Words of Wisdom

Youth is wasted on the young.

Thursday 24 December 2009

Retail Cheer

How about this?

Himself goes to buy a basketball at a well known sports retail store. He carefully selects a mid range ball suitable to our needs and reasonably priced at $36.99. At the checkout the cashier announces that the ball is $90.00!
"There seems to be a mistake," says Himself, "this ball was marked at $36.99."
"Oh, no," says an arrogant young man behind the counter, "this is a $90.00 ball."

Himself took the young man to the shelf and pointed out the 4 identical balls still in the rack, fronted by a card that read G534 $36.99 (or some such number.. I don't know...it's a basketball!). He pointed out the matchnig serial number on the balls.

"I'm sorry sir, I'm afraid this is a $90.00 ball."

"Look," says my incredibly patient husband (hahahahahahahahahha), "these balls are clearly marked at this price, if you have made a mistake, that's really your problem. It says $36.99 and that's what I'm going to pay for it!"

At this point the young man snatched, you read me right, snatched the ball out of Himself's hands and announced,
"Oh no you're not!"

Himself told him in typically colourful language where he could put his ball and what he could go and do with himself in the meantime and left.

He got a perfectly good ball from K Mart for $20.00. And everyone smiled at him!

Now, I like to ensure that youngsters are aware and educated in the art of life. I think someone needs to have a word with this young man, for his own edification of course. Therefore I went to the internet to try and find a way to send a message to the company. On the webpage I tried 'customer service' and went down several links before reaching a dead end. Then I tried' contact us', which only gave me the option 'orders@....', in frustration I typed 'complaints' into the site's search box.

This is the message I received:

Unfortunately an error has occured on the site. The Rebel Sport technical team are aware of this and are working to fix the problem. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Do you think there is a programmer somewhere having a bit of a laugh???????

7 comments:

chaoticfamily said...

LOL oh no that's not good. False advertising is illegal here - but happens all the time. What a snotty youngster.

natalie said...

What happened to "the customer is always right?"

The Honourable Husband said...

False labelling of products illegal in Oz. If that's the marked price, Himself was perfectly entitled to buy it at that price.

Rebel sport is owned by a private equity firm, Archer Capital, who also own Cellarmasters and MYOB. No wonder you can't reach them on the RS website.

You can find them at archercapital.com.au or

Suite 7 Pier 2/3
13 Hickson Road
Dawes Point NSW 2000

Telephone: +61 2 8243 3333

Contact them. Point out that as an owner which boasts of its "operational skills", they may wish to improve their operation of the business.

If no satisfaction, dob them in.

What happened to the budding lawyer you once were?

Arizaphale said...

Loving your Christmas Spirit headbang! hahahaha
When our pastor asked the congregation 'why we were at church' this morning (rhetorically of course) the BA whispered, "To balance out Atheist Villa this afternoon!" Yea, we're going to see Miss Betty :-D
Happy Atheist holidays to you my lovely friend...you're always in my prayers and in my heart.

Maggie said...

That is so not cool! Bad customer service makes me nuts. Super nuts. At least you got what you were looking for - and for MUCH cheaper!

susiej said...

Yeah, the customer is always right? What happened to good old fashioned customer service? What a rude employee! Yes, I do think someone is having a good laugh1

Jill said...

Ugh. That's the one positive thing I was hoping would come out of this whole recession thing - better customer service as a result of stores actually caring whether a customer was satisfied or not. That is to say, I thought if they had to try HARDER to sell stuff 'cause people had less money in general, maybe they'd be more accommodating. And if the unemployment is so bad, doesn't it stand to reason that the GOOD customer service people would be the ones with jobs? If it's going to happen though, I guess it's taking its own sweet time. Glad he ended up with a decent basketball in the end!