This is page 2 of:
Wal-Mart’s Gift Receipt POS Headache: Weak Associate Training Brings FTC Investigation
The problem may also stem from the fact that Wal-Mart accepts returns with regular receipts, without receipts or with gift receipts, each of which involves different procedures. In particular, receipt-less returns reportedly get the lowest price the store has charged for the item in the past 30 days—which matches what the TV reporters described. (It also sounds like that old Wal-Mart slogan: “Always low prices. Always.” What we didn’t know then was that the full phrase was “Always low prices for returns. Always.”)
Wal-Mart didn’t respond to specific questions about the issue—hey, the chain could see this PR train wreck coming—but did issue a statement saying that all U.S. stores have put associates through a refresher course in handling gift receipts.
That doesn’t absolve poor training practices or eliminate the possibility that some store managers have been less than scrupulous about checking on how no-receipt and gift-receipt returns are handled.
But at a chain-wide level, it’s hard to see how cheating on gift receipts makes sense for Wal-Mart. It irritates customers, it’s easy to test and, unless it’s very carefully managed, it’s likely to lose the retailer money at least some of the time.
Worse than that, it contaminates valuable data on what customers buy and how they return it. If gift receipts are mishandled and gift-receipt returns are treated as no-receipt returns, Wal-Mart has no way of knowing how many items bought as gifts are actually being returned. The chain loses track of when items were bought, how long it took to return them and whether discounted gift items are returned more or less often—in short, exactly the sort of inventory-control data that Wal-Mart finds critical.
The technology and systems to collect and manage all that data are in place. But they’re useless if stores don’t train associates correctly or, worse, if managers are cheating.
With an FTC investigation on the way and class-action lawyers already casting their nets for representative victims, there should be plenty of evidence one way or the other soon enough.
-Marc
May 26th, 2011 at 11:25 am
This is not an isolated incident, and blaming the training procedures is not going to fly. Very interesting story. My guess is that a number of large retail/franchise chains are carefully reviewing their procedures on “gift” returns.
May 26th, 2011 at 2:20 pm
Editor’s Note: Interesting comment. To clarify, when you say “blaming the training procedures is not going to fly,” do you mean that it’s not true or that it is true, but consumers won’t tend to believe it? We were skeptical initially, but after reviewing the receipts themselves and interviewing quite a few Wal-Mart people–plus reviewing the video taken by the TV stations–their explanation seemed to make sense. When we drilled down a bit, it’s quite easy to see how associates could have hit the wrong button. It really does seem to have been a training issue.