7 ms·

Aside from putting up the odd sign to discourage certain behavior, no, I do not think that stores have any good reason to bend over backwards to keep individual

Aside from putting up the odd sign to discourage certain behavior, no, I do not think that stores have any good reason to bend over backwards to keep individual customers. Retail is far too accommodating already. Some people figure that being a “valued customer” means they can be an unending source of sunken costs in time, effort and stress, among other things. And those costs can be multiplied across the other customers waiting in line, too. If a “customer” is destroying your inventory, annoying other customers, or commanding far more of your time than warranted, there is no reason to put up with them. Protect the larger investment, which is: all your other customers, your store, and your employees.

dogma1138 10y ago
Stores bake that into the cost of doing business, it's like dropping something and breaking it, in the vast vast majority of cases you won't be charged for it, just be clean up on aisle 3... Heck I've dropped jars or similar things during bagging after paying for them several times and every time I was offered a replacement. Mistakes happen, it's often considerably more expensive to deal with customer complaints especially in the age of social media than it is to replace an item. It's also important to note that this is baked into the cost of doing business all along the supply chain, if items are not sold they will be often returned by the store to the distributor which would chuck them as a loss, or more often than not sell them for other uses other than human consumption. Some perishables are thrown away others are then sold to other industries e.g. the roast that was left over might end up as dog food... For a dog food company it's cheaper to buy discarded meat produce the dog food take samples and while it's being shipped do the cultures to ensure that there are no contaminants or bacteria and if something fishy is found just do a recall upstream for specific batch than it is to buy "fresh" meat and ingredients which are fit for human consumption. Supply chains are huge and complex and all these little annoyances don't really count for much, it only really bothered very small stores that have to buy everything almost up front and they aren't leasing effectively shelf space for distributors.
- dimino 10y ago
  It'd be nice, for the stores, if they didn't have to bake so much "attrition" into their accounting.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    The attrition is going to be high anyhow, tons of stuff gets damaged during shipping, handling and stocking, tons more is never sold. Most large stores take out nearly everything off the shelves at night even if it's still within it's "use before" date which on it's own is utterly nonsensical to begin with as most items don't expire for days, if not weeks, months and even years from the "use/best before" date. People drop stuff, people mishandle goods, how many people squeeze a vegetable or a fruit to check if it's ripe damaging it? how many apples get a mushy spot because they banged around in the crate? You are literally scraping the bottom of the barrel of inventory attrition when you are talking about perishable misplaced items, compared to everything else they are a rounding error. There is a lot of loss baked into every supply chain, unless you are going to change it in it's entirety really don't bother with the end, the loss at the point of sale is minimal compared to everything else.
    - dimino 10y ago
      I get that there's a lot of attrition, but less attrition would be nice.
- Gustomaximus 10y ago
  In Australia if you break something in store, they typically wont charge you, but if they do, they have to charge at cost. I wonder if this another reason many stores dont charge. As any store with a larger markup would have to let you know that $55 vase they were trying to sell you cost them $6.
  - fowl2 10y ago
    I've never heard this "rule" before, do you have a source? "Cost" is a pretty flimsy concept.
0xfeba 10y ago
Perhaps my example was a bit too extreme. But someone else replied to me with a better example of notifications on an app, or warnings that items are still in their cart but did not pass the store threshold, etc. Seems like the maximized value could be somewhere in the middle, maybe without trying to sneak in replacement costs for items left on other shelves..
mpolichette 10y ago
I agree, especially you see those videos on youtube where the kids are intentionally 'slipping' and throwing multiple jugs of milk onto the floor.
- pshc 10y ago
  The store will have video footage of everything... maybe their sensor AI will eventually distinguish between intentional and accidental spoilage.
falcolas 10y ago
> I do not think that stores have any good reason to bend over backwards to keep individual customers. Funny; want to know how Amazon CS became so popular with people? They gave complainers what they wanted, and only shut down repeat abusers. You want to exchange or return this TV for no reason at all? Go ahead. You bought this a year ago and want to return it now? Get a rep on the phone and it's done. It was fascinating to watch from the inside. CS reps became easier to hire (no need for independent thought when 95% of the calls can be answered with binary flags determined by a "follow the prompts" wizard), Amazon's CS approval rating skyrocketed, and they're still making money to this day. So, yeah, they have proven that there is a really good reason to keep all but the most abusive individual customers.

