This guy on San Fran’s “Woody Show” goes into Office Max, twice, and loses his shit after every item he brings up to the counter rings up higher than its shelf-price. Not only does no one seem to care, one employee even insinuates that the complainant might be partially at fault for Office Max’s inability to shelve things in the right place. Neither disc jockey, producer, crazed customer, Office Max employees number 1 and 2, nor Office Max Manager seem to realize that if the item is found on the store shelves under a certain price, as long as the description matches the product, the store has to honor the price. It’s the law. In addition to a an amusing radio clip and animation, The Woody Show also has material here for a complaint to their state’s Attorney General. Video, inside…
(Thanks to Clokeisgod!)
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@InfiniTrent: Yes it’s a sliding scale of justice, but the disparaging fact of the matter is that every corporation screws its customers over daily, so when any of us peons has the opportunity to ‘get one back’ we’re going to. It isn’t fair, but then business these days in general has ceased to be fair.
@Leohat: It’s all in the computer now. The computer is all-powerful. The shelf tags are merely there for your convenience, and do not represent the actual price of the item, nor does it convey your ability to purchase the item even if the item has been put out on the shelf. Does that sound wrong to you? It should; see the above point about business these days being fair.
@SayeedaMacrotainer:
I really hate the “logic” that employee makes “X” so it’s ok that they suck. That makes no sense. They’re PAID to do the JOB. Not paid to do what they/me/you think is a crappy salary so hence can do a crappy job.
7 an hour is terrible. But what does that have to do with doing the actual job? A fair pay rate discussion and the actual job are 2 different things.
And by the way, how much is putting something on a shelf that matches the price worth anyway? Let’s be serious – if they can’t do that with relative reliabilty what the hell on the earth can they do?
The part that I don’t understand is why you would treat your customers so shabby. Office Max could have saved this bad press for $4! Four dollars! It’s insane. I had a recent issue at a local K-Mart, and we left without the item we came for, and were angry and told all of our friends what a bad experience we had.
What sent this guy over the edge was not the mistake, everyone understands that those happen. It was being treated like it was somehow his fault, and no one seeming to care that the store had screwed up. How about “whoops, really sorry about that.” And fix it. Don’t make lame excuses and don’t blame your customers.
And I don’t know where you guys live, but our Kroger couldn’t care less if their prices ring up wrong. Good luck getting customer service to even talk to you!
First point: It’s not nice to call employees stupid, it’s not going to get you anywhere. Most of us retail employees aren’t out to get the customer but if you treat us like we’re idiots then we’re not going to provide you with the same level of service that we provide to someone who is polite, calm and treats us like a human being.
I know this sounds bad and I will be told that I should treat every customer the same, but I’m only human 
About the price changes… if the item scanned at a lower price than marked, would you complain if they changed it to the marked price? It goes both ways. If the price of a book that I scan is different than the tag, then I always change it to what the tag is. It’s not your fault that the tag is wrong, no, but people are always out to save a buck or two and they’re always too ready to treat employees like crap to do so. I had a woman yell at me over 15 cents. She was buying a book which cost 100$ ._. And she was a doctor. I mean come on, it’s 15 cents. I don’t deserve to be treated like crap and have my feelings hurt by a mean doctor-lady ;_;
@SayeedaMacrotainer: Every post about retail seems to get some comment which defends an employee’s lack of courtesy or helpfulness based upon the relatively low wage said employee is paid. This is ridiculous. I fully expect a lower _skill_ level when a job doesn’t pay much (i.e. I don’t expect an electrical engineer to be selling me a PC at Best Buy), but I do not expect a lower level of _professionalism_. If you’re not willing to do the job you’re paid for, quit. To half-ass your job because you don’t like the pay is inexcusable.
I work in retail. Sounds like the Office Max employees could have handled this situation a lot more deftly.
With thousands of items in a store, sure, misplaced merchandise is going to occur occasionally. I have personally witnessed dozens if not hundreds of customers take an item off the shelf, examine it, decide they don’t want it, and put it back on the shelf two or three feet away from where they found it!
If the price tag truly only said “Logitech Mouse, $12″, then shame on Office Max for not providing a PLU/SKU or UPC for comparison. They would have a more solid claim that they didn’t have to honor the lower price.
However, common sense must be used. If this is a $50 mouse (probably a VX Nano, if I had to guess), how reasonable is it to expect it to cost $12 at this particular store?
If I saw the same sign, my first instinct would not have been to try and rip off the store, but rather alert them to the obviously misplaced sign!
@ringo00:
No, the change would have been less annoying.
Seriously, if there’s an “end of sale” date, that means after that date, you don’t get the sale price anymore.
Stores aren’t trying to leave up signs to get you to be all upset over it, it was probably an honest mistake, or possibly just lazy employees. In either case, it’s obvious the sale price is not indefinite.
People not putting stuff back in the right place is ridiculous.
I work for OfficeMax, and yeah, more than likely someone put the stuff back in the wrong spot.. It happens all the damned time.
But like this guy, people freak out at the cashiers and then we have to go up and change the price from say… $16.99 to $3.99..
The argument that someone put the item back in the wrong spot rarely works.
