Long-time lurker here, I've been a Cashier/GA/whatever with GSA responsibilities (I don't even know what to call that at this point lol) for several years now. Just wondering how your stores handle "item not found" returns for clearanced-out items?
Long story short(ish), had a guest come in the other night with about $200 of merchandise to return, my GS team member did everything she could off of the receipt but was having issues with a couple items so she called me over. As I looked it over I realized the receipt was from January, so I was impressed that it was working for any of the items (I think because they were a store brand and sometimes return policy is extended on that?), and so I explained to the guest that the receipt had expired, but was still letting us do most of it, it just wouldn't let me add the last couple items due to our 90-day return policy. I told him I would see if I could process them as a no-receipt return and get him a giftcard instead, as I've generally been advised to do--he was fine with that, so I started that process. There was one remaining $20-$30 item that was zeroed out and no matter what came up with the red "item not found" screen, so I told him that unfortunately we didn't sell that particular item anymore, so it wasn't in our system and we were unable to issue a refund, which is what I've always been told--if you can't make it happen on the register, then it can't be done (barring extenuating circumstances). He made a scene about it, I ended up calling up my closing TL who backed me up, he took our names for corporate and proceeded to storm around the store to spend the giftcard from the other items before leaving.
Today, was told by my SETLs (who are great, usually I'm totally on board with how they handle guest situations) that he had called the store this morning, and I was basically told that they decided to back me up this time, but in the future I should just issue a free giftcard for the value of the item as an apology for the "inconvenience"? That's not something I remember ever having anyone do in my years there and just seems off to me, just wondering if that's standard at other locations or what. Getting really frustrated with my store continuing to basically give away merchandise/giftcards to rude guests just to avoid bad surveys.