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Dragon Master wrote:
Sorry but I just had to VENT!!
I’m not going to defend the retailer, who handled the situation badly, but I am going to step into his smelly shoes for a minute.
The Ruby Emperor was listing for $268.00 when the store bought it. Hence the $269.99 price tag, which got forgotten about but was the reason the sales person quoted $270.00 over the phone. But all the prices went up right at the time the Ruby Emperor retired (Windstone Editions took it off general sale and had it as a direct-only item at the new price of $299.00) and the store owner would likely have increased the price of that Ruby Emperor to $299.00 in the POS when changing all the other prices. The other Emperors went to $344.00 so the Ruby was still cheap. The big problem was that after the store owner or clerk changed the POS entry, no-one bothered to check the statue itself.
Contrary to popular belief, a retailer has no obligation to sell at the sticker price if the sticker price is wrong as a result of accident rather than deliberate intent to deceive, but the sticker/POS price-discrepancy thing happens all the time, and as a retailer I know that I had better have a really good reason for telling a customer that the sticker price is wrong in a direction that favors my wallet and not theirs. In this instance I’d have cursed myself for a forgetful fool and cheerfully given a refund and an apology. And I honestly think that this would not be an unusual response. I have a lot of friends who are retailers, and I can’t imagine a single one of them coming up with “The best I can do is $300.00 out the door.” I mean, that’s just irritating. “$300 out the door” is something you might expect to hear from a used-furniture salesman at a flea market who’s ripping you off but trying to make you think you are getting a bargain. “$300.00 out the door”? I’d have felt like slapping the fellow silly, and that’s totally not my style.
As you say, it’s a matter of customer service. It’s not that the price was higher than you were willing to pay; it was that the price was higher than you had been lead to expect.
I CAN’T stand the lack of costomer service. OOOO it gets me so fired up!! Honsestly, we go into a store for my art sapplies and the tag says 20 but the cashier says it is 30. My mom says,” your tag says 20, that is what you are advertising it as and why i was going to buy it.” so we get the 20 dollor price.
but other times I have heard of haggling or seen it. If I was there I would have some sharp words about it.
I am glad you got something out of it though, sheesh.A few years ago…Like 5, I got both of the Wizard Cat’s for $53.00 each due to an error on a website’s sale page. The sale was finished, and I was so happy to have gotten such a sweet deal. They got stolen a few months later, re-sold on ebay and I finally replaced the Emerald Wiz Cat, but I haven’t had the funds to snag the Peacock one (Who reminds me of my twin kitties). O’well, you win some, you lose some. Glad you got a little something for your pain DM. 😉
well Dave isn’t the store repsonsible for checking their computer system when customers call in to check inventory for sales. If they had quoted me the $299 price up front we would have had all the facts and Dragonessjade could have decided if she wanted to pay that price or not. I have no way to get in touch with her so I was stuck. I’m a firm believer that you have to come thru on your promises that you make to your customers. I was originally quoted the price of $269.99
Once I was in a store and found a Christmas CD some how marked at .01 I grabbed it and asked it the counter about the price and the sales person said NO it’s mismarked and his manager was standing there and said “you know if that is the price we had on it then that is the price we have to sell it to him for.” I was very happy with my CD for a penny!!
It was his employee that misquoted as a representative of the company. I was not looking for any sort of deal I was just looking to get what I have on hold for the price I was originally quoted. I was also sort of chuckling on the “$300 out the door price”. I did get a beautiful trinket box with a dragon on top with my store credit and an additional $20. I will actually be putting in on display in my glass case instead of using it as a trinket box.
I thought you ALWAYS had to honor your prices on the floor??😡 So sorry!
It’s too bad we’re not all close enough to shop at Astral castle, or wolflodge’s or em’s emporium at least when she’s at fairs… but if you’re ever in NM, I will recommend Natural Lites 😉Sigh, remember when people tried to make you like their store and come back? Remember when employees tried to not be rude? I’ll agree that’s sadly lacking in many stores, but again, good customer service does exist in some corners. It’s too bad the store owner doesn’t read the forum, as he’d find out how far reaching good vs. bad opinion can be. I go out of my way now to buy from my local dealer because of the customer service, and likewise, they are willing to go out of their way to keep me as a satisfied customer. It’s a great relationship. How much MORE would DM or others be willing to buy if the store owners tried to keep them happy? I mean really! Isn’t that good business sense, esp. with something as high end as windstones.
Dragon Master wrote:I thought you ALWAYS had to honor your prices on the floor??
Apparently California law says that retailers have to sell at the advertised price. Laws in other states can be different though.
Here’s a San Jose Mercury News article on a case that was similar to yours.
