New Home Depot policy - 10% restocking fee on returned items

Next time it happens, asked the "associate" whom Lee County was named after!

If they get that correct ask if they know where the Confederate memorial is located.

Groan. ;)

Closest thing I've seen to a correct answer in this thread. That is the way it worked when I was a wee boy- for regular customers, raw stock in resalable condition was taken back with no fee, and special order stuff was a 10 or 15 per cent restock charge, which I have absolutely no heartburn with. Makes me do my homework up front. IMHO, tools and such, and 'decor' frou-frou, should only be returnable if defective. (My sister proudly told me she buys BIL's clothes that way online- shotgun purchase on styles and sizes, and returns half of it.) I dearly wish there WAS a ma'n'pa traditional lumberyard near here. The only survivors had to morph into boutique door and window shops, or custom trim mills. Rest of them went belly up when the chains moved in.

-- aem sends...

My typical trips into the store average 3 or 4 MIHU contacts. Many of the workers look like retirement age, and actually know their trade.

Red wrote in news:157580b8-3902-42f0-bcab- snipped-for-privacy@z34g2000vbl.googlegroups.com:

Checked a receipt for a single item from last Saturday the 3rd. Nothing like that on it. Used a credit card.

"John Grabowski" wrote in news:4acbc171$0$5004$ snipped-for-privacy@cv.net:

Ditto. Been like that for quite a while.

Been in a Kragen's auto store lately? Two vapor trails to the back room.

--Winston

From a legal perspective, the crap printed on the receipt has no force.

They offered to sell you something at a specified price. You accepted and paid. The receipt is an "after the sale" condition. Presumably, if you walk out of the store with the merchandise, you've agreed to the modification of the original contract.

To be part of the "contract," they have to announce this policy as a condition of the sale in advance and, absent any direction to the contrary, you are allowed to rely on the customary terms of no-penalty returns.

The most common conditions I've seen are during hurricane season: "No returns on generators!"

No. Two returns in the past 2 years and neither was a high dollar item.

Red

When I was a boy, in the 50's, we lived in a small city of 50,000 in western Pa. My mother usually had a car**, but still, when there was a sale in the newspaper, like on purses, and she didn't want to go shopping, she would call up the department store and tell them approximately what kind of purse she wanted, and they would deliver maybe 3 purses, with their own delivery truck. She would look at them for a couple days and then call them to come and get the ones she didn't want. If she didn't want any of them, that was okay too. My mother grew up poor and didn't spend a lot of money on clothes, but otoh, she never went out naked (she even wore clothes at home) and there were only two department stores in town, maybe one, so whatever she did spend, she spent with this store. And the driver probably got paid bupkes (goat droppings).

Maybe your friend is the daughter, or granddaughter, of someone like my mother.

That's a good point. I pay cash in part because if I return something, I feel obliged to watch my account to see if the return is credited, yet I never do watch it. But if they ever give me a problem, I guess I'll start charging everything.

They want it because the stores offer it. If someone offers "service", someone will want to take advantage of it.***(towards the bottom) If no store offered it anymore, people would get used to that, but one store started, years ago, because they found they could make more money that way, even allowing for the cost of taking things back. If HD really changes it's policy, it will cost them, especially if Lowes, Menaards, etc. don't change theirs, although it still might be worth it. It's more likely they'll warn specific customers that a new policy applies to them for 6 months or a year or so.

Closely related: Did you know that [the famous department store I can never remember the name of which started in Philadephia but had a branch in DC**] was the first place in America to have fixed prices for things. Around 1876 iirc. Prior to that. and their policy catching on elsewhere, people dickered about everything they bought.

That's outrageous and I won't do that. If a buyer can tell something's been used, he'll pass on it and get one that's never been used. The used one can sit in stock forever. Or he'll want a discount, justifiably.

More below.

All the rules so far are fair, though I can certainly see how someone could sort of get trapped by no refunds on gift cards. Of course I've solved the problem by not giving gift cards, even the ones that don't expire!! Once for my mother and her husband I was going to give them a gift certificate for an unusal ethnic restaurant near them. Fortunately they didn't offer gift certificates (which is pretty stupid. They shoudl have made one up when I called and asked) So I gave my folks a 50 dollar bill taped to a piece of paper saying where they shoudl spend it. Years went by, they never went, and the restaurant went out of business. The gift certificate would have been worthless, but the money I gave them was fine.

I guess that's something a lot of people wnat to use once and then return. :(

They want to think about it, don't want to come back, want to see if it will work, are afraid they'll sell out and they have to keep coming back until it's finally in stock again, Etc.

Wanamaker first thought of how he would run a store on new principles when, as a youth, a merchant refused his request to exchange a purchase. A practicing Christian, he chose not to advertise on Sundays. His faith also informed other business decisions, many of which were innovative and before their time. Before he opened his Grand Depot for retail business, he let evangelist Dwight L. Moody use its facilities as a meeting place, while Wanamaker provided 300 ushers from his store personnel. His retail advertisements?the first to be copyrighted beginning in 1874?were factual, and promises made in them were kept. Word of this increased Wanamaker's business and John Wanamaker never lost the public's trust while he pioneered truth in American advertising.

Wanamaker guaranteed the quality of his merchandise in print, allowed his customers to return purchases for a cash refund and offered the first restaurant to be located inside a department store. Wanamaker's also innovated the price tag, because John Wanamaker believed if everyone was equal before God, then everyone should be equal before price. All of these concepts were seen as innovations in American retailing at the time.

