Thursday, March 31, 2011

Walmart

Who can guess what happened?

There was several coupons expiring today, but I couldn't decide if I wanted to bother going to try to use them.  My youngest son was like, Go for it, it's free stuff, it'n it.
I said, eh, I still have to pay tax on the stuff.
He asked what kind of stuff was it, and I said just like toothpaste, floss, travel size shampoo. He said well what if we want to go on a trip and need some travel size shampoo? (Since he and I both have waist-length hair and would use a whole little bottle of shampoo each by ourselves, I'd have to carry a suitcase full of nothing but little travel sized bottles of shampoo to have enough, that's what.)

In the end, I decided to go because of the $4.00 Sinex/Free Puffs coupons. Someone had posted that they had gotten Nyquil/Dayquil Sinex at their WM for $4.12, so .12 after coupon and free Puffs.
Turned out, the Nyquil/Dayquil Sinex was $5.64 at my store, so it wasn't worth it to me to pay $1.64 because I already have a pretty large stockpile of Nyquil/Dayquil and kleenex.

They only had (2) of the Pert, and (12) of the Sensodyne, and I took along (10) floss coupons.

I had a $1.00 Rav-O-Vac battery coupon for Alkaline or Hearing Aid batteries. Someone posted they'd found .97 batteries, and these HD batteries were the only ones I found for .97. The first five numbers of the UPC codes matched, so I got one to try it out.
I still don't know if it was a match because after starting and stopping and voiding the transaction and starting over again, when she scanned the coupon it said no matching item. I asked if it was the wrong thing, willing to give them up if they weren't a match, but then she scanned the Sensodyne coupon and it said the same thing, and I know those were a match, so I don't know what she did. Eventually the CSM came along and just entered them manually.

To back up some, the store has the Old-New coupon policies posted at every register, the 03/02 version, before they changed it again 3/16.  I just conversationally asked the cashier if they accepted Walgreens Register Rewards and she had no idea what I was talking about. No surprise; she's probably never even heard of Walgreens.
I let the subject drop, and certainly wasn't trying to use one, not even the $5 off Hershey product one, so the rest of the Transaction *should* have gone without a hassle.

Without a hassle - HA! - was I dreaming or what??

First coupon she scanned was a Pert. Register asked "Valid Coupon Amt?" Cashier got a look on her face like it had told her to strip butt naked and do the Hula or something.  Then she asked, did you get shampoo? and starts digging through the bag.
Then she decides she has to call a CSM and make sure it's allright.
CSM comes over and looks and says Yeah, push yes. So I'm thinking, okay good, this is going to be easy.

Then we get to the Sensodyne. Same thing. She calls the CSM back over.
Now the CSM looks at the coupons, looks at the toothpaste, takes the Reach coupons, and calls on her mic for someone to call her at Register 7 (two registers away from where we are - obviously so I can't hear her convo).
In the meantime, me and the cashier are just standing there and she starts chatting about how a woman had come with the Gain coupons and got the dryer sheets and they had to pay her in the end, and another woman had the Gain coupons and got the dryer sheets and some Gain with Crystals (she meant Purex) and a bunch of other stuff and only paid .88.
I'm standing here thinking, ok, so obviously they're not seeing anything new, and knows about overage and all...why the hell are they giving me such a hassle and run around??

Eventually the CSM comes back and says her Manager says the Pert coupons are okay, but as far as the Reach and Sensodyne, the coupon says "One per Purchase", so we have to ring them all up separately.
I tried to explain that one per purchase meant one per item, but she wasn't having it; her Manager, who is an Assistant Store Manager told her that meant they have to be rung up separately.

That was when the cashier started trying to check me out again and the coupons kept saying wrong bar code, or no matching item. The CSM had to come back again and help.
That first transaction, they gave me back .85.  I was pretty sure it was wrong, and sure enough they had entered one too many coupons.
It's not that I didn't want to be honest and tell them what happened, but I was afraid to at that point. That would involve returns, voids, I don't know what all more kinds of crap and trouble.
Besides, they'll still get reimbursed for the coupon. I know at least one person has bought Reach floss without having used a coupon.

After the first transaction, the cashier ties the handles of the bag together and tries to hand it to me. I said, you can probably put it all in the same bag. She said no, it's just easier for me to keep it all separate, and I was like, you're going to give me 12 bags??  (With a Floss and a travel size toothpaste in each.)
At that point the CSM took over and did the other 11 transactions.

Because of the original .85 mistake, this ended up with me making .02 cents.
Not freekin worth it!

When I got home I told my kid, next time I ask him if I should go to Walmart, he better say NO!

BTW, at least half of all those receipts came out with a Survey request on them. They're gonna be sorry they caused me to get so many chances to complain.

3 comments:

Cheap&Sweet: Life on the scales said...

LOL Thats all I have to say!

Mrs. Babcock said...

What the F word?? Do you live in a village full of idiots?? I'm not one to get all crazy and go off on someone but I don't know how you stood there and watched them look stupid.

Melissa said...

Yep, LOL is about all one can say.

Village, ha. My whole world is full of idiots.
I tried explaining, but you can't argue with stupid. It was less painful to not to keep hitting my head against that brick wall.

I could have said forget it and left, but what the hey, I didn't have anywhere to be. If they wanted to put themselves through all that trouble, be my guest. I only had to stand there and hand them a few cents at a time.

Too bad I couldn't hand them any sense, huh.