to not understand why people do this and think it's fucking stupid?

[geegollygosh1]

I own my own business selling products via a webpage.

Every now and then I will put on a sale, sometimes randomly, but also for things like Black Friday etc.. I always ensure that all orders have been fulfilled before doing this.

Every time I get customers contacting me acting aggrieved at the fact that an item they bought is now on sale. I understand its annoying but some of these people ordered their items literally weeks prior and will actually be pissed off that the items now on sale WEEKS after they bought it.

I do actually occasionally refund the difference to someone if its a recent order and they are polite in their request but I have people emailing weeks later and being really shitty about it.

Aibu to think this is fucking stupid? A sale has to have a start date surely it's not feasible to expect a refund for something weeks later just because it's now on sale and be annoyed about? Obviously I can't simply go back weeks and refund everyone the difference otherwise there would be no point ever having a sale.

I just don't understand why people do this.

Quite.

I knew this and I was studying engineering!

What annoyed me was the personal abuse you got when you, one, said no, two, pointed out (as above) why they were wrong. This was at Bristol uni where quite a few of the students are from fairly well heeled backgrounds and they were the ones that got irritated that this lowly shop worker had the audacity to challenge their bullshit.

I prefer to shop at places like @MyKingdomforaNameChange business.

There are a couple of small businesses I have been interested in using that I follow on social media and they endlessly post rants about customers who ask for discounts and how it is rude and disrespectful when they are a small business, they have tiny margins etc. But then they do sales offering 20-50% off their original price, each time claiming 'it is the lowest they can go'. It makes a mockery of their original point of having small margins if they can offer the same service at upto 50% off. Offer a regular price that is reasonable with no promotions.

If I have purchased an item recently, not yet used/worn it and it goes down in price whilst still in returns period, I will ask nicely for the difference to be refunded. If refused (never happened so far), I will consider returning and re-buying but the environmental impact of this is poor so may not do it - guess depends how much I want it!

Not always true.

Huge sale prices and reductions can mean the shop is selling at very marginal profit, break even, or even at a loss.
There's times shops sell items like that due to:

• They're just trying to get the stock sold and gone as it's not selling and is taking up too much room in the warehouse.
• Because there's an expectation for a sale to be on, eg at Black Friday and the shop feels forced that they have to engage in order to compete with competitors.
• The economy is slow and people aren't spending money on non-essential items, so the shop has to take the hit on the profit just to keep some revenue flowing, whether or not they make any profit on it, they just need the cash flow coming.

Additionally, it's not just down to the shop. The manufacturer could say to the shop, "We managed to buy a load of materials cheaper than normal as a one off, so we can sell the XX product to you at a cheaper price for the next month." Then the shop can pass that saving onto the customer and put it on sale.

Yes, you have to do something with stock you can't sell - whether that's selling it at a large markdown, selling as rags by weight, or giving to charity shops and writing off the full amount it cost you, it has to go, especially if you're closing down.

That makes me think of Ned Flanders and his Leftorium - where he gets the reputation of being the only shop in the mall that's willing to validate free parking tickets without purchase.

Because a lot of people are nuts. DS has just started working in a shop and they had a customer demanding a refund as he'd lost the item he'd bought. DS was 🤯😂

He seems to have the same attitude to 'other people's fault' as seen here (from 0:56)!

I'd reply with an email saying something like sorry you missed out on this occasion, please sign up to my newsletter for exclusive early access to sales

I think the cut off should be the returns period. If the sale happens during this time, they should be entitled to a partial refund. I recently returned and then repurchased a playmobil set to argos due to it going in the sale a week after I ordered it. Also, 2x toddler Clarks shoes. Both went in the sale less than a week after I bought them, hadn't been out the house in them yet.

Many years ago...

I had a customer throw a toaster at my head because she wanted a refund and I was just being 'an argumentative slag for no fucking reason'

I was in Sainsbury's and the toaster was a Tesco's toaster but according to her we were 'all the fucking same'

Annoyingly, after the toaster was bounced off my head, the manager gave her petty cash to the value of the toaster to keep the peace as she was creating merry hell and causing a store wide disruption.

I was livid and it showed, so I was told I wasn't a team player and marked down in my next performance review. To this day I wish i had given that manager a piece of my mind, but I was young and needed the job.

Out of interest, what would happen if a store had received and accepted an order for a temporarily out-of-stock item that was pending; and then, when you return the item, the system automatically allocates it to the waiting customer and notifies them as such - meaning that your returned item is suddenly not available for you to re-buy at the lower price, and may never be back in stock again, if it was the end of the line?!

Just how do people get to the point of such extreme stupidity and/or entitlement that they genuinely think it reasonable to return an item to a random, unconnected shop rather than go back to where they bought it from (or at least another branch of the same chain) - and then kick off and tell you that you are 'wrong' when you respectfully disabuse them of that notion?

