Apparently the customer is not always right!

[crispykreme]

I was shopping the other day and my ds spotted a LEGO pack. A little bag with a Disney character in. As he's been really well behaved and never usually asks for anything I said he could get it.

The price on the shelf ticket said ' Disney blind bag £1.20' .

He spend the rest of the time I shopped looking at the bag and feeling to see if he could guess what one it was. He was so excited.

Got to the till, scanned LEGO bag and it comes up at £4.50!

I knew LEGO can be expensive but there was no way I could pay that much as we are low on money at the moment.

I asked the cashier if she could get someone to double check the price as I was sure it was £1.20.

Someone came back with the ticked that said Disney blind bag £1.20. Apparently as it was still scanning at £4.50 that is the price it was.

Now usually if that happened the shop would sell to me at the ticketed price. Customer always right ?

I had to refuse the item and leave poor ds near to tears. I promised I would get him one for his birthday or at least when our money situation is better.

Aibu to have expected it for the price clearly stated on the ticket?

Aw, your poor ds - that’s made me feel sad. Mean of them to not sell it to you for the ticketed price. Personally I’d have let him have it and worry about the money later, but I’m soft like that.

Have others seen when argos accidently puts a £600 laptop on thei website prices at £60 and its a technical error where the software or the person entering the details misprint the item?
They don't just send thousands of people laptops at that accidental discount, they all get refunds and apologetic emails.
I think its even in argos' small print that everything is due to their own discretion, pricing, refunds, sales. They can't rip people off, but it works the other way too, they are not going to take a massive loss because of mistakes.
While this is obviously a much smaller value item and price difference, no one can be forced to sell anything, stores have rights too.

OP, can you tell us what store it was, out of curiosity?

Poor kid. They should have offered it at the price out of kindness.
I'd understand if it was a high end product but come on FFS.
I brought lots of clothing back to Dunnes store my receipts were out of date all items now on sale, they kindly overruled the receipt and gave me full credit.
Shame on IKEA.

I can see exactly who has worked in retail and who hasn’t 😂

I'm seeing things. I thought you mentioned IKEA.

Was it a blind bag though? Those Lego bags are usually called 'Disney Lego'.

It's an invitation to buy. The store doesn't have to sell the item at the ticketed price, if they did it would be a goodwill gesture

I worked in a jewel try store and a '0' had fallen from the display of a collar. So it was priced at £120 instead of £1200. Needless to say the customer was not right but understandably very pissed off

I work in retail, very rarely things are marked down wrong or a promo sign is left up after its end date.
If its the last one we will let it go at the price marked or if the customer is nice, they can have it.
If the customer kicks off and shouts at us we refuse to sell it and take them all off sale for 24 hours.

I absolutely can’t stand people who claim the customer is always right.

The customer is in fact very often wrong! And the kind of people who use that expression tend to be wrong even more often than most in my experience, plus entitled, arrogant arseholes.

How many people are parroting the incorrect fact that they store has to legally sell at that price. Do some research, absolutely they do not have to.

Should they have? Ethically? Well that depends, is it a small store family run struggling in the current climate? I’d say no, Tesco / Asda / other large store that could take a £3 hit... more leeway. Also it would depend how OP approached the situation. If they were nice and polite then I probably would have asked management (in a lot of stores they can’t just sell you it at that price if it’s scanning at the wrong price, it can only be overridden by management) but if op was kicking off and had an attitude, nope.

I know it’s already been linked but the phrase ‘the customer is always right’ was coined regarding stock/supply and demand not because random people dictate pricing and policy.

I’m sorry your dc was upset but they were under no obligation to sell it at such a massive discount. As much as it wasn’t your fault it wasn’t theirs either.

You can't even assume it was a shop error. There is more than one type of lego bag product it's perfectly possible that another customer put it back in the wrong place. Those who are saying the shop should have honoured it - is it really fair that retailers have to lose out if customers put things back in the wrong place or change labels? If all these things were honoured every chancer in the country would be swapping products around to get discounts!

If we HAD to sell at the price displayed there would be a hell of a lot of customers carefully faking up price labels on their printers at home and charging in DEMANDING that we sell them that expensive pool set at £5.99 'because that's what it says on this label here...'

