Imagine you are waiting in the checkout line to purchase the two new, fancy, techno electronic items sitting in you’re shopping cart at Circuit City.
Suddenly the manager –or some boss - comes from behind you, pulls the two items from you’re shopping cart, puts them back on the shelf and increases the price of the items by 20%. When you ask what is going on, the manager states that it is company policy that they can remove the items, change the price of the items, will not honor the price you wanted to pay for them, and that the shareholders are what drives this “policy”.
This is exactly what happened to me when I tried to make an online purchase on the CC website; It goes something like this:
I am browsing the CC site and find a computer monitor and small LCD TV that I want to purchase. The prices have this red line through them stating that if I want to see the “real” price I need to place them in my shopping cart. I am elated when I find that I am going to be saving an additional 20% on the purchase of these items and promptly go to the checkout process to purchase them.
This 3-step-process of checking out and purchasing the items are basic: 1: Provide your shipping address if the shipping address in not correct then provide that. 2: Input any coupons that you may have, summarize you’re purchase and shipping. 3: Provide a payment method and finalize the purchase. I received this nifty –get a free gift card worth 10% of your purchase of $199 or more - coupon and entered this “code” into a field on the 2nd step. After the code was entered something strange happened, the 10% gift card was ADDED to the total of my purchase items, that is, the two items plus 10% of their total cost was added to the total the CC site was asking me to pay for.
I thought this strange and proceeded to the 3rd step to see if it would be removed before I paid for these items.
I inputted my Circuit City Credit Card number –that had a $3000 limit - and as my finger is about to click the process key the step 3 of 3 page with all my information, CC number and summarized purchase disappears. I click the back button and I am informed that my shopping cart is now empty.
I though this just to be another –internet snafu - until I went back to add these items back to my cart. These items where now not red-lined and where not on sale anymore and where now 20% more than what I was going to pay for them! I was livid to say the least. Fortunately for me I hit my print screen of the 3 of 3 page before my items where taken back.
I immediately called customer service to get my items back in my cart –at the negotiated price I was going to pay for them - and after an hour on the phone told me that I needed to go to my local CC store and ask the manager to honor that price -if I had proof - and that there was nothing that they could do about it because that is there right, and I am bound by the terms of these purchasing policies when I go to make online purchased through their website.
When I went to my local Circuit City store in San Luis Obispo I was told by the manager that the only people that could authorize the sale of my two items was corporate and provided me with a number to call –the old pass the buck. I told him that I already had talked with corporate and that they told me to talk to him. At this point I was given a 5-minute speech about how he would fire one of his employees if they ever tried to lower the in-store advertised price of an item and was more interested in providing me with a detailed summery about is job function then trying to solve my issue with his company.
As I cut my Circuit City Credit Card in half and handed it to him, I provided him with the fact that if you piss-off one customer you loss the business of 20 other people.
If I was a stockholder of this company I would be outraged at how my investment is being treated as my dividends depend on how my customers are treated and how I want them to come back and make future purchases. This is why CC is a bad investment, bad company to work for, and have the lousiest customer policies in the business. Beware and never do business with circuit city!!!
0 comments