Tuesday, August 25, 2009

This Week in "Epic Fail"...

For the past couple of weeks, we've had a woman (sometimes with a large group of her friends) who would come into our store several times throughout the day. She would cart up a crapload of items, try to check them out, then void all but three (or fewer) items because she never had enough money for everything. She would then come back much later that night (usually at around 9 or 10) with $150 to $200 worth of items to return. Now remember, this is the exact same woman who didn't have enough money to cover her purchases earlier. So where the hell was this slag coming from?!

As if that wasn't enough, she claimed that she had been employed in a retail store, had been fired and was currently trying to sue them. She also claimed she was looking into suing our store for discrimination.

Yeah, a real piece of work, this one.
But thankfully, her little games are now over.

This Saturday, she came into the store again. (This had to be the fourth time that she had come in that day, but I digress.) Again, she's pulling the exact same BS--trying to buy a heap of slag, then voiding off most of it. She then leaves and returns.... with an enormous pile of returns and no receipt. She swears she'll be back with her receipt and leaves again. It goes without saying that management was alerted. Immediately.

When Ms. StickyFingers came back with her receipt, it got interesting fast.

Management refused the returns. Ms. StickyFingers tried to leave and was promptly met at the door by the police. One of our loss prevention guys was on her tail, too. She had nowhere to run.

Ms. StickyFingers has officially been banned from our store. I have no idea if she was treated to a nice cozy pair of silver bracelets, nor do I know if management is pressing charges. But from what I hear, they have a shitload of documentation on her, so if they wanted to do so, there's no reason they couldn't. In any case, that's one problem out of our hair.

Fast forward to Sunday.
One of Ms. StickyFingers' friends came in, with a few bags. She claimed that they were from a local competitor. The people greeter who spotted her made her tie the bags shut and we let management know that we had another potential problem in our store.

The friend was tailed, but nothing came of it. She didn't really do anything illegal. But I have to wonder; if you know your ringleader was busted, why in the hell are you going to go into the same damn store that busted her?! That makes no damn sense to me, I swear.

--Weasel, "The good guys won.... for once. Next time may be very different."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So those silver bracelets would be her latest fashion accessory? =)

~daiAtlas

Weasel said...

Yeah and boy do I hope she gets them. They'd look great one her, if you know what I mean. ;) (I'm a little evil today, apparently.)

I just can't believe some people would even think of this crap. It make my brain hurt, I tell you.

Methusalen said...

Reminds me of something that happened on one of my last days towards the end of my time at The Big Blue Box. I was stationed up at Loss Prevention (er, "Asset Protection"). We had one guy come in and pick up a Playstation Portable that was cased up. He went back to the Car Audio area and proceeded to spend his time 'looking at the radios & amps', but kept an eye on the employees in the area, and kept trying to stand behind objects while he was 'browsing'.

After I got a few of our associates to 'give him the best customer service he ever got'; he ditched the cased PSP on a basestack and went to purchase an amplifier for a car stereo. The case the PSP was in looked like it'd been worked on a bit, but was still intact. We had no *proof* that he'd actually been trying to get it out, so couldn't confront him about it. The 'guest' then went up to the front lanes to purchase the amp. He headed up to customer service (instead of the frontlanes) and paid with cash because he didn't have his ID on him for 'his' credit card...

He ended up coming back in an hour or so later with a 'friend', bringing the amp back in with him. He never did anything with the amp, kept it with him the whole time... (and I knew it was the same amp because it was an open-box item to begin with, and had a 'scuff' on the top when he first purchased it.

Apparently, he had an online order for a (couple?) Nintendo Wii(s) that he was there to pick up. -Turns out the order had been flagged for fraud (see 'his' credit card, there were quite a few things ordered with this credit card); so there was *no way* anyone was going to let him pick it up. He left, but came *back* in AGAIN later that night to try AGAIN. -He went to one of the store kiosks and printed out the order confirmation, and went *back* to customer service to try to pick up the Wii(s)...

Once again they were able to give him the run-around, I got a *really* good shot of him with the cameras, and the other stores in the area were notified about the situation...

I don't know what ultimately ended up happening, but I'm still pretty sure that this guy didn't get his hands on any of the merchandise.

I don't get people either... I mean, I *know* there are those people out there who get away with this crap; but eventually they make a mistake, or we just catch wind of what's going on...