As I went through my day today, I was beginning to get concerned that I might end up with a similar entry to last night; nothing really to say, but the need to do this as part of my experiment. But, as the fates would have it, something fell right into my lap.
I ended up in the Wheaton area because the Peeve needed to go to the HMart, which is like an Asian Super Walmart. It's a pretty cool place, lots of free samples of small, crunchy, spicy things - mostly fish, but tonight I wasn't feeling it. As we pulled into the parking lot, I remembered that there was a Hollywood Video in that same strip. And after having experienced the joy of my old Hollywood haunt while visiting the parents for Christmas, AND discovering that HV was having a buy two, get two free sale, I figured I could poke around for a while and see if I HAVE to pick up some more DVDs.
Now, it's not how you think. People think that I just buy movies no matter what, but that is not true, especially as I have gotten older. I have become more picky in what I buy for myself. There have been plenty of occasions
in the last three years or so, that I have walked into a store and picked out a handful of movies, only to return them to the shelves and walk out with nothing, thinking that there are more important things that I should be spending my money on, like Diet Soda.
I had this high expectation for this store before I entered, based on my experience back in GA, and I was sorely disappointed in this place. Granted, their selection of Previously Viewed DVDs was pretty good, all in all, it was the store, the presentation, and the customer service that left much to be desired.
I walked through the many shelves of Previously Viewed DVDs, looking for those movies that I just couldn't live without, sometimes based on the film itself, but many times it's the price, and it's always based on the fact that I had seen it before. I don't buy movies that I haven't watched before; this is what separates me from the rest of the animals. I ended up with many DVDs, and ended up putting about a third of them back. It is always based on the sale. In the end, I ended up with 6 DVDs, that were part of a "50% off all DVDs Marked $9.99 or Lower," making them all each under $5.00 at least, so I had to buy them. That's a rule.
And this is where the experience turned ugly. I stood waiting to get served for a few minutes while the two, and then three, staff members talked among themselves about this and that. I tried to endear myself on them by helping answer another guest's query about a specific Charlize Theron movie, which ended up being "Aeon Flux." I got checked out and I was signing my receipt, and I noticed that one of the movies was not marked 50% off, and was in fact priced incorrectly at $12.99, when the sticker said $9.99.
I pointed out the error to the cashier, and he said that the sticker was incorrect, I excused myself and went and grabbed the other DVDs of the same movie to verify to them that they were all priced the same and should be a part of the deal. (You see, I always look at the price tag on almost every copy of a movie to see if one is marked cheaper than the others, hey every penny counts) My cashier couldn't make the refund, so I was shuffled off to the manager, which is totally understandable. But the manager, who happened to be the Store Director, end of the line as far as the store goes, spent the next 24 minutes (I have the two receipts showing that time difference) trying to figure out how to fix the issue, apparently having to void out multiple attempts to figure out why these one DVD was priced incorrectly, or how to make the exchange and refund me back the difference. At a certain point, I was sure that he was stalling to get me to just say, "Fine, whatever, just give me the movie." But I had nothing else really planned for the night, and I wanted to get the movie for $5.00.
Now, I used to manage a Hollywood Video, granted that was a little over four years ago, but the computers system didn't appear to have changed much; they're still using dot matrix printers for their receipts. I tried to explain to this guy that all he needed to do was a refund of the original price and then sell it back to me at the $5.00 price, either by manually changing the price to $9.99 and using the 50% off coupon, or just manually pricing the DVD to $5.00, but I didn't want to just say to him that I used to run a store, and all that.
After the 24 minutes of him clicking and clicking on the computer, he took my credit card and swiped it and refunded me $8.47. And when I looked at the receipt, it was exactly how I said it should have been done. But why had it taken him 24 minutes to do that? On a Saturday night? These guys aren't pulling in much business if our transaction was allowed to take up that much time.
In the end, I got my movies, at the price I wanted to pay, but I think a piece of my heart died. It's hard to see something you dedicated 7 years of your life to, fall into the hands of incompetents.
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