Gift voucher greed

irishfeller

Hi,

I got quite a few gift vouchers for Christmas - got some of them One For All ones and some River Island vouchers. All in all I had 300 euros worth of vouchers. I went in to River Island yesterday and picked out 5 pairs of jeans to buy. The balance came to 297 euro and I was paying with the 300 euro of vouchers. Instead of getting my 3 euro in change, however, the shop assistant hands me a 3 euro credit note. I asked her was she seriously going to give me a 3 euro credit note (which I will never use) after my spending nearly 300 euro there. She said it was the store policy. I took the credit note but was p*ssed off - to me that is ridiculous - if the change on the voucher is less than 10 or 5 euro then they should just give ye cash back. They are really making sure that the customer spends every cent of their voucher in that shop. They should be a little more flexible considering vouchers are given as gifts and they should not be used by the store to wrench every cent they can from the recipients.

Irishfeller

axer

irishfeller wrote: »

Hi,

I got quite a few gift vouchers for Christmas - got some of them One For All ones and some River Island vouchers. All in all I had 300 euros worth of vouchers. I went in to River Island yesterday and picked out 5 pairs of jeans to buy. The balance came to 297 euro and I was paying with the 300 euro of vouchers. Instead of getting my 3 euro in change, however, the shop assistant hands me a 3 euro credit note. I asked her was she seriously going to give me a 3 euro credit note (which I will never use) after my spending nearly 300 euro there. She said it was the store policy. I took the credit note but was p*ssed off - to me that is ridiculous - if the change on the voucher is less than 10 or 5 euro then they should just give ye cash back. They are really making sure that the customer spends every cent of their voucher in that shop. They should be a little more flexible considering vouchers are given as gifts and they should not be used by the store to wrench every cent they can from the recipients.

Irishfeller

Unfortunately I don't believe they have to give you the change in cash. Kinda silly but they have the right.

mollydolly271

well in all fairness if i had €300 worth of vouchers to spend i wont be worrying about the €3 i couldnt spend,i'd just be happy with all the jeans i got and didnt pay for???????????????? if u wer that worried about loosing out why didnt u pick up something cheap to go over ur voucher

craichoe

mollydolly271 wrote: »

well in all fairness if i had €300 worth of vouchers to spend i wont be worrying about the €3 i couldnt spend,i'd just be happy with all the jeans i got and didnt pay for???????????????? if u wer that worried about loosing out why didnt u pick up something cheap to go over ur voucher

Someone else paid for them as a gift, now he has a voucher for 3 euro that'll he'll never use. Its not like the vouchers were 'free'

He already spent 297 euro, whats he supposed to do, go back and buy something he doesn't want just to get his 3 euro.

AFAIK most of the other store, Dunnes etc just give you change.

Corruptedmorals

I work in Dunnes, you will only be given change if it's under a fiver, if it's over, it has to be put onto a gift card. River Island should have given you the change, but if that's their policy then that's that, tbh.

mollydolly271

craichoe wrote: »

Someone else paid for them as a gift, now he has a voucher for 3 euro that'll he'll never use. Its not like the vouchers were 'free'

He already spent 297 euro, whats he supposed to do, go back and buy something he doesn't want just to get his 3 euro.

AFAIK most of the other store, Dunnes etc just give you change.

yeah exactly some one else paid for them so whats he worrying about? like i said if he was that worried he could have spent over the €300 plenty of places dont give any credit notes u have to spend the amount or over it.

Doctor DooM

gift vouchers are not legal tender so the company- unfortunately- is entitled to deal with them pretty much however they wish, change wise. Believe me when I say this is often as much a pain for the guy behind the counter as it is for you.

In 2 shops I worked for, gift vouchers were actually treated as items of stock which you exchanged.

dahamsta

Surely the intelligent thing to do in that situation is to request a store manager and tell them unless they waive such a silly policy, you'll cite your policy of not dealing with silly policies and walk out without spending a penny?

adam

Doctor DooM

dahamsta wrote: »

Surely the intelligent thing to do in that situation is to request a store manager and tell them unless they waive such a silly policy, you'll cite your policy of not dealing with silly policies and walk out without spending a penny?

adam

Basically.

parsi

dahamsta wrote: »

Surely the intelligent thing to do in that situation is to request a store manager and tell them unless they waive such a silly policy, you'll cite your policy of not dealing with silly policies and walk out without spending a penny?

adam

What's the point - they have the money anyway whether or not you exchange the vouchers ?

BTW: spending a penny costs at least 20c nowadays...

dudara

SDooM wrote: »

gift vouchers are not legal tender so the company- unfortunately- is entitled to deal with them pretty much however they wish, change wise. Believe me when I say this is often as much a pain for the guy behind the counter as it is for you.

In 2 shops I worked for, gift vouchers were actually treated as items of stock which you exchanged.

This is a good post. Most companies see gift vouchers as a product that has already been sold, not as cash, which is how the consumer sees them. They do not have to give you change, if that is in accordance with their policy.

However, as Adam pointed out, there is never any harm in asking to see the manager and seeing what can be worked out.

irishfeller

dahamsta wrote: »

Surely the intelligent thing to do in that situation is to request a store manager and tell them unless they waive such a silly policy, you'll cite your policy of not dealing with silly policies and walk out without spending a penny?

adam

This is true - this did cross my mind. But after fitting on loads of jeans I wasn't going to walk out. Too much hassle. But I guess its that kind of laziness that allow them to get away with it.

As to the person who said that why was I worried when I was getting the jeans for free - its the principle of the thing. When I was bringing the jeans to the counter I actually though they were going to come to over the 300 euros in total and didn't mind paying that - but the fact that it came to 297 and they wouldn't give me the 3 euros in cash seemed so petty on their part. It is really bad customer service and seems really bad business practice as it annoys the customers and gains them very little money.

Corruptedmorals

All the same, I hope you didn't hassle whoever served you, since they were operating according to company policy. Take it to management tbh.

Sam Vimes

i've worked in several shops where the till system was designed not to give change on vouchers. if someone was spending €300, you could say that they had just given you €1,000,000 in vouchers and still the change would appear as €0.00.

their tills have to balance at the end of the night so they can't just give you the €3

Random

Someone gave you a gift. The person who bought them agreed to the conditions. Tough is how i see it.

dahamsta

parsi wrote: »

What's the point - they have the money anyway whether or not you exchange the vouchers ?

They have the River Island ones cetainly, but not the others. And there are other River Island shops, the staff of which might be more customer-friendly.

(I don't disagree that the staff don't have to give cash change, but customer service should be about keeping customers happy. The "store policy" line is a terrible way for an intelligent person to start a conversation with a customer -- the customer knows what's coming and will immediately go on the offensive, killing an opportunity for creating a happy, repeat customer. A little basic training would work wonders here.)

irishfeller, sometimes you have to take a hit to make a point. In my opinion it's better to make the point. You could argue that they won't notice, but that's an endemic problem with the Irish in that we don't complain. If we continue to accept that as true, it'll remain true. Someone has to start us off, next time maybe it could be you, and you can tell your friends about it, and next time it might be them...

adam