In my state, all the Karens are lawyers. Here’s the law,
“If there is a discrepancy between the price listed on the shelf or item and the price that it rings up at, the consumer must be offered one of two corrections:
- If the item costs more than $10 and rings up higher than the advertised price, $10 must be deducted from the lowest advertised price.
- If the item costs less than $10 and rings up higher than the advertised price the item should be given as free”
Not the law in our state. To be honest,
too many guests are willing to fib, exaggerate or flat-out lie. They are looking at the wrong tag, wrong shelf, or wrong item. They are looking at an adjacent item with an almost identical-looking box but it's the next model up: i.e. a good medium-priced vacuum Model Z-1 ($149.99 shelf price), and that vacuum with Pet Remediation features, vacuum Model Z-2 ($249.99 shelf price). Visually the box packaging is very similar until you look in the lower right-hand area where the premium Pet Remediation stuff is mentioned, and if you don't have the boxes side-by-side this isn't easy. Compound this if Model Z-1 is out of stock, and the Z-2 box is close enough to the empty Z-1 space.
Making matters worse is that the new POS system makes it very difficult to find price history, and the last upgrades on the old POS system, the "price inquiry" function frequently no longer displays past promotional pricing. Finally, because of lack of staffing and the difficulty of getting somebody in another section on walkie to go check the signage particularly if there's an outdated sale promotion sign, these disputes can be very time-consuming.
Very few guests in my experience actually are rude on this, but
frequently the complaining guests are wrong. Too many of the guests who fight the worst about alleged incorrect prices this are NOT frequent shoppers at Target. Again, the biggest problem is with bigger-ticket items like I showed above. If it's a bottle of pasta sauce ringing up at $4.49 and they are insisting it's $2.49, they probably grabbed the wrong size, so for me it's not as much of an ethical problem to go ahead and adjust price per the guest's request.
A century ago, some owner of a now-bankrupt and closed department store coined the phrase, "The Customer Is Always Right". As mentioned, that store is now out of business. Two better ways to get across this point is, "The Customer Is the Lifeblood of Our Business" or "The Customer Is Our Priority". The ultimate truth is
The Customer Is Always the Customer. At some point in any line of business, the customer doesn't have the unrestricted right to "name their own price" on merchandise. They don't have the unrestricted right to return unwanted merchandise. They don't own the business, they don't pay the business' daily overhead, the business' daily payroll, or the business' merchandise and service suppliers. They are welcome and invited to shop at the business but there are policies in place, as well as laws against things like shoplifting or harassing employees.
