Sunday, January 3, 2010

Mrs. Oh and the Bluelight Special

As promised:

On the eve of Christmas Eve I ran out to pick up some last minute stocking stuffers and after the preliminary run down to the Wally World I decided to hit up K-mart which is right across the street. Or K-Mark as Mom used to call it. That or K-Marks. Anywho --

Since I didn't have Tobey or the kids with me and time was, for once, not of the essence I decided to look around a bit. Now Tobey and I decided this year not to exchange gifts because with buying for 6 kids, his parents, my Dad etc ad naseum: money it tight.

But.

While shopping I came across this:
A Kenmore dual basket digital fryer. W00t. On sale. For $39.99 which I knew because the bright red shelf tag screamed the price at me - taunting me! I had seen a fryer on sale at Wally before Thanksgiving for the same price but I passed it up. This one I didn't pass up. Digital. Dual basket. On sale! I scooped it up in my cart and headed for the check-out. Two pair of sleep pants and the fryer came to over $100. Yikes.

I informed the cashier something was wrong and the fryer was the problem. It rang up on sale alright, for $69.99. The cashier tried and failed to get an associate to price check the fryer and then got a different associate to do the price check. Now I am in the express lane holding up traffic. Great.

I had the cashier take off the fryer and I went back to the endcap that I saw the fryer on. I found Abbott and Costello there looking at the fryer and holding ALL of the little red tags that promclaimed its price of $39.99. Long story short: the $39.99 was for a different product that wasn't even on the endcap stuffed with fryers. Abbott then told Costello he was supposed to have removed all of those tags and he must have missed a few. No kidding. Oppsie.

I then went back and told the cashier the problem and she directed me to customer service where there was a manager on duty. Whom I spoke with. She scanned the fryer and told me it was on sale for $69.99 but they had a nice Hamilton Beach fryer on sale for $29.99. I told her I didn't see that one but I wanted this one for the price point on the shelf. She told me she couldn't honor that because the fryer is orginally $87.49 but she could offer me $5 off of the sale price. Er, no thanks.

I came home and swore to never step foot in that store again and being Mrs. Oh: I complained via the K-Mart web site. And you won't believe this but after a flurry of e-mails with the Customer Service department on the web site I received a call from the store manager. Apparently he had read my complaint as I didn't have to go into a ton of details and get this -- he honored the shelf price!

So the day after Christmas Tobey and I went to pick up the new fryer. Whomever thinks that customer service is dead needs to complain like heck shop at K-Mart where they restored my faith!

~ame

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