One thing Wal-Mart is good for

[jmowreader]

I TOOK HIM BACK TO WAL-MART

My ex-husband and I fought constantly,
Why I married him, I'll never know.
For all those miserable years I said
My hubby has got to go!

Tried poisoning cakes, stripping his brakes,
Salting his pork chops with lime.
Wiring his chair, igniting his hair
Even though playing with fire is a crime.

But I failed at each plot 'til I suddenly thought
Of a way that would set me free!
I got rid of him for good and, know what?
They couldn't do a thing to me!

I took him back to Wal-Mart!
They'll take anything back you know!
They said they couldn't recall selling him,
But they must have if I said so.

They just credited him to my Visa and said,
"Y'all come back now, 'ya hear?"
They were so nice, polite, pleasant and insistent,
I took back his mother the next year!

They'll take anything back at Wal-Mart,
Though it's broken or rotten or sweet.
And know what else? This time of year
You don't even need a receipt!

All kidding aside, one of the ways Wal-Mart is fucking up the rest of the retail landscape is their abominable return policy. To compete with Wal-Mart, you almost have to be willing to take back anything anyone wants to bring in, which leads to this wonderful tale of woe...

We sold a customer some mahogany plywood about four months ago. He was happy as hell because it's nice material and the price isn't bad. He took the wood home and made a bookcase out of it.

About two weeks after he did this, he saw an ad in the paper for Builder's Bargain Center, which is part of a chain of outlets in the south that sell cull lumber, seconds, Number 3 stock, and other real low-grade material. They had 3/4-inch plywood for $19.95 per sheet; the wood we sold him was over $30 per sheet because it was worth over $30 per sheet. ($20/sheet 3/4" plywood is a material called "blows"--when they make plywood, part of the process is to put a four-foot-high stack of it into a hydraulic press that's in an oven, apply 300 pounds pressure then heat the oven to dry the glue. When they relieve the pressure, the top few sheets in the stack will delaminate, or "blow," along the edges. You can sell this cheap because if you trim six inches off all four sides of the sheet, you have a real nice piece of material.) This guy took out his Sawzall, cut the bookcase up, put the pieces back in his truck, brought it and his receipt back to Home Depot and asked for a refund. The cashier refused and called me. I came up, took one look at the "return," and refused it. "Why won't you take it back? I have my receipt and your policy states you take back merchandise with a receipt." Our policy also states that after you cut it into thirty pieces, glue and nail it together, and paint it blue...it's yours. (Yes, he brought the half-used can of blue paint too. We didn't refund that either.) The guy got pissed off, started screaming "you'll hear from me," turned around and stormed out, leaving the cut-up bookcase with us. I tagged it "do not throw away," put it on a pallet, shrink-wrapped it and put it behind the building.

Three hours later, a guy in a suit walked in. He was the lawyer for this customer, who was going to file a million-dollar lawsuit against us for breach of contract and some other stuff--I think mental distress was in there, I know financial loss was--because we violated our return policy by not giving him a refund. I took the lawyer behind the building and showed him the cut-up bookcase. I thought it violated the Code of Judicial Ethics for lawyers to laugh that hard.

[madrchsod]

1. really,you are kidding

aren`t you?? god some people are really dumb, thanks for the info on how they make plywood...

[jmowreader]

2. There are worse ones

Another guy built a $2500 deck. When you build anything, you get scraps, right? This fuckhead made sure that the scraps would all have the price tags attached. Then he brought the scraps from every board in the project back and asked for a refund--which would have been bad if he had just brought the scraps from $3 boards back, but this guy used $23/plank composite decking.

We are NOT going to give you $23 for a three-inch scrap of composite decking. We are not going to give you anything for it. And he got pissed off that we wouldn't take the stuff back! We are in business to SELL lumber, not give it away.

Worst part of that little incident: the cheap bastard had brought the scraps back in his Cadillac Escalade. I like dealing with middle-class people lots better than the moderately rich; middle-class people won't attempt to screw you. Doctors are the worst; they will screw you in a heartbeat if they can get away with it. We do have some really rich people in town, and they're my favorites: they buy the very best quality, they don't try shafting you and they never return anything unless it's defective because they either got the right amount in the first place or they'll use the excess stuff on their next project.

People have also attempted to return burned-out light bulbs, worn-out lawn mower blades (the package for those is a hard plastic; if you're careful you can slip the new blade out and the old one back in without damaging the package), their old carpet, empty five-gallon paint cans--they'll say they didn't like the color, but can't you figure that out before you use the WHOLE CAN?--boxes of nails with three left in them...and before we got a tool rental department, we had the world's greatest collection of Used Once Tools. Man, you could get the best deals on Used Once Tools...and we were better than a pawn shop; if you buy a tool, use it for your job and bring it back, you get all of your money back!

We also get lots of returns of Lowe's merchandise. What we've done in that case is set up sort of a prisoner-exchange program. We have a box in receiving where we throw the Lowe's merchandise we take back. They have a box in receiving where they throw the Home Depot merchandise they take back. (Some customers will shop at both stores but bring all of their returns to one.) About once a month, one of our guys will haul the box to Lowe's and we'll swap on a like-for-like basis.

People will attempt to return anything, and most of those people have repug-themed bumper stickers.