HARASSED BY NATHAN AND MIRANDA AT THE 29 PALMS STORE
I bought a $2 bag of chips along with $80 of other food yesterday. I opened the $2 bag of chips while I was shopping. I know this is irregular, but all that food makes me hungry. I usually get "was this open sir" at the checkout. I say no, that was my dinner or something funny. The checker laughs (with me) On this occasion with the $2 bag of chips I told the checker they were stale. She said you have to go ahead and pay for them and the do a return. I said no problem. I go to several of these stores. Palm Springs etc.. I spoke to Nathan about it and he inferred I stole the $2 bag of chips. I said are you kidding. I brought them to the checkout, and told you guys they were stale. I would think you'd want to know. I said, do I look like I need $2 ? He said and I quote YOU MAY. Wow, did you really say that ? Then he tried to correct himself and "you may or you may not" I said I'm 64 years old. I don't steal $2 bags of chips. He said 64 is just a number. I have no personal opinion of him. I looked up the return policy and emailed the central store customer service. I went back the next day because the popcorn, and another bag of chips I bought were also bad. I'm thinking how is this possible. I've never had bad food there. Although once I did get some tomatoes that had a metallic taste. I asked for the manager. Miranda comes up with an immediate attitude of some kind. I explained about the $2 bag of chips and the popcorn. I showed her my receipt and read her the return policy off of their own site. See a photo of it below. She jumped in TELLING ME TO GO ON GROCERYOUTLET ORG There's no such site. I tried it standing there. Then she flat out said I stole the chips. I said, "if I had opened it, and left it on the shelf, I could see your point". Then she sto leave the store. I've never seen any grocery store conduct themselves like this. Escalating something over $2 is more than unusual. Then she backed off when I said "I've been polite to you". I left. A lot of employees walked by as we talked. Most were curious. Some looked at me like what's gonna be the outcome of this. They've seen me in there since it opened. I've never had a problem. Everyone is friendly and helpful. I'm just not sure how these two individuals justify taking a stale $2 bag of chips and using it to accuse a nice friendly local man driving a very nice car of stealing (a $2 bag of chips I brought to the checkout) I'm sure I'll go back, but unfortunately I will not be buying anymore chips, or things like that. As for these two, I would fire them in two seconds. I'm a general contractor and a businessmen. If one of my employees came at one of my clients in a confrontational manner, and accused them of ANYTHING, I would crap. One mistake, one petty argument can cost you $50,000 in business. Never do what Nathan and Mirando did. The proper way to handle it was to ask "how can you tell they are stale, or wow, bummer" something friendly at least. THEN, i went to get some apples to take on the drive to San Diego. 3 of them were bad. I bought them with these chips.
So I called 2 other stores and told them this whole story. THEY BOTH PLED WITH ME TO BRING THE ITEMS TO THEIR STORE. This is the way to do business. I personally would not know how to deal with these two individuals. I wouldn't know where to start. I think sitting face to face in the office I would say "what exactly were you thinking about how this was going to help our local reputation when we just moved here across from a chain grocery store ?"
Stater Brothers will have a field day with this. They might offer me a reward and a trip to Cancun.... Competition is rough. Never treat a customer, no matter what your problem is, rude. Just take it in stride. Smile. Say "of course we honor our return policy. Yes we need to know what's stale in the store." Then you'll not create a mess you have to defend and live down for months or years to come. Cause we all know, this is not an isolated event. It was too easy for them to be insulting and extremely unprofessional. Too easy. Just too easy. That's my two cents, or should I say my two dollars $2 ....... read more