Horrible retail experience and question for those in retail

[Newyearkiss]

I took something back to a well-known high street store yesterday, and the young girl behind the counter had to call her manager over. There was a slight query on my return and her manager was totally hostile, to the point that I actually walked out of the shop shaking after (eventually) getting a refund. I don’t know if she was running on the adrenaline of the sales and was taking a ‘no-nonsense from customers’ approach (it was heaving in there and had a jumble sale in January type vibe), but I don’t think anyone has ever made me feel so awful. I was mortified as well in front of this young girl. The manager was just so abrasive and aggressive. I’m normally quite able to hold my own but she totally blindsided me.

I was actually thinking I might put in a complaint although I signed my name on the returns receipt. Does anyone know what happens to those bits of paper at the end of each day? I would prefer this woman not to be able to access my name and potentially trace me online.

Several posters asking OP for more information regarding the manager's rudeness and the situation in a bid to see if OP's complaint would be justified, even though she is asking about the return receipts and not validation. She doesn't have to justify her feelings to anyone here, or give more details; that wasn't the point of her post and totally unnecessary.

I have worked in retail before. It can be thankless - this was years ago, must be worse now.

However I have also received very hostile service as a customer too even during mundane transactions, it’s baffling. It is a symptom of declining manners and social niceties across the board. Nowadays most service is devoid of any interactions, some don’t even say a word, even if you have been polite. If I get a really friendly and helpful experience it is rare but lovely.

I am a southerner but visit the north a lot. The northerners are better at customer service, friendly and engaged.

I would imagine she forgot about you almost the moment you left the shop op. You may be there as a sort of faceless ‘one in a crowd’ of a horrible day for her but that’s about it. Sorry you felt awful afterwards, that’s a shame. I can’t decide if you’ve led a bit of a charmed life that this is the worst anyone has ever made you feel or whether the retail worker was a savage… but either way, it’s done and in the past now. Hope you can put it behind you!

Do all the posters on this thread demanding more information before ‘deciding’ realise this isn’t AIBU and actually Chat where the OP has given information and then specifically asked if anyone knows what happens to the return receipt?

OP I hope you’ve found the answer in the few replies that actually read your post properly. I would suggest she won’t be able to trace you and I would raise the complaint with head office

I had a similar experience once. I didn't complain to the store, I wrote a long message to their head office and told them from beginning to end, the entire story. I got a phone call from head office. They apologised profusely and said leave it with them - 'matters' would be dealt with. I was sent a load of gift vouchers and that manager wasn't in the store for all that much longer. She was gone within a few months so I don't think I was the only one to complain about her.

The fact that you think the manager might track you down suggests that your reaction to this incident is disproportionate, makes me wonder about your perception of the whole thing to be honest

I immediately roll my eyes at anyone who claims to have been “shaking” over having to return an item to a shop, and would assume that “the adviser was rude” is probably code for she wouldn’t give in to what the OP wanted.

I absolutely know that there are rude people in customer service, I have worked in a webchat team and I have also worked in call centres. But the customers who have accused me of being rude have typically done so because they were the ones in the wrong and I’d had to point this out to them.

Like the customer who came through to demand the £200 offer we had on on a bank switch the week before, except there had been no offer, not for months. But she was absolutely adamant, demanded to make a complaint, demanded the £200 plus compensation for her distress and because I was apparently lying to her, and in the feedback she then said she looked forward to hearing that I would be fired as a result of me lying to a customer.

Or the ones who come through to complain that they weren’t eligible for the bank switch incentive because they haven’t brought across any direct debits, and are adamant that they did, Netflix and amazon, and won’t be told that those aren’t direct debits they’re regular card payments.

Or the one who, when I worked for an insurance company demanded a refund on his insurance which he had to cancel because he’d lost his licence for drink driving, and wanted his entire annual premium refunded because he had to cancel it and hadn’t made any claims.

Every single one of those would tell MN I was rude, and I absolutely wasn’t.

Oh and “the customer is always right”? Complete and absolute bollocks.

There’s no need for rude customer service. That being said, retail and customer service staff have been expected to put up with rude customers for decades, and it’s become out of control now.

Which is why people are asking what happened, yet some seem to think it’s not relevant. Of course it’s relevant.

Agree.
Unless there's a whole lot more to the story, they'll have forgotten about it within 5 minutes of you leaving the shop.
It's been 20 years since I last worked in any sort of shop, but back then, someone in the back office will just tally up the numbers and make sure what's in the till/on the card readers matches up with what they expect it to be. No one is examining receipts or refund slips, unless there's some discrepancy in the numbers.

All of this. Sometimes managers are rude but the vast majority of cases the customer is asking for something they are not entitled to or cannot have because it doesn’t exist. Some even ask for help doing or fixing things that have fuck all to do with the store/department. Every one of those customers will walk out saying the staff were rude but actually they were just told no, and quite rightly.

