Wanting to give a perfect new house for my fiancée, I went out shopping to Big Bazar, Vizag, with plans of purchasing various household and decorative items. Since it was a planned affair, my shopping was finished in less than an hour. I stood at the bill payment counter for about half hour. No complaints! May be I can imagine the long queue was because of volumes of business. Then came my turn and the bill was handed over which read Rs. 1960, apart from lots of other bills, worth Rs. 4000, they broke into pieces so that I could get Rs. 200 discount. Fantastic till here, but that Rs. 1960 bill was special.
I recalled that as I was moving around, buckets were offered as ‘buy one-get one‘. I needed two, and I took two, similar ones. My understanding was that I have to pay for one bucket only. But the bill showed two different prices for two pieces, and two different discounts applied to them. This is completely different from what the earlier offer said. It would make a difference of Rs. 40 in my favor if it was done as per the offer I had seen and considered. I asked for an explanation, and that is where the story began!
Representative who was billing sent me to customer care counter. Representative there was busy documenting lots of stuff, or so he was showing. After a while, like about 20 minutes, I get the attention of Mr. Busy, to find that I have to get the sales rep who sold me these buckets to sort out the issue. I question ‘why me‘, and then he ‘announces‘ in mike calling for a representative from ‘buckets‘ section. He comes and explains to me that one is an old bucket and one is new. Obviously, his argument fails because I am purchasing only new goods, can’t pay for an old one, at least in a shopping mall of that size. He brings himself some help. This representative tells me that I have taken two different buckets and they vary in their capacity. The sarcastic self in me took the dirty pleasure of proving him wrong in the crowd. They bring in more help. This Mr. Intelligent (perhaps an MBA) representative explains to me, that as the economy changes, prices keep changing. So one bucket was bought earlier, and the other was bought later. His explanation fails too, because it is me, the customer, who is purchasing two pieces of the same product on the same day. On top of it, I had to remind him we were in a retail store, and not in a bullion market or commodities exchange. Then as I expected, after all this action for an hour, to meet the store manager, another representative suggests me that Rs. 40 is not worth my time and energy there. I had one simple answer: that it was not Rs. 40 that was motivating me, but the case was so bloody interesting. By this time, I figured out that it was a case of ‘prices changed, offers changed, but barcodes not changed, and systems not changed‘.
At this point, one representative (new one again!) who does not speak EngRish, walked up to me, took the bill, spoke to the customer care representative, got a credit note, changed the bill, and gave me ‘bottles‘ worth Rs. 40. I wish he backed up his good job by saying, ‘we wish you could have a better experience next time‘ or something to that extent.
Haa! What an experience! And the lesson came at a low cost! Does this case convey failure of staff in this retail store? If it does, just wait for me to tell you that the system had calculated 3 x 14 as 38.25. And the billing representative said he was rounding it to Rs. 40. Now, that was hilarious.
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