Like most stores we have a large warehouse area that has our entire excess inventory as well as items that need to be sent for repair. One day, the battery in one of the laptops exploded and as a result the area that this laptop was locked in caught on fire. You could clearly see from the main shopping area that there was a large amount of smoke coming out from the warehouse.

We immediately tried to direct customers out of the building as the alarms began to go off and eventually people from the fire department started to arrive. There was this one lady that had an item that she wanted to return for a refund and she actually ran into the store and then lined up at the returns and exchange desk as if nothing was wrong.

Of course, we mentioned how we couldn’t process anything and that she needed to leave the store for her safety. She insisted that we process her request though and then went on a rant on how we are just trying prevent her from getting a refund. With the alarms still going and more smoke slowly coming out onto the shopping area, at this point even one of the firemen told the lady to leave.

Amazingly, she then began to argue with him as well on how it shouldn’t be a big deal as the process should be fairly quick. Fortunately, we were stern enough to get her to leave eventually.

Like a lot of companies, most of them have some kind of guarantee in place to ensure that the price that the customer has paid for the product will be protected from any sales or price drops within a certain timeframe of the purchase.

One day a customer came in as he had purchased a fairly decent television set for about $2000 or so. Now since the item went on sale at a competitor’s store for about $200 less, he came in to receive a refund of the difference. Not only that, but the store’s policy is to refund 110% of the difference. Ten percent of $200 is $20 and so in this situation he would actually get $220 back.

He wasn’t happy however as he started to accuse us of misleading customers about our price guarantee policy. He told us that we should be refunding him the full $2000 plus the $200. Basically, he interpreted our policy as in if there is a drop in price we would provide customers with a full refund and then some as well as allowing them to keep the product.

We tried to explain it to him, but he was dead set in believing that he was entitled to receiving $2200 while being able to keep the TV. Afterwards, he went on a rant on how he was going to report the company to the proper authorities for deceptive business practices.