The Miracle on 'whatever' Street

Today is a great day to not be in any significant retail establishment!

Yes, granted, there's likely to be some impressive discounts on inventory that retailers want to move. Just remember that what you save in cash outlay, you're going to make up for elsewhere. Do you like people? I mean do you really like people? Really, really like people, as in total strangers? You can expect a brutal test of your patience anywhere you go that is open to the public. Retailers, but also gas stations and restaurants. People are everywhere!

Of course, if you charge everything to typical revolving credit accounts you have, will you really save anything? If you get twenty to thirty percent off, and it takes you a year to pay it back, you're still paying regular price in the end if your account features an Annual Percentage Rate of 20% to 30%! Some discount. And, if it takes you longer than that, there's no doubt you'll pay more than regular retail. Ouch! It gets worse if you have two different APR's. One of my accounts has a 23% APR on normal purchases, but frequent promotional offers for temporary single digit rates for some purchases and cash advances. Guess which one your lender will apply your payments to first? Exactly! The low rate balance will disappear soon while the higher rate balance goes nowhere for a couple of months or years. Oh, the hazards of plastic!

I had the good fortune of not having to be at the store this morning. I don't know what time we opened today. Usually, it's eight. The day after Thanksgiving, it's six. Christmas Eve day it was seven. I'd expect something similar for today. We try very hard to have the floor cleared by the time all the lights come on and the doors are opened. Does it always happen? No. You could come in ten minutes after eight and perhaps still see some boxes sitting on the floor in the aisles and a wire bin full of flattened cardboard boxes and a pallet full of merchandise headed to the stockroom may be nearby. A lot of days, we just barely make it, and sometimes unopened boxes have to be picked up and stacked in carts just so we can say, 'Yeah, it's off the floor!'. Opening early makes it that much harder to get everything stocked and cleaned up so our customers aren't tripping all over yet-to-be stocked products. I don't work directly with customers very often, but if I'm still on the floor helping to get stuff put in its place when they come in, I'm fair game whenever someone needs help. Thankfully, they usually just want to know where to find something. I can help them with that! Much of anything beyond that, I have to figure out who to refer them to. I'm very thankful I had nothing to do with toys and electronics this year; I'd be completely out of my element in either of those departments!

One thing I always have to smile about: the generosity of major retailers. In this case, we're thinking of after Christmas, though in general terms, it's just about year 'round.

Because most merchants bend over backwards to do whatever it takes to get and keep your business, most of us today are unaware that technically, taking something back and demanding a refund is legally considered to be breach of contract. By law, the contract you made with the retailer when you agreed to offer your consideration in the form of money, whether it was currency, a draft on your checking account, or funds loaned to you by whoever was willing to extend credit to you, in exchange for the merchandise that was owned by the seller, was a done deal. There is no law that requires them to take it back. Don't believe me? If you ever are refused a refund or exchange, try to take them to court. Good luck finding an attorney to take that case! Of course, I doubt you'll ever have the chance to try that. If you ever see the things they'll do to satisfy you, I guarantee you will be amazed.

If you open it and use it, that usually isn't a problem. Broken because you obviously abused it? Most of the time they'll exchange it or refund your money. You bought it somewhere else? They're usually up for that, be it if you purchased it at another location operated by the same company (like, in a different city) or even from a competitor! They'll worry about how to deal with it after they take it back.

There is one real reason why they'll go to these extremes to make you happy: the free market. Anyone who operates a business knows full well that you vote with your pocketbook. If you aren't pleased doing business with them, you'll go to the competition and spend your money there. They also know full well that if you're happy, you might share that fact with between one and three people, if at all. And they're painfully aware that if you're ticked off at them, you're likely to let everyone you know in on it. Any publicity isn't always good publicity in the case of retail!

This is the Miracle on whatever street the retailer you're dealing with is on. Maybe it's 34th Street, but most of the time it's in a retail district on the edge of town or out in the suburbs, and it may not even be on a numbered street.

Just think: If you lived in a lot of other places in the world, or in a different time, particularly any time in the past, if you were stuck with something defective, you were STUCK. Even if an exchange was allowed, you often only had that same brand available, and the replacement was very likely to be just as poor as the one you wanted to be rid of. Good luck getting your money back; if the seller wasn't sympathetic to you, you could likely be arrested if you tried to push it too much, especially if the store was owned by the government, such as in most of the socialist countries of the Eastern Bloc or the other Soviet satellite states. Competition can be a wonderful thing when you're a customer...be thankful we have it!

The TiGor