Should I be mad at Sears for a pricing mistake?

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I went in to a Sears to buy a Gamecube memory card. The rack for it was labelled 19.99 (with 5 or 6 cards there), and it was the locking kind that required an associate to unlock it. I got an associate and took the card to the cash register, where it rang up 29.99. I mentioned that the rack said 19.99, and upon inspection, the associate decided that the rack was mislabeled (I agreed). I asked to talk to a manager about honoring the price on the rack, and the manager (without speaking to me), told the associate that the prices were easy to swap. They couldn't honor the price, and claimed that someone could have easily changed the prices.

Do I have a right to be mad here? I feel like they thought I was trying to scam them, since they effectively accused me of swapping the price tags (which I certainly didn't). I suppose my biggest problem is that the manager or associate never said something like "we just can't sell it for that price because we would lose money on the sale" or "that's our mistake, the wrong label was put there or the items were put on the wrong rack." Instead, they blamed other customers (or me).

Thanks for reading and thanks for any comments.
 
They just sound like idiots. They, as a good customer service rule, honor the price, but I don't think they HAVE to.

Sears' cust. service is horrible, so this incident is not surprising.
 
The fact that Sears is blaming you is wrong. I mean, how could you change the price label if you needed the employee to open in the first place? Usually, they reach in and grab the item, not you. So, if it's anyone's fault, it would be their own.
 
[quote name='Kain Vincent']The fact that Sears is blaming you is wrong. I mean, how could you change the price label if you needed the employee to open in the first place? Usually, they reach in and grab the item, not you. So, if it's anyone's fault, it would be their own.[/QUOTE]

Every Sears I've been to has little holes cut out in the windows of their display cabinets - big enough to get your arm through, but not big enough to pull a game through. I assume so you can get the game in your hands to turn it around and look at the back without it actually leaving the display case.

That's probably why they thought he did it.
 
How the hell are you going to change the pricetag when you need to unlock the case to even get to the item? Was the price outside the case? They should've honored the $19.99 price.
 
The policy for all sears stores is to reduce a price by $5 (if its $5-$100) if mislabeled. so you should have at least gotten it down to $24.99 as thats the policy.
 
If more than 1 item is there, they should honor the price it was listed under. I had a similar situation at Circuit City with the Logitech Cordless Xbox headset that retails for $80 and was placed on a rack with about 4 of them that said $20. At the time, the headset had just came out so I did not know what the price was and had assumed that it was $20 so when I told them to go look at the rack, they honored the $20 price and removed the price tags from the rack. Sears just must not care about customer service since I have never really had any issues with price matches or price mistakes not being honored at Circuit City.
 
He shouldn't have been accusing you in front of yourself (ugh, i know that sentence sounds funky but you know what I mean).
 
[quote name='Kain Vincent']The fact that Sears is blaming you is wrong. I mean, how could you change the price label if you needed the employee to open in the first place? Usually, they reach in and grab the item, not you. So, if it's anyone's fault, it would be their own.[/QUOTE]

I was wondering the same thing. OP, did you point this out to them?

Furthermore, the general customer service rule is that the customer is always right (even when you know who's fault it is, store or customer). They should have apologized and then made the decision about honoring it, which they aren't required to do (depending on their policy). But there was no reason to blame you - the customer - at all. That just speaks of the poor service they provide.
 
[quote name='Scorch']How the hell are you going to change the pricetag when you need to unlock the case to even get to the item? Was the price outside the case? They should've honored the $19.99 price.[/QUOTE]

Well, this one wasn't one of the glass cases ... each hanging rack was lockable on its own (if that makes sense).

Edit: I'm sorry if I didn't make this clear at the beginning: the price tags were exposed, but the cards couldn't be removed except with a special key.
 
[quote name='nwaugh']Well, this one wasn't one of the glass cases ... each hanging rack was lockable on its own (if that makes sense).

Edit: I'm sorry if I didn't make this clear at the beginning: the price tags were exposed, but the cards couldn't be removed except with a special key.[/QUOTE]

I am curious, but were you able to handle the items yourself?
 
It was bad move on Sears part. For a mere $10 (honoring the lower price) they could have generated some goodwill with a customer. Now they have a dissatisfied customer posting to a public website about his bad experience at that store. You absolutely have the right to be mad.
 
[quote name='dopa345']It was bad move on Sears part. For a mere $10 (honoring the lower price) they could have generated some goodwill with a customer. Now they have a dissatisfied customer posting to a public website about his bad experience at that store. You absolutely have the right to be mad.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the support. That was similar reasoning that I used to keep myself for blowing up at them; $10 wasn't worth the aggravation it would have resulted in. Really, I wouldn't have had any problem with the situation if they had at least acknowledged that they might have been at fault.
 
[quote name='jennie25']I am curious, but were you able to handle the items yourself?[/QUOTE]

I'm probably not describing it well enough. It's similar to any hanging rack that has plastic blister packs hanging from it; I've seen them used for calculators, memory cards, and action figures. Really, anything that can be "pegged." The rack that I'm talking about, however, had a locking mechanism at the end that prevented someone from just sliding the item off the post. A special tool had to be used to release the lock.
 
I think you're right in your thinking. The Manager made an error in dealing with the situation. He *should* have just said "We can't sell it at that price" and kept the possibility of switching the tags to himself. Sounds like he has some personal issues of his own. Not something to necessarily be mad at SEARS for, or really worth getting mad about anyway (afterall, being mad doesn't bring actual harm/retribution to anyone but yourself), but the fault/blame I believe lies with the Manager's handling of the situation.
 
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