dogma1138 10y ago

Stores bake that into the cost of doing business, it's like dropping something and breaking it, in the vast vast majority of cases you won't be charged for it, just be clean up on aisle 3... Heck I've dropped jars or similar things during bagging after paying for them several times and every time I was offered a replacement. Mistakes happen, it's often considerably more expensive to deal with customer complaints especially in the age of social media than it is to replace an item. It's also important to note that this is baked into the cost of doing business all along the supply chain, if items are not sold they will be often returned by the store to the distributor which would chuck them as a loss, or more often than not sell them for other uses other than human consumption. Some perishables are thrown away others are then sold to other industries e.g. the roast that was left over might end up as dog food... For a dog food company it's cheaper to buy discarded meat produce the dog food take samples and while it's being shipped do the cultures to ensure that there are no contaminants or bacteria and if something fishy is found just do a recall upstream for specific batch than it is to buy "fresh" meat and ingredients which are fit for human consumption. Supply chains are huge and complex and all these little annoyances don't really count for much, it only really bothered very small stores that have to buy everything almost up front and they aren't leasing effectively shelf space for distributors.

dimino 10y ago
It'd be nice, for the stores, if they didn't have to bake so much "attrition" into their accounting.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  The attrition is going to be high anyhow, tons of stuff gets damaged during shipping, handling and stocking, tons more is never sold. Most large stores take out nearly everything off the shelves at night even if it's still within it's "use before" date which on it's own is utterly nonsensical to begin with as most items don't expire for days, if not weeks, months and even years from the "use/best before" date. People drop stuff, people mishandle goods, how many people squeeze a vegetable or a fruit to check if it's ripe damaging it? how many apples get a mushy spot because they banged around in the crate? You are literally scraping the bottom of the barrel of inventory attrition when you are talking about perishable misplaced items, compared to everything else they are a rounding error. There is a lot of loss baked into every supply chain, unless you are going to change it in it's entirety really don't bother with the end, the loss at the point of sale is minimal compared to everything else.
  - dimino 10y ago
    I get that there's a lot of attrition, but less attrition would be nice.
Gustomaximus 10y ago
In Australia if you break something in store, they typically wont charge you, but if they do, they have to charge at cost. I wonder if this another reason many stores dont charge. As any store with a larger markup would have to let you know that $55 vase they were trying to sell you cost them $6.
- fowl2 10y ago
  I've never heard this "rule" before, do you have a source? "Cost" is a pretty flimsy concept.

0xfeba 10y ago

Perhaps my example was a bit too extreme. But someone else replied to me with a better example of notifications on an app, or warnings that items are still in their cart but did not pass the store threshold, etc. Seems like the maximized value could be somewhere in the middle, maybe without trying to sneak in replacement costs for items left on other shelves..

mpolichette 10y ago

I agree, especially you see those videos on youtube where the kids are intentionally 'slipping' and throwing multiple jugs of milk onto the floor.

pshc 10y ago
The store will have video footage of everything... maybe their sensor AI will eventually distinguish between intentional and accidental spoilage.

falcolas 10y ago

> I do not think that stores have any good reason to bend over backwards to keep individual customers. Funny; want to know how Amazon CS became so popular with people? They gave complainers what they wanted, and only shut down repeat abusers. You want to exchange or return this TV for no reason at all? Go ahead. You bought this a year ago and want to return it now? Get a rep on the phone and it's done. It was fascinating to watch from the inside. CS reps became easier to hire (no need for independent thought when 95% of the calls can be answered with binary flags determined by a "follow the prompts" wizard), Amazon's CS approval rating skyrocketed, and they're still making money to this day. So, yeah, they have proven that there is a really good reason to keep all but the most abusive individual customers.