Do they think that all retail premises are essentially exactly the same, and all owned by the same people? Does it really not occur to them that you might not want to take on an unwanted/faulty product that was sold by somebody else and make it your own problem, just because your shop happens to be nearer to where the stupid person who bought it lives?

They know they are being CFs but if they think there is even a slim chance of getting a 'freebie' they will happily act the twat to get it.

I think it depends. If you have a regular price and occasionally drop your price for a sale, fair enough. But the situation I encountered did make me feel rubbish:

1. A 'free delivery for one day only' offer.
2. After I had checked out and got the 'order confirmation' page, an offer to add something that I had already ordered as part of my original order at a discounted rate.
3. Two days later, a 15% off 'Halloween sale'.

If I had known they would do a 15% off sale, I wouldn't have ordered on the 'free delivery' weekend. If I had known they would offer me a 10% discount on the pretty vital accessory, I wouldn't have included it in my original order.

It just felt underhand to offer free delivery as a 'puller', knowing they would be offering 15% a couple of days later.

I work for a tour operator and we have a black Friday sale every year, as well as a January added value campaign. Every time we get customers asking for us to reduce their holiday to the offer price. I had a stock answer which says something along the lines of"unfortunately we aren't able to do that, and likewise we wouldn't ask you for more money should your holiday go up after you've booked. I appreciate this isn't the answer you would like etc "
We don't make huge margins throughout the year on full price holidays and over the years such up massive increases in our operating costs without passing them on. Unfortunately the nature of the market is that if one operator launches Black Friday offers we all have to!

It just felt underhand to offer free delivery as a 'puller', knowing they would be offering 15% a couple of days later.

It’s not a calculated move to upset you, it’s a calculated move to generate sales. Maybe the free delivery wasn’t bringing in the customers, so they’ve upped the offer to 15% off.
Sales offers are usually luck of the draw, you don’t necessarily know when they going to happen, or if the item you want will be in it. Otherwise everyone would just wait for the sales and not buy anything at normal price.

I am fucking furious for you. Your twat of a manager should have backed you, threatened to call the police to get her removed and banned her from the store too. I cannot believe she actually refunded her

That sounds particularly stupid of them, as specific holidays are a limited supply - and once all the places on a particular holiday have been sold, they're gone for the year.

They aren't like manufactured products that will be freely available indefinitely for as many people as want to buy them; by booking early, you're not just buying the holiday, but you're also guaranteeing your place.

By choosing to leave it late, you may get a bargain, or you may miss your chance completely. This is exactly why some people who just want 'a holiday somewhere nice' deliberately leave it until the last minute, accepting that they will get a great deal, but at the expense of having a full choice of where they go and all the other specifics.

@FatherJackHackettsUnderpantsHamper the company i work for sells very niche holidays so that's definitely true in our case! We're pretty much the opposite of a mass market beach holiday with hundreds of places.

In large department stores it is often the manufacturer of the items on sale who take the hit for the sale reductions. They actually have to pay the store the difference between the full selling price and the marked down selling price. So the stores always get their full huge margin even if the item goes on sale and the manufacturer takes a further hit on their already much smaller margins. It's called funded markdown.

It takes all sorts. I had a customer this year come back wanting to purchase an item I priced for her….. wait for it…. FOUR years ago. She couldn’t believe I ‘wasn’t willing to honour my quotation’. She ended up going elsewhere (and paying more than I re-quoted her as I included a discount out of embarrassment) to show ‘her utter disgust’.

Recently had a customer buying an end of the line type item with a huge discount ask if they could wait until Black Friday to receive a further discount on it. Couldn’t understand why I couldn’t see them a brand new item for less than it cost to make. Aghhhhh!!

I wish we could just avoid doing any offers as it always leads to trouble.

I'm guessing those students failed their law course miserably as anyone with the smallest knowledge of contract law knows that displaying goods in a shop is only an "invitation to treat". For a binding contract to exist there must be "offer" and "acceptance". The offer is when the customer takes the item to the till and offers their money, the acceptance comes when the assistant accepts the money and rings the sale up on the till. The shop is not obliged to accept any offer.

Maybe those students should also look up the definition of fraud before they start shouting the odds as they would find that deliberately switching price tags to try to fool the shop into selling to them at the wrong price would come under this classification. That's a criminal offence so you could have called the police and had them arrested.

I see @Goodornot beat me to it!

Just ignore, I wouldn’t refund the difference. The sale has to start at some point like you say.

I’ve ordered from two places last week that now have buy 2 get 1 free offers on. I bought 2 items from each so I’d have got free items worth £20 and £15 if I’d have ordered a couple of days later. You just have to suck it up. I suppose I could have tried to cancel and reorder but I haven’t bothered.

I think it's fair enough if within the return period as they could just as easily send it back for a refund of the higher price and buy the same again at the lower price. So giving them a partial refund makes more sense than suffering the duplicated postage!

But if bought further back than the returns window, no, tell them to sod off!

I don't think there is anything wrong with this if it's within the return time frame and you haven't used the items.