The service was very quick, but the pricing and communication were quite bad…read more
I went in to have the battery I had purchased four years ago checked. I'd been going to this store for a very long time, but it had a new manager. The manager attached a meter to the battery very quickly, which I appreciated. I didn't see the meter, and he didn't explain anything, just, "Yep, it's bad." He gave me the replacement price, which was high, but I decided to go ahead and have it done. I asked about the warranty, and he said it was five years.
I said, "Does my current battery have the same warranty?"
"Yes," he said, "You bought it here."
"So, am I due some pro-rated discount because this battery failed early?"
"I can give you 10%"
"Hmmm," I'm thinking, "I'd have thought 4 years out of 5 would be a 20% discount," but I didn't know how they prorate, so I let it go.
When he rang up the sale, he forgot the discount. I asked about it, and he said he could give me a slip of paper for an extra core charge when I come back to replace this battery. This was because it was "too hard" to run the sale over again. He scribbled on the back of a business card and initialed it. (It is pictured below.)
Of course, I'm thinking, "So I have to hang on to this piece of paper for four to five years and come back here for another battery because you made a mistake and are too lazy to run the transaction over again?"
He caught my look and said he could run it again, but he was "just trying to save me money because running a credit, and a new sale would be two or three transactions, and the card machine charges me $2.50 every time it runs a card, so I would end up losing most of the rebate."
I'm thinking, "Huh?!"
All this is happening at high speed, I feel pressured, and so I decide it's not enough money to hassle over, and I'm not up for the fuss.
So I end up paying the full (high) price and have to keep track of what I think is likely a worthless piece of paper that won't be honored even if I just happen to be in the right place at the right time when I need a new battery sometime in the future. Nah, not gonna happen.
Needless to say, I'm very disappointed, feel poorly treated, and slightly deceived. I won't go back to the store and will not recommend it to others, which is kind of sad because I've been going there for so long (when it had a different manager). Oh, well, life goes on, and it's not enough money to worry about, but the principles involved were worth mentioning.
There, I got that off my chest, and I feel better now. :-) Thanks for being my online counselor! LOL.