Complaint Review: KMART - SEARS - San Mateo California

 I totally agree with the original post, they will continue to lose customers like this. And as for the comment about not taking the tags off , I bought drapes that someone else must have taken the tags off because they just weren't there when I bought them! The cashier had to use the barcode on a different pair (same brand wrong color) It's a matter of time before all Kmarts close!

First off, you came to Kmart without a receipt, then you where mad you had to drive home and get it , but since the tags were removed anyway you couldn't return it .

Since you know they have to scan the barcode on the tag to ring the price up, does it make ANY sense to you that you could return it without the tag . The problem with America is I'm sure folks like you get honest workers fired all the time, since you whine and complain so much management decides to "take action" against their minimum wage works .

I saw this whining in person a month ago at kmart . The manager told this woman clearly that they can only refund the lowest price in the last 30 days without a receipt . The woman became erratic, claiming that Kmart was stealing from her, her mom brought her the clothes so she didn't have the receipt, then this woman proceeded to tell the employees about how much she was going to complain , how she was going to tell her friends not to shop their . 

Now after witnessing this , I went and warned the workers( who were very nice and helpful to me, since i'm smart enough to BRING MY RECEIPT WHEN EVER I RETURN SOMETHING ) that this woman was probably going to get at least one of them fired . That's how minimum wage jobs work, you work all day severing some of the stupidest people on earth , and you'll still get fired though no fault of your own if they complain enough . 


Remember the folks on the other side of the counter are still people who deserve to be treated with respect . 

It's amazing that it's come down to blaming the intelligence of a clerk at a retail store for incompetence and lack of training when you don't get your way - It doesn't come down to lack of training when a no-receipt refund is denied or a tagless refund is denied, it comes down to that customer service representitive being trained properly in the companies policies.

It doesn't matter what's right or wrong, it matters that this person behind the counter is making minimum wage, if not just over minimum wage to deal with whining all day and more than likely has very little job prospects other than dealing with people like you - They follow these rules to the T because they may get written up or fired, otherwise - Not everybody is lucky enough to get a high paying job, even with the proper experience the job market is so saturated that the most qualified people sometimes end up in the worst positions.

The truth of the matter is you came to an SHC store and tried to return something against store policy and blamed the competency of the person in charge for not allowing it to happen - I can only imagine the horror of the clerks and managers who had to deal with that kind of crap.

All of that aside, I work for K-mart as a Loss Prevention Associate - I'm the guy in the store who sees everything happen behind the scenes, gets to see all of the scams and how they take place and comes up with ways to prevent them at a store level [so corperate policy is not my job].

Almost every day somebody comes into a K-mart store, walks into an aisle, picks up an item off the shelf and walks over to customer service trying to return something they never bought, let alone even walked out of the store with.

Almost every day somebody comes into a K-mart store and attempts to return something they brought in from outside that they stole off our shelves months in the past.

Almost every day somebody walks into our store claiming they never got an item on their receipt even though when I review camera footage I can clearly see the item being bagged properly and leaving the store with the customer.

I'm not saying you're one of these people, sometimes legitimate claims come up that we can't do anything about - I've returned items without a receipt in the far past before at local retailers, but would not be remiss if I were turned away, the policy makes sense. If you're mad don't blame the clerk, he didn't make the policy. . .And you can blame corperate all you want but it's not their fault either - It's the thousands of people pulling scams from simple $5 return fraud for spare cash to thousands of dollars in return fraud per week to make a black market living.

While I do not work at the aforementioned store, I am a Kmart employee. As far as I know, all stores have the same return policy: 90 days WITH receipt. Without a receipt, it goes to the lowest sale price in the last 30 days. Not all sale prices are listed in the ad, and if the item was on a one day blowout clearance sale, it DOES count. Hence the $1.99, or so I assume. As for there being no tag on the item, that does create difficulties in determining if it is the correct item or the item that was sold to you. Don't get me wrong here-- I personally believe you, but it is not up to what I believe. Customers have bought rugs identical to the ones they have at home that 'Fido' has urinated on, and brought back the Fido rug and kept the new one. This might be why they were hesitant to issue a refund. The smart thing to do, on their part, would have been to look at the item's sewn on tag for the UPC number. If that had been removed, my guess is as good as yours. I know that where I work, it really is at manager discretion in cases such as this, and they are under no obligation to prevent you with a refund. I'm glad that they at least made an attempt to rectify the situation, though it seems you have deemed it as sarcastic.. though I also think that a 6:30am call is ridiculous. I'm sorry you feel you have been treated unfairly, but read the fine print on the back of your receipt and it might save you a trip or two.

While I do not work at the aforementioned store, I am a Kmart employee. As far as I know, all stores have the same return policy: 90 days WITH receipt. Without a receipt, it goes to the lowest sale price in the last 30 days. Not all sale prices are listed in the ad, and if the item was on a one day blowout clearance sale, it DOES count. Hence the $1.99, or so I assume. As for there being no tag on the item, that does create difficulties in determining if it is the correct item or the item that was sold to you. Don't get me wrong here-- I personally believe you, but it is not up to what I believe. Customers have bought rugs identical to the ones they have at home that 'Fido' has urinated on, and brought back the Fido rug and kept the new one. This might be why they were hesitant to issue a refund. The smart thing to do, on their part, would have been to look at the item's sewn on tag for the UPC number. If that had been removed, my guess is as good as yours. I know that where I work, it really is at manager discretion in cases such as this, and they are under no obligation to prevent you with a refund. I'm glad that they at least made an attempt to rectify the situation, though it seems you have deemed it as sarcastic.. though I also think that a 6:30am call is ridiculous. I'm sorry you feel you have been treated unfairly, but read the fine print on the back of your receipt and it might save you a trip or two.

