Hi this is Tiffany, Pauls wife. I am hijacking his blog for a post today. He has much better luck at any stores than I do. I posted about this before, they have not hassled him where they have me! I wanted to show him, and try the Target deal $.01 but he used the last coupon for his video experiment!
I have been price matching for a long time, in fact I got Paul finally doing it last year. I just wanted to share a story with you about my experience yesterday and some new info for The Woodlands area.
I went in to buy milk, eggs and fruit. I price matched the eggs to the $.99 store, ( I will get to that later) and wanted to get blackberries for 2/$5 like at Kroger/ I write the Kroger match ups so I knew that they were that price.
This is how this goes:
“I am price matching the blackberries, they are $2.50 at Kroger.”
“Do you have an ad?” she askes.
“No not with me, you provide those.” I say
“You have to have the ad to price match anything” she says (not very nice)
“In your new policy it says you have to have it.” I sweetly say!
“Fine.” She slams down the scanner and stomps off.
She comes back and tosses all the ads at me and tells me to find it. I am nice to everyone and was really mad that she got this way for no reason to me. I look for the blackberries as she glares at me.
I can’t find them! I know they are part of the deal, I typed them up, I look and look and look. NO BLACKBERRIES!
She is thrilled! “See, that is why we have to have the ad, people try and rip us off!”
I am livid, I tell her I don’t want them and finish checking out. Yep, I am trying to rip off Walmart for $.50. I walk to the service desk and start looking trough my phone at my matchups on my site. The blackberries are there, so I check the Kroger ad online. THEY ARE THERE. That is the problem, they were in the online ad and not the printed. I was wrong. Walmarts policy is that they only price match a printed ad. So the cashier was correct in not pricematching them. How she handled it was SERIOUSLY unprofessional and infuriating.
As I was in the front of the store looking on my phone the manager walked by and we started talking, I told her what happened and that I was wrong, I showed her the online price and that I was not intentionally trying to rip the store off. She laughed and said that it was silly not to price match that and most every other cashier would have.
Sooooo, I guess I am stealing a post to say that I messed up pricemacthing but that it is REALLY easy for the most part. Just always be super nice even when they are nasty to you, and carry the policy with you. Oh yea, and if you do matchups online, check the actual paper ad to make sure the same deals are in there!
** If you are in the Woodlands area, the Walmart on 242 will price match the $.99 store! They have a dozen eggs for $.99 no limit! You can see the ad HERE.
So, I bring the 99 cent store ad with me to the Walmart off 242 and they will pricematch anything in it!? Oh man, but that means I gotta go to the Walmart off 242, doh!
Tiffany agan – Actually they have the ad there for you, you don’t even need to bring it. IT has to be the same size and brand but we should be able to find some good deals. I would suggest thanking the manager at that store for the decision! I am killing them with kindness!
I thing that is why Kroger has stopped publishing a large paper ad. They don’t want everyone price matching at Walmart. Just another way Kroger is isolating it’s customers. Thanks Kroger
I’m a Walmart cashier and they rarely provide us with ads, and when they do it’s only for convenience. You should have all the ads prepared when price matching, but newer cashiers tend to let it slide. The cashier was not accusing you of ripping off Walmart (as you suggested), she was telling you that they require it as a result of previous incidents, which is also why we can’t give change anymore.
Also you might find this interesting but we have a word for you, we call you secret customers. The cashiers are people, their behavior is their own and has nothing to do with Walmart. I’d suggest figuring which cashiers are better and which are worse, it’s very easy to learn all the cashiers at a Walmart if you shop a lot, try to avoid the bad ones (there are some nasty cashiers here).
As you can read in many of my posts, videos and comments I always encourage the readers to bring their ads. Thant being said, it is Walmart’s policy that says we don’t have to bring them. The reason Tiffany said she was being accused of ripping off Walmart was because the cashier said in plain words that she was trying to rip off Walmart. If you can readily accept that their are nasty cashiers, why would you not accept that she said something way out of line? I promise you that Walmart does not feel that their cashiers’ behavior has nothing to do with them. Does that mean that a police officer can have a bad day and do what he like because his behavior doesn’t represent the police department? How about a teacher, a doctor. There is no place at IHearttTheMart.com for bashing cashiers, or Walmart. I do believe their is a disconnect between what the corporate policy is, which I really like, and what is actually happening in some of the stores. I appreciate your input, I hope I am not being too harsh, I just felt it necessary to set the record straight.
The store gives you much more freedom than that to treat the customer right! I’m a cashier too, or was, and here’s my take: Give your customers better service than this cashier did. I see many more cashiers being downright rude to customers than I see customers trying to rip off cashiers. Even if Tiffany were $0.50 off in her estimation, in most cases the cashier should have done a price override without asking. It isn’t Tiffany’s job to absorb the cashier’s prejudice without feeling hurt, it is the cashier’s job to do her job! Yes, people can fudge on the truth, but more often than not the cashier is simply untrusting and rude and not willing to see the customer’s need. It is much more dangerous for our stores to be percieved as lying to our customers than for us to give a dollar or two of customer service here and there! Have you not seen the new customer service CBLs? They make it plain as day that the company values the customer enough to give them a benefit of a doubt if the customer thinks an item has been marked down a few dollars, much less with a $0.50 price diff! Same with clearance– because of the way markdowns work, people often come up with items in our store that are marked wrong on the shelf– I know because I see things marked wrong all the time in one store. But do they fix it? No. Lazy associates who don’t zone like they’re supposed to blame the customer for not looking at all the little numbers on the shelf tag and realizing that the price is intended for a different item. It is the store’s responsibility to keep things organized enough that a pile of $3 office supplies isn’t sitting in a $1 slot for more than an hour or so-but in my store, in most cases, the csm will find a reason to tell the customer that it was in the wrong slot, so we can’t give them good customer service for a $2 difference. You could have a better attitude than this. Don’t go online looking for a way to blame all the customers for the fact that associates have been rude to them! Those customers pay for your food and bills.
I’m sorry that happened to you. This is exactly why I have been reluctant to try price matching. 🙁
I have a problem with any coupons or matching prices about 50% of the time at one of my Walmarts. Just last night we held up the “express” cigarette lane for almost 15 minutes because the cashier needed to call management and they had to figure out all the overage with the KY Gel stuff and Reach Dental Floss, etc.. LOL that was funny. I had to literally teach them their newer coupon policy, show them and give them sources. I’m guessing the manager looked it up in the office when she said she was going to talk to someone else.
The manager was nice about it and said they would be discussing it in their next meeting. Hopefully it will straighten things out a little around where I live.
So many people got in line behind us and gave us those glances like “ugh, couponers”
Good for you though. We have to educate Walmart employees about their own coupon policy. But it will make for better and easier shopping for everyone else.
On one side of our town we have the Walmart Supercenter, on the other side of town a reg Walmart & let me tell you what a big difference between the two. I WILL NOT SHOP @ THE REG WALMART EVER they have rude cashiers, nothing but trouble when using coupons & just about outright calling you a liar on certain things. The Supercenter on the other hand (oh my gosh) what a world of difference they have friendly cashiers, you don’t have to have an ad (they take your word for it), NO PROBLEM w/overage or using coupons & the cashiers know all about the new coupon policy. Just an all around different experience there let me tell ya!!!! I just LOVE my Supercenter!!!!
So, the manager didn’t apologize to you for the cashier’s bad attitude and say something like, “I will talk to her and promise you that this type of behavior is not tolerated at Walmart”? All too often, employee forget that without customers, they don’t have a job.
I was just told TODAY I had to have the ad and that they couldn’t price match without it. Grrrrr.