I went by my local Circuit City in Catonsville, MD today trying to get a birthday gift for my dad and noticed something interesting in the parking lot. They had the sign telling people to park for online pickup in front of the row of handicap spots. They have the deal of your order being ready in 24 minutes or you get a $24 gift card. I guess that $24 gift card would come in handy after you pay the $98 fine posted for illegally parking in the handicap spot itself. I looked around, this was the only sign they had for online pickup.
Anyway, thought you might find this interesting. By the way, along with this disregard of the ADA, I also had a nice experience of Circuit City failing to follow their own 110% price match “guarantee”. They were selling an external hard drive for $70 more than I had seen 15 minutes earlier, less than a mile away, but they would only offer to match the price and not give the extra 10% because 1) the price difference was “too much” (170 vs. 100) and 2) I had “seen the other price first”. According to the manager, if I had bought the drive at CC first, then seen the other price, he’d give me the 10%. Unfortunately he refused to even look at the CC price match policy even though I had pulled it up for him on one of their laptops 2 feet away from him. For the record, their policy is “Find a lower advertised price from another local store with the same item in stock, and we’ll gladly beat their price by 10% of the difference.” Well, they didn’t “gladly” do that at all. And in fact, if I had purchased it at CC first, I would have been ineligible for the extra 10% because “Plus, if you see a lower advertised price within 30 days of your purchase with us, we’ll refund 100% of the difference.”
It became a matter of principle and it would have been a measly $7 that could have kept a customer. It also would have earned them over $200, because not only did they lose one sale on the hard drive (since I decided to give my business to the other store), but they lost a second sale on my father’s gift too.
Who is training these managers?
Keep up the good work.
-Andyp.s. For the record, I’m not leaving my dad hanging. I got his gift somewhere else.
Don’t hesitate to call the corporate office when a store refuses to honor its price match policy. In this case, you could have also threatened to call the police to report the asinine web order pickup zones if they didn’t honor the price match policy, only to call anyway because it’s the right thing to do.
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The way the sign is placed it doesn’t look like it has been installed yet. There are two arrows so two spots should be designated and in that picture there aren’t. Bad space for the sign to be left yes but I don’t think it’s their intention to designate that spot for web order pick up customers.
For the price guarantee, let me ask you this, did you have an add from the competitor you saw the lower price at? Was it a new unit and not refurbished, was it a membership club? The price guarantee applies to local competitors who have an advertised price lower than circuit city’s. Who’s price you see first doesn’t matter. However it has to be instant savings (no rebates and no limited quantaties or while supplies last) and they have to have it in stock. Membership clubs are excluded from because you pay a fee to be able to shop there.
I have a hard time saying they should have a honered the guarantee without both sides of the story. With any offer there are always exclusions, including with price guarantees.
I can’t believe Circuit City wasn’t a contender for the Worst Company contest. I certainly nominated them.
@TheUncleBob: Because I’m sure they feel “special” and “above” others when the law requires a store to have a ramp that takes them 4 times as long as someone that can just walk up the stairs. I bet your opinions make you a real hit with the ladies.
That’s right. The day they passed the ADA, the lawyers of America turned on a giant sleep cannon that shot non-lawyer-affecting stun rays across the entire nation, so that nobody at all could stop the bill’s passage! And it was totally unnecessary, because everything has always been fully available to handicapped people up until then.
At least, I guess that’s a more comforting fantasy than having to admit that you might have to make your ramps a little less steep for those wheelchair users who think they have a RIGHT to go anywhere. Entitled bastards!
@mythago: Wheelchair users should have the right to go anywhere they please…
…except for privately owned property. If you’re on private property, you’re there at the invitation of the property owner. Don’t like how s/he keeps his/her property? Leave.
@Krysta1986:
the other drive was at an office depot which is 0.9 miles down the same road. actually at first, when i went to the customer service desk, the rep i spoke to said she didn’t know if she could price match to OD, hence why i was even dealing with a manager. the store is adjoined to a staples and obviously close to an OD. the manager told her their store does price match them since many of their products are the same (computer stuff, cameras, mp3 players, TVs, etc.) and they compete for those markets. i can’t say if this is the case for all circuit citys (cities?), but it would have surprised me any other way, especially because of their proximity. this first concession actually had me thinking that i was in good, competent hands with the manager, until he said “so give it to him for $99.99″ … me: “um, what about the 10%?”
the manager was mostly polite, but completely unbudging once he named the price. in the end, i explained very clearly that i was trying to give him the opportunity to make the sale and that as a matter of principle, if he was going to refuse to meet the “guarantee”, i was just going to go back to the other store. it would have just been $7 different, but i kind of like it when “guarantees” actually guarantee something. he stuck to his guns. the refusal to look (literally, he would not turn his head) at the 110% policy that i pulled up on their website was a nice touch, too.
anyway, yes, the price was in OD’s circular and website as $99.99 and it was for the identical new drive, on sale for that week, but it was the price out the door. no rebates or anything. and like i said, i had stopped by OD first, and they even had more in stock (or at least on the shelf) than circuit city did! i almost bought it when i first saw it but decided to go to circuit city to check their price knowing that if it was higher, i’d at least get the 110%, right? wrong. almost fittingly, now that the shopping week has changed, it’s on sale at circuit city and not OD, even though it’s still $20 more than i paid. [www.circuitcity.com]
I see many references to “private property” being posted in the comments. 1.) driveways and parking lots are private/public places at least as far as cars are concerned – ask a cop. 2.) Businesses have licences and zoning regulations, these permissions by the government/public also have conditions – a business is not the same as a private house/property. The ADA isn’t much different from your town/city/state building and safety codes that require your “private property” to have certain outlets installed in your bathroom, or accessible utility meters, standardized wiring, ice-free sidewalks, etc.
And obviously you can’t do anything you want on your private property, breaking laws still means police “intrusion.”
@amightywind: Heck, I once got Circuit City to price match to a Walgreens.