While I do not work at the aforementioned store, I am a Kmart employee. As far as I know, all stores have the same return policy: 90 days WITH receipt. Without a receipt, it goes to the lowest sale price in the last 30 days. Not all sale prices are listed in the ad, and if the item was on a one day blowout clearance sale, it DOES count. Hence the $1.99, or so I assume. As for there being no tag on the item, that does create difficulties in determining if it is the correct item or the item that was sold to you. Don't get me wrong here-- I personally believe you, but it is not up to what I believe. Customers have bought rugs identical to the ones they have at home that 'Fido' has urinated on, and brought back the Fido rug and kept the new one. This might be why they were hesitant to issue a refund. The smart thing to do, on their part, would have been to look at the item's sewn on tag for the UPC number. If that had been removed, my guess is as good as yours. I know that where I work, it really is at manager discretion in cases such as this, and they are under no obligation to prevent you with a refund. I'm glad that they at least made an attempt to rectify the situation, though it seems you have deemed it as sarcastic.. though I also think that a 6:30am call is ridiculous. I'm sorry you feel you have been treated unfairly, but read the fine print on the back of your receipt and it might save you a trip or two.

While I do not work at the aforementioned store, I am a Kmart employee. As far as I know, all stores have the same return policy: 90 days WITH receipt. Without a receipt, it goes to the lowest sale price in the last 30 days. Not all sale prices are listed in the ad, and if the item was on a one day blowout clearance sale, it DOES count. Hence the $1.99, or so I assume. As for there being no tag on the item, that does create difficulties in determining if it is the correct item or the item that was sold to you. Don't get me wrong here-- I personally believe you, but it is not up to what I believe. Customers have bought rugs identical to the ones they have at home that 'Fido' has urinated on, and brought back the Fido rug and kept the new one. This might be why they were hesitant to issue a refund. The smart thing to do, on their part, would have been to look at the item's sewn on tag for the UPC number. If that had been removed, my guess is as good as yours. I know that where I work, it really is at manager discretion in cases such as this, and they are under no obligation to prevent you with a refund. I'm glad that they at least made an attempt to rectify the situation, though it seems you have deemed it as sarcastic.. though I also think that a 6:30am call is ridiculous. I'm sorry you feel you have been treated unfairly, but read the fine print on the back of your receipt and it might save you a trip or two.

It's pretty common knowledge that without a reciept most stores will only give you current price that rings up in the register. For instance...you buy someone a sweater for christmas and they try tu return without the reciept. Store doesn't have any more because that item went clearance after you purchased it. Although you may have paid full price, it's the LAST CLEARANCE PRICE which shows on the register and that's what you get for the sweater. Otherwise all kinds of people would be buying things on clearance and returning them for full price. The ONLY time I have EVER had a store make an exception to this rule is when I purchased an expensive mens 3 in 1 coat from a large sporting goods chain. less than a year later the coat was completely coming apart. I phoned ahead and the store told me to bring the coat in and it could be exchanged out for a similar coat. When I took it in...mind you it was a 90 minute drive to the store and it was December...the computer showed the last price on the coat to be $39.00. I explained to the cust service rep that I had driven 90 minutes with the coat, it was obviously defective, it was the middle of winter, and all I wanted was to swap for a similar coat of equal value. I wouldn't even get a windbreaker for $39.00. She called a manager down and he looked up the original price of the coat, and what they had in stock in the same size. He agreed that the coat was, indeed, defective. In fact, he told me his friend had had the SAME coat for 5 years and it did not have any of the issues this one had. He told me the coat had been discontinued by the manufacturer the past spring and that they had 2 similar coats in stock in the size I needed. One was 99.00 the other on sale for 85.00. Then he instructed the cashier to give me the full original price of $119.00. I had actually paid less than this for the coat as we had bought it in the spring, but the store manager was aware that all I wanted was another coat and it would not have been fair to expect me to pay out of my pocket to replace a defective item. And although I could have mailed the coat in for a replacement to their customer service center, he knew that would have put my husband out of a coat for 4 - 6 weeks. Again, not fair. In effect, by giving me MORE than I needed to replace the coat on the store credit, he encouraged me to do additional shopping while I was there and I actually did buy some extra items out of my pocket. That guy should be training people in customer service as a freelance training assistant!!

Wouldn't common sense tell you not to remove the tags until you are sure the rug would fit and you are going to keep it?

OK, so lets say that you own a company and someone brings in an item that the tags are off of and they do not have a receipt...what would you do? I am an employee of Sears and work in the Sears store, not Kmart, but you have to understand, a lot of other stores carries the same brands as Sears/Kmart and without a receipt we can not tell if you really bought that item at our store or not. I think Sears is very good about offering gift cards if you do not have your receipt especially if you have already torn off all they tags!