I work in a shop and 2 of the price tickets for items had been (either) put on the wrong way round or moved by someone, I of course am not insinuating that the customer swapped them around (like they would!?!) but sometimes they fall off and people put them back vaguely in the right place - bare in mind that these 2 items are next to each other.
Essentially the customer had bought the higher priced item and wanted it for the price on the lower priced ticket.
Had she approached the situation calmly the manager would've more-than-likely offered some sort of discounted refund or perk, as it was she shouted across the shop summoning me and then started demanding money back and being very aggressive.
Just to point out that getting aggressive with a lowly-sales assistant doesn't help, first we have little/no power to do anything about the prices and secondly if we have to go fetch a manager for you the manager is going to be confronted with an upset assistant who's done nothing wrong and is probably going to bad-mouth you before the manager before they come out to speak to you. You will be offered a lot less help than had you been nice because now you have all of the staffs backs up.
The customer starts screaming at my supervisor and manager who are now both involved telling us that her sister works in trading standards - implying she will 'get them involved' as if we're all going to get charged fines and sacked and the shop shut down! (Yeah, of course!) as if this sudden hollow threat was going to make us quake in our boots and going "Nooooooooooo, don't call trading standards, what ever will we do???"
As it is the law is very clear, and working in retail for 10 years in various shops we are made very aware of the legalities of it and in every shop I have worked in I have been told the same thing, so to re-iterate for those of you who are unclear:
Retailers are under NO obligation whatsoever to sell items to you at an advertised price, a price ticket is an 'invitation to buy' only and the price can be changed and is contractually agreed when you pay for the item at the till point.
Trading standards can fine companies for advertising items at incorrect prices. However it needs to clearly state on every item the incorrect price and they need strong proof of this in order to apply this fine (E.g. Trading standards would have to walk in and find 100 tins of soup all with individual price stickers on for 30p and a shelf ticket for 30p but the store was scanning them all at 50p) that sort of thing. - In our case all the items had the correct prices on and it was only the shelf label that was incorrect (again these items were next to each other and could've easily been swapped/knocked off etc.)
We were not advertising incorrectly for 3 reasons:
- 1. All items were individually stickered with the correct barcode and price
- 2. The tickets, although in front of the wrong items, were still not advertising incorrect prices as the tickets had item codes on them below the price which correlated to the correct items - had we looked at the item codes on the tickets and on the individual barcodes the prices advertised are still correct.
- 3. The customer had already paid for the item, entering a contractual agreement that said she was happy to pay that, until money exchanges hands (which it had) all ticketed advertising is still only an 'invitation to buy' - which the customer had already agreed to.
Even if the item was completely advertised incorrectly (which it wasn't) the retailer is STILL under NO obligation WHATSOEVER to sell you it at the advertised price, if you choose to buy it or not is completely up to you. The most that would happen is the company would get a fine after a lengthy process of trying to prove the inaccuracy. You would NOT be 'entitled' to buy the item at the lower price.
Also had the customer been polite, calm and understanding we would've given some sort of discount, as retailers try to be helpful and avoid argument as much as possible. As it was she spoke to all of us with guns blazing, being aggressive and condescending to 3 members of staff, it felt like she was trying to get a rise out of us and trying to get us to argue back - all of the staff were patient, polite and honest to her - we all told her we understood her point of view and would see what we could do, explaining and pointing out the barcodes with the correct price on - but following her attitude and the legal obligations set forth by trading standards and the fact that she wasted half an hour and 3 members of staff's time shouting at us and telling us we were wrong and she wanted the difference back none of us felt vaguely inclined to help her.
As it was she still took the item. And as she left had the nerve to tell us that she thought we all had horrible attitudes towards her - because obviously being nothing but polite while she lost her temper was such an awful attitude to take.
It was an unfounded and unnecessary act of aggression, in which no one won -I'm sure she left feeling angry and unhappy, but she also caused 3 members of staff to feel angry, aggressive and upset/hurt as her final say was a personal attack to say we were awful individuals with bad attitudes.
Anyone who has worked in retail will have encountered this, in all the shops I've worked in I'm pretty confident its happened at least once in every single one of them - do you know what, not once has trading standards gotten involved, the stores never got fined, the staff kept their jobs and the world did not crumble into non-functioning chaos. That is because in every instance THE CUSTOMER IS NEVER RIGHT.
Grr.
