$10.37 plus $4.92 equals $25.00!
I was quite pleased when one of my favorite credit card companies "partnered" up with one of my favorite building supply companies and sent me two nice promotional coupons to be used by March 29, 2009 providing I pay for our building supplies with our favorite credit card. No problem because sometimes the "best things in life are free"!
This was fine with me. Receiving $10.00 off any order of $50.00 or more and $25.00 off any order of $250.00 or more was more than welcomed since we were planning a small building project. No one uses or likes $35.00 worth of freebies than me!
We make our building list, check it twice and since it we know it will be a lot more than a total of $300.00 and since we have two coupons we take some of the hardware list such as brackets, nails etc and decide to use it with our $10.00 off coupon and off we go to our favorite building supply company one day while we were off on an errand in Bowling Green, KY.
Our first order was about $60.00 so we qualified to use our $10.00 off coupon and when our cashier totaled our order and scanned the coupon it did not work. The cashier upon dutifully double checking the coupon, the date and whatever else it said confirmed that the coupon was valid and commenced to do some computer, double whammy, "voodoo that you do so well' kind of stuff' and finally got the $10.00 off our bill and we signed the printed receipt for the correct amount and happily headed home.
The second part of our order was the big stuff and it would require a truck and a large trailer to haul it back so we decided to use a closer to home branch of our favorite building supply store in Glasgow, KY.
After an hour or two of loading up 3 large construction carts with what we required to start our little project we headed to the commercial checkout counter and I informed the cashier that all the three carts were on one order and we would be paying for it with our favorite credit card and using a $25.00 off coupon. The cashier proceeded to ask if these three carts were all together. "Oh Boys", I thought as I responded "correct".
The next question as she counted four 2 x 4's was, "Four 2 x 4's?" "Here we go" I thought as I looked a many different pieces of lumber etc and decided to say, "Whatever is on these carts and whatever amounts you count will be what there is". Que Sera Sera as the song lyrics go almost!
Finally she completed her checking out tasks and I proceeded to give her my $25.00 off coupon, which she scanned and again nothing happened. This cashier also dutifully double checked the coupon, the date and whatever else it said confirming to herself that the coupon was valid and commenced to do some computer, double whammy, "voodoo that you do so well kind' of stuff' and it really did not seem to do anything either so she rolled up her sleeves and did it all over again and then smiled at me as if to say "I got it!"
As I gave her my favorite credit card when she totaled it up and gave me the total. I again asked her if it took off the $25.00 since I could not see the screen and she looked at her computer screen and said "YES" so I proceeded to check o.k., yes, sign the credit card machine in order to process this sale.
Upon receiving the printed out sheet I looked at the bottom only to see that the discount was not $25.00 but $10.37.
"Just one moment, please", I said, "this is not $25.00 credit and you need to rectify this." The line was piling up behind me and she was not a happy cashier. However, she did take the printed receipt back and started to add it all up again and smilingly told me she had given me another $4.92 credit toward the $25.00 coupon.
Whoa! I do not know what kind of arithmetic they teach in school nowadays, but for the 74 years I have inhabited this planet $10.37 plus $4.92 does not equal $25.00!
Now she is getting annoyed and if I were a mind reader I could just about read it from reading the look on her face.
I know she was not happy as I firmly stood in my tracks and said you need to fix this before any of this leaves the store. Again she looked at the line of people behind me, picked up the phone to ask for help only to be told that the person who could help her was on a lunch break. With that she told the people behind me to go to the other register and she started in again.
After approximately 3 minutes I asked what the problem was. "Well, I cannot scan the coupon again because it was scanned once." (This was funny to me because apparently these coupons were not scanning in either store checkouts.) I simply said, "Look, this is really basically simple, get the total, deduct $25.00, add 6% sales tax and that is what I should be paying", She says, "But I have to refund the whole original order back to your favorite credit card and start all over again." "Well, if that is what it takes, then do it, because it will result in me being a happy customer, getting me out of your line and life and doing it correctly." Finally that is what happened.
The moral of this story is if you do not check out your receipts when you are done how much money a year are you losing? For the past 5 or 6 years I have started to really pay attention at all the checkouts and regardless of what kind of store I am in, invariably a price is incorrect or the cashiers counting of the number of items is incorrect.
I wonder what happens the day the earth stands still with no computers running, correctly or incorrectly and someone has to do some basic arithmetic to sell something, make change or give a refund!