The Castle [Dave wrote:“]Contrary to popular belief, a retailer has no obligation to sell at the sticker price if the sticker price is wrong as a result of accident rather than deliberate intent to deceive
You’d think they’d have to sell at the advertised price. I don’t know how the laws are in the States, but here in Switzerland, if the advertised price differs insignificantly from the price the seller requires verbally or otherwise, the seller has to let it go for the price that’s advertised black on white. $30 difference is considered isignificant. Now if the price tag said $29.90 instead of $299, there’d be an obvious mistake and the seller could refuse to sell for the marked $29.90.
So if that had happened here, DM, you could have rightfully insisted on getting the emp for $269. And if I understand Mimi correctly, the same thing applies for California?Greater Basilisk wrote:And if I understand Mimi correctly, the same thing applies for California?
Yeah, that’s my understanding.
And regardless of what the law is — if its just a small amount like in DM’s case, I think it’d just be good business sense to sell for the advertised price and keep the customers happy.
Yikes! 0_0 I’m sorry DM…I’m glad it all worked out (if not perfectly)…and I DO love my rainbow emp…I’m sorry to hear I snatched it from Ski, though! 🙁 Sorry Ski! I didn’t mean to!
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."
-J R R Tolkienmimitrek wrote:Greater Basilisk wrote:And if I understand Mimi correctly, the same thing applies for California?
Yeah, that’s my understanding.
And regardless of what the law is — if its just a small amount like in DM’s case, I think it’d just be good business sense to sell for the advertised price and keep the customers happy.
Yeah. A little common sense and courtesy goes a long way.
Holy crap, if I tried to pull something like that at the store I work at, I would probably be fired so fast my pants would catch fire! @_@ It costs NOTHING to be polite to customers, even when mistakes are made!
Sorry to hear about your situation! :/
Dragon Master wrote:wolflodge100 wrote:I bought one Rainbow Emp for me and sent the contact info to ski forb the other one. When I went up there to pick mine up, I asked about ski. They said they were just waiting to get a shipping quote. I should have just bought it and sent it to ski myself! They never got back to her! 👿 Same store!
I wonder if that is the Rainbow Emperor that I ended up buying and bringing down on for my birthday for Arlla??
Wow. that would be interesting if it was. They just never got back to me. 😕
When did ruby retire? I was not aware that it was.
Dragon Master wrote:well Dave isn’t the store repsonsible for checking their computer system when customers call in to check inventory for sales. If they had quoted me the $299 price up front we would have had all the facts and Dragonessjade could have decided if she wanted to pay that price or not. I have no way to get in touch with her so I was stuck. I’m a firm believer that you have to come thru on your promises that you make to your customers. I was originally quoted the price of $269.99
Once I was in a store and found a Christmas CD some how marked at .01 I grabbed it and asked it the counter about the price and the sales person said NO it’s mismarked and his manager was standing there and said “you know if that is the price we had on it then that is the price we have to sell it to him for.” …
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I thought you ALWAYS had to honor your prices on the floor??Sometimes it’s just easier to look at the price on the actual item. If I have something in my hand with a price on it, I won’t check that against the computer when telling someone how much it is. And yes, sometimes the shelf price is “wrong” but usually when it is wrong it’s not wrong by enough to risk losing a customer and one’s reputation by charging the higher rather than the lower of the two prices. I’m guessing that when you were at the counter the sales clerk just rang up the item and didn’t look to see if it had a price tag on it, even after you brought the discrepancy from the original quote to his attention. That was clearly bad judgment. If this happened to me, my first thought would be “Where did that quote come from if not from the computer?”
In most stores, particularly the big stores that pride themselves on their impeccable if impersonal customer service, the customer is likely to be charged the lower of any likely price. The tag says $0.01? And it’s the right tag for the merchandise; just the wrong price? And the store loses a few dollars and not a few hundred? Oh well, an employee screwed up and it’s your lucky day. Or, the item you are buying that says $15.00 comes up as $7.95? You just got an unexpected discount. Enjoy your purchase and please hurry back for more.
However, these will probably be sensible store policies rather than legal requirements.
I don’t know what the exact law in California is, but elsewhere if something is accidentally wrongly priced, the store can withdraw it from sale rather than let it go at the incorrect price. Or the store, being on private property, can simply refuse service. That’s an extreme solution, though. That gets reserved for the ruffian who sneaks a $10.00 sale sticker onto a $10,000 home entertainment center and kicks up a fuss at the checkout.
Most laws that target price differences between the shelf and the scanner at checkout are primarily intended to protect consumers in places like grocery stores, where a few cents extra on every tenth item can add up to thousands of dollars a week for an unscrupulous store. In your local collectibles shop, though, any transaction pretty much comes down to being a handshake agreement without the handshake. What’s that Latin street-vendor’s phrase that sums all this up so well? Avoid Disgruntling the Purchaser? Something like that.
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