Customer: “Well, I still don’t see how that changes anything.”

Me: “Okay, you bought [Food] originally at [price], which we marked down to [lower price], and then you bought [clearance item] at [price], which totals [amount]. Add in the tax, and you get [ total].”

Customer: *Cutting me off* “See?”

Me: *continuing* “And then we took the remainder of the cost from [Food] here at this black bar.”

The customer then just grabbed the receipt and walked off grumbling that it “still doesn’t make any sense.”