Im betting the tag was for one of the Mombasa Black corded mice, and he picked up a Nano or someone along that line that was in its spot.. Sorry, but it happens.. It shouldnt, but it does.. It could be because of a customer, or a lazy cashier just throwing crap on the shelves when they are restocking..
But to freak out on people over the price changes? Yeah.. we get price changes EVERY MORNING from corporate.. more and more these days… Cant do anything about it… Mouse in the wrong spot? Sorry.. Customer error is the most likely culprit..
“ANd there is NOTHING more annying than some pissant employee saying something like “oh, that must be a mistake” & then removing the price (like they are covering up their own incompetance/scamming).”
Incompetance? Scamming? It can be because someone forgot to take down and ad sign.. The proper procedure is to honor that price for that customer, and thats it… Certainly not a “scam” if we take the sign down..
@Haess: No it’s scamming when they take the incorrect signage down and then DENY that price. I’ve had this happen to me before at Menardsw. Specifically, I was purchasing a circular saw blade. Signage said $14.99, but it rang up at $49…. I made the mistake orf not going back with the cashier, and she removed the pricing (none of their stickers have actual skus on them, only Menard #s that a customer wouldn’t have knowledge of) and told me too bad. Her sign was on a bid with at least 10 other identical blades. So yes, in cases like those it IS scamming…
As for a customer mistake, OM can simply put the SKU on the bin lable to ensure there is no confusion, but as the radio personality stated, the label SAID “wireless mouse”
@Haess: But to freak out on people over the price changes? Yeah.. we get price changes EVERY MORNING from corporate.. more and more these days… Cant do anything about it… Mouse in the wrong spot? Sorry.. Customer error is the most likely culprit..
i’m having trouble deciphering this, can you help please? you’re talking out of two sides of your mouth at the same time here. on one side you say, “we get price changes every morning…can’t do anything about it…sorry” & then in the very next sentence you say “customer error is the most likely culprit”.
huh? how is it the customer’s error that they didn’t know there was a price change b/c it was missed by an employee? that makes ZERO sense. please tell me that was some sort of typing error.
I had a similar experience at Publix once. An item did not ring up at the price on the shelf tag. The description on the shelf tag matched the item I purchased. I was incensed. I had to resort to going back into the store, pull the shelf tag, and showed it to the clerk. It turned out that it was a sale price that ended the previous day but they hadn’t pulled the tag. I guess I was the first person to notice the issue.
S’funny, I was just talking about Office Max mis-pricing two days ago with a friend of mine. I went to an Office Max in Long Island last weekend to pick up a DVI cable. Found one — the LAST one — on the shelf marked $20.99 (expensive, but I needed one). Brought it up to the register where it scanned as $74.99. YES. For a fucking DVI cable. I did exactly the same thing this guy did; I brought the clerk over to the shelf, showed her the tag, showed her that the name and model number matched. (Note that I didn’t get angry or confrontational or anything like that. I was totally polite and professional.) Without saying a word she removed the tag and WALKED AWAY. I watched her go back to her register and start helping other customers.
I couldn’t believe it. My revenge? I grabbed a shopping cart and wandered the whole store for about 15 minutes, grabbing every piece of random stuff I found. I made sure to reach every corner of the store and grabbed at least one item from every shelf. When my cart was full I went to the customer service counter and asked for the manager. When the manager arrived I explained what had happened with the DVI cable and the clerk. He apologized but refused to honor the posted price. So I said fine, and I asked him to check out the rest of my items so that I could be sure they were all priced right. He complied. I watched him diligently scan up about $800 worth of items. When he was done, I looked him in the eye and told him that I wasn’t going to honor that price, to enjoy putting it all back, and I walked out of the store.
NEVER going back to Office Max again.
@InfiniTrent: Well it was at a gas station.
@RetailGuy83:
@farker:
I don’t care about being on the manager’s good side. I’ve got plenty of friends. I care about getting the best price I can for something.
A for the expiration dates on the sale signs, I’m in California where the law states that a merchant has to honor the lowest posted price for a given item regardless of any posted expiration dates. CA Business and Professions Code 12024.2 I wasn’t asking him to honor an expirede sales flyer. The price was in a plastic sign posted on the grill itself.
This is supposed to prevent sellers from posting expired sales signs and raising the price at the register. If I were a more petty individual, I could have had the manager cited or arrested. I didn’t think the $30 difference was worth that.
The Office Max in my locality also has this problem. I’m not convinced that it’s anything but a deliberate scam to deliver more store profit.
I work for OfficeMax and this does not suprise me in the least bit. I have worked at two different OfficeMax’s and to be honest with you some store are like that. It is really up the cashier on whether or not they will price override an item. If it’s generally less then a $10.00 differences then I do it. But sometimes it depends on your boss and whether or not he’s a dickhead. If you were to pick up that calendar and there were 30 more like it in the same spot then that is obvisouly our fault, if there’s just one then it was probably a customer, and in that case I would simply tell you that someone missed placed it but I will go ahead and give it to you anyway since $4 is not worth the hassle. I’ll be the first person to tell you that OfficeMax can certain be a pain in the ass but if you find the right store with good people, its amazing. The store I’m at right now is amazing and people come in a they always leave happy.