Mistakes are made, sometimes on the shop floor, sometimes in the back room, sometimes at the Head Office. We, standing behind the tills, usually haven't got a scooby what the item is even advertised at on the shelf. We go by what the till says. Please feel free to query, if you think you've been overcharged though, if you are polite enough we will usually find in your favour.

It's not deliberate, it's not the shop trying to swindle you. It's a genuine error.

I think a spell in retail should be compulsory for all. 😂

I find Smyths Toys really bad for this especially at Glasgow Fort. The latest time my dd has birthday money left and we popped in, she loves the our generation dolls. They had one of these big basket things full of three different styles of the clothing sets. Big a3 signs on the three sides of the basket saying SALE and a price of £6.99. She was over the moon picked one of each of the three styles only to go to the till to be told that they were close to £19.99 each. I explained they were in a sale basket not the only ones so not mistakenly put there by a shopper but was told that was the price, asked her to go and have a look at the basket which she did but she cane back and just said nope they're £19.99. I had to pop in a fortnight later for a birthday present and said clothing sets still in the basket marked sale at £6.99 asked them to check price just incase they had now been marked down but no still full price spoke to who I think was a supervisor and explained that they had been there for a fortnight in a wrongly priced sale basket fell on deaf ears. I realise that I was probably just being a pain in the arse but after seeing my little ones face at the cash desk that day I'd hate for it to happen to other kids

The price on the shelf ticket suggests the item had been put back in the wrong place perhaps by a customer...if there were multiples of the same and the description matched then it was more likely the shop's mistake and if the customer is polite then they would usually mark it down..and deal with the ticket and the rest of the stock. If the price was properly advertised on the item it would make your case stronger if it scanned through at a higher price. Where I work the reduced stickers often get, ahem, moved between items..it's quite often spottable by the previous price not tallying or the sticker not being stuck so well

God the shops have either just reopened or been ransacked daily from day 1 of covid

The shops have enough on their plate right now

As a manager I may have honoured this. Depends on you op and how you acted. As others upthread have said, if a customer acts stroppy and entitled then no! A cute kid with a flustered mum, then absolutely! 🙂

Hang on - so a shop could have all their items marked on the shelves for £1 then when the customer goes to pay charge them any amount and say oops it's priced wrong??

I feel very sorry for your DC, if there had been a nice kind customer in the shop (like me) they might have helped you out with a donation.

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz it was because the transaction had gone through. The contract had gone through so therfore they were legally obliged to to refund you. In the case of the OP no payment had been made so therefore the contract had not gone through. As per the "invitation to treat" is an action inviting other parties to make an offer to form a contract.The shop was advertising or offering the item to sell however the person advertising is compelled to sell. I understand you child was upset, however the shop didnt have to sell it at that price. Maybe its a good lesson that we can not have everything we want but if it was me would have caved and paid the price for it, though am told i am a soft touch

@Sparklingbrook
Agreed.
When I'm at work I'm sure I can tell the difference between other customer service workers, and those that have clearly never worked in the industry, by both attitude and knowledge.

@Hushabusha

Hang on - so a shop could have all their items marked on the shelves for £1 then when the customer goes to pay charge them any amount and say oops it's priced wrong??

Well, they could, but a) you wouldn't have to buy the items, you could just say 'I'm not paying that' and walk out, and b) they wouldn't stay in business long.

You're not being forced to buy the items at gunpoint.

@Hushabusha no shop is going to have everything priced incorrectly though are they?

Hang on - so a shop could have all their items marked on the shelves for £1 then when the customer goes to pay charge them any amount and say oops it's priced wrong?

"Goes to pay" is the significant step here - the customer hasn't committed to pay when they pick the £1.50 toy up - they have to take it to the till, where it is scanned and the recorded price revealed. Then, the customer hands over their money, or chooses to decline based on the actual price, like OP did. OP didn't commit to paying £1.50, she only thought that's what it cost, and she was given an opportunity to decline at the point she was informed of the true price, which she took.

Yes, it's disappointing she didn't get the item and yes, it's the store's mistake, but these are the reasons that a shop might honour the displayed price, not because they're obliged to.