They are defensively rude because they realise they are in the wrong and people HATE being proved wrong. Like when we'd get someone saying I'd overcharged them because 'the shelf label says it's 60p and you charged me £4.30'! When another customer had just shoved something back in the wrong place, and we'd not had time (chronically understaffed) to put it back in the proper place and the customer hadn't looked at the label only at the price. They could get very upset about it and it would, of course, be my fault.

Yet another OP who doesn't give the full story, so peeps have to hazard a guess and perhaps give answers [might be totally incorrect] to what has been stated while Op sometimes piss off never to return because the thread hasn't gone the way they hoped.
Given the time frame not saying this applies to you OP, the situation describe was not good. You might be the one nice person among 100 arseholes the manager and staff have dealt with recently.

There "The customer is always right...in matters of taste." It's often misquoted.😉

The slips normally all get put into a big pile together and sent off (that’s what mine did anyway). It you put in a complaint though, they won’t say “miss Newyear complained about you”.

The store needs proof of who they refunded to, as a protection against the store staff being accused of theft etc.

Plus many customers try to return stuff without packaging or receipts in a totally unsellable condition

YABU to call an adult retail worker a young girl. Clearly you mean young woman, as a young girl would be between toddler and teen.
I am sorry for your experience in the shop, it is hard to be sure with that level of detail but probably YANBU about that. It's not a great time of year to be either side of a shop counter.

I've worked as a retail manager and a central team customer services manager, in retail.

Due to GDPR, any customer details must be immediately secured. Your receipt will have gone into a till, probably securely filed at the end of the day and then sent to a central store (often head office) on a weekly basis. Obviously all companies procedures will vary.

Of course, there is a possibility the manager could look back through and find your details if you make a complaint while the refund slip is still in her store. No one here can reassure you otherwise.

However, it's unlikely this will happen. If you email customer service to complain, I imagine their lead times will be several days, at least, at the moment before they even see it. Depending on the severity of the complaint, usually either the store will be emailed directly or their area manager will deal with it.

You will probably get a generic reply thanking you for your feedback and assurances further training will be provided.

The store, nor the area manager, will not be provided with your details. If it needs looking into, they will check dates and times and then speak to the manager in question who will probably struggle to remember the interaction but will 'take the feedback on board.'

My best advice if you're still concerned is to let it go rather than worry a retail manager will harass you online. I mean that nicely, it probably isn't worth your worrying.

My guess is that that manager has been equally rude to anyone making a return so a complaint could have been from any one of numerous customers.

I had this recently when returning a faulty broken item. I was told I was using the item incorrectly and they tried to refuse my return. I promptly informed this manager that I was within my right to return a visibly broken faulty item and the other cashier started getting really mouthy with me basically calling me thick. What should have been a very straight forward return was quite traumatic. I tried complaining to head office but they didn’t even acknowledge my email.

I would be tempted just to leave it. She might have been horrible but you must have held your own, as you still got the refund!
If you do decide to complain, I very very much doubt she would go to the trouble of tracking you down cos you’ve signed a receipt. Unless you think that because you actually got the refund you’ve no right to complain. This isn’t true of course. If she was abusive to you you can complain regardless of what the outcome was. But I’m honestly not sure I’d bother.

It's Jan 3rd. Everyone and their auntie will be trying to return crap, some.people will be chancing their arm

Shops don't have to accept any returns unless they are faulty. It's just something they tend to do

So, I was returning something but the receipt was faded in parts and the barcode wouldn’t scan. That is when the manager came over. At first she was saying the date of purchase couldn’t be seen (which it could except for one number), then she started saying she needed to check if it was out of the return period (which it wasn’t). We then had a bit of back and forth about exchanging it instead. When she finally put the bar code in it came up as the sale price so she said she would only refund it for that. Given that it was only £4 difference I couldn’t be bothered to argue at that point but I’m sure she was on shaky ground with that..you either refund something in full or you don’t refund it at all.

Given that the receipt was faded in parts, I wasn’t quite sure who was right or wrong, so I didn’t feel hugely confident anyway. But it was more of a kind of gaslight-y feeling that was so unsettling.

When I’d finished, I said ‘do you always speak to your customers like that?’ and she said ‘all I’ve done is explain our procedures and processes’…which in a way was true. But she was just so hard and brittle. It’s hard to explain written down, but the whole episode triggered a really anxious feeling in me. Not nice.

It’s tricky @Newyearkiss annoyingly she was just not accepting your approach, but that was about it , she wasn’t rude or out of line, so 100% nothing to complain about

id just forget it and move on

complaints are only take seriously if your names on there - if you still feel it’s necessary send it