Recently I tried to return a defective product back to Fry's. First, they deny that it's defective. I kept trying to show it to them but they wouldn't want to look. Eventually I got a manager, this short, fat kid who couldn't be more than 22. He looks at it while I show him how it's defective, and then the story changes. He indirectly accused me of having made their product defective! Imagine that. You buy a product, open it, it doesn't work, you return it, you expect an apology and a refund.
Instead, without a pretext, without a reason, without proof, they say the product was not defective when it left the store. But how do you know, sir??? No reply. Are you saying all products in your store are 100 percent not fault and never broken? No reply. Long story short, finally he agrees to take the product back when all other customers are standing there looking at this whole thing incredulously.
Wow, that must have been some feat for me to convince them, I thought. They ring up the return slip and put in front of me to sign. I looked, there is 30 dollars missing from the 200 dollar purchase. What is this for?"Restocking fee". What??? They show me a fine print lost in the mess of other fine prints on the BACK of the receipt that says if you return the product there is a 15 percent restocking fee. "But this was a defective product."."Not in our opinion."
That's when you feel you're in a twilight zone. 10 minutes of argument and the manager comes back. "That's how all stores do it." I said to them, "fine, let's say this is not a broken product. If you're going to charge a restocking fee, aren't you supposed to tell people BEFORE they buy, not afterward?" The fat manager says "well we did, it's on the back of your receipt." "But this receipt was given to me AFTER I bought the product, not before!
Why don't you have signs on the walls, in your ads, on your cash register? The salesman who sold this to me had ample opportunity to tell me and he didn't.instead, he spent tons of time trying to sell me a product warranty and other products. He even walked me to the queue for the cash register. There is plenty of opportunities and instead you hide it on the back of a receipt after the point of sale when it's too late?" "That's how everyone does it", was his best come back.
It's obvious what they are doing. They do not inform you of the restocking fee because they do not want any discouragement from purchasing. Once you buy you're committed. Now, if you try to return for any reason they use the excuse that they informed you. Furthermore, beware of how they define a product as defective. These people do NOT want to refund your money. Fry's is notorious for repackaging defective products and selling it. Now, they are resorting to further shady tactics to deal with those customers daring to return a faulty product. Disgusting. No more Fry's for me, ever again. Never ever ever.
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