His employees were to be treated respectfully by management (including not being scolded in public), and John Wanamaker & Company offered its employees access to the John Wanamaker Commercial Institute, as well as free medical care, recreational facilities, profit sharing plans, and pensions?long before these types of benefits were considered standard in corporate employment. The famous logo

Innovation and "firsts" marked Wanamaker's. The store was the first department store with electrical illumination (1878), first store with a telephone (1879), and the first store to install pneumatic tubes to transport cash and documents (1880).

Wanamaker's commissioned a Philadelphia/New Jersey artist, George Washington Nicholson (1832-1912), to paint a large landscape mural, "The Old Homestead," which was finished in March 1892. The 7x14-foot mural was still owned by Wanamaker's in 1950, but its location is currently unknown.

In 1910, Wanamaker replaced his famous Grand Depot in stages, and constructed a brand-new, purpose-built structure on the same site in Center City Philadelphia. The new store, lavishly built in the Florentine style with granite walls by Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham, had 12 floors (9 for retail), numerous galleries and two lower levels totaling nearly two-million square feet. The palatial emporium featured the Wanamaker Organ, the former St. Louis World's Fair pipe organ, at the time one of the world's largest organs. The organ was installed in the store's marble-clad central atrium known as the Grand Court. Another item from the St. Louis Fair in the Grand Court is the large bronze eagle, which quickly became the symbol of the store and a favorite meeting place for shoppers. The store was dedicated by President William Howard Taft on December 30, 1911.

Despite its size, the organ was deemed insufficient to fill the Grand Court with its music. Wanamaker's responded by assembling its own staff of organ builders and expanding the organ several times over a period of years. The organ still stands in place in the store today, and is the largest operational pipe organ in the world, with some

Other innovations included employing buyers to travel overseas to Europe each year for the latest fashions, the first White sale (1878) and other themed sales such as the February "Opportunity Sales" to keep prices as low as possible while keeping volume high. The store also broadcast its organ concerts on the Wanamaker-owned radio station WOO-AM beginning in 1922. Under the leadership of James Bayard Woodford, Wanamaker's opened piano stores in Philadelphia and New York that did a huge business with an innovative fixed-price system of sales. Salons in period decor were used to sell the higher-price items. Wanamaker also tried selling small organs built by the Austin Organ Company for a time.

The famous advertising axiom "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half" is credited to John Wanamaker.

Although disputed in some circles, John Wanamaker is credited as the first to coin the "Retailer's Rule"?"The customer is always right."

--Of course some people seem to think this is literally true, when it's only a policy of some stores, which even they suspend when the customer makes ridiculous demands.

It's all related to the automobile, and also to the two-car family. People got used to driving farther for things they want, and a store with little service can be cheaper to run, lower prices are possible, or at least a bigger selection of parts.

Although the ACE hardware I like is only a fifth the size of an HD. Much space is saved because it doesn't have lumber or many building matterials, it doesn't have home appliances, etc. just hardware and things pretty close to that. (It does have phone, cable, and some other electronic accessories.)

No, not even while charging a 10% restocking fee.

Except that it isn't an answer to the original question.

OK.

I have no idea what "'decor' frou-frou" is. Some new type of electrical wall plate perhaps? Tools might not be defective but may not explain on the literature, box, etc., exactly how it works and allow you to assess the quality. For example, that huge adjustable wrench for that once-in-a-lifetime clean out plug nut removal might turn out to be just 1/16" shy of the right size. Or sometimes the tool so violates the merchantability concept (i.e. does not do the job) that used or not the retailer deserves to take it back and take a bath on the returns (a water pre-filter for drywall sanding dust springs to mind).

Smart girl!

Ignoring this whining... My version: the world would be a whole lot better if contractors and other grunts would tug their forelocks when I approach them. They should be very happy to work for a bowl of rice a day, and keep quiet in the presence of their betters especially on usenet!

As to the original question. If HD are running a sale or some kind (e.g. 10% off your next purchase) they will deduct the 10% from the total and show all the individual items with a refund value of 10% less than the actual retail shelf cost. When you return one of the items you only get back the reduced price. Nothing wrong with that. You only paid the reduced amount! Lowe's does the same thing. I suspect this is what's happened with the OP. He needs to read the receipt more carefully.

That's bad alright. If I have to decide if I reallllly want something, I'll buy fewer things. That's the reason for liberal return policies in the first place, to encourage impulse buying, most of which the person will be happy with and won't return.

Computers have substantially lessened the bookkeeping costs of returns. I don't know what the restocking actually costs them (about the same for a 1 dollar item as for a 100 dollar item I think)

I wonder if this is only on things that tend to get damaged when they are out of the store (probably everything. I'll look), 30, 50 pound paper bags of things seem like they would not last long.

I also returned a big thing for watering a planting for 2 weeks way after summer was over. I got a full refund a year ago, but I knew they woudlnt' sell it again until spring, and they'd have to sort of keep track of it until then. (although that should be pretty easy if they're organized.)

The closest HD to my home seems to be staffed by folks who know their stuff, and act as if they own the place. If they spot you scanning shelves, they stop and ask if they can help you find something. If you turn them down, they don't hover, but wait somewhere down the isle in case you change your mind. I have often been literally chased across the parking lot by employees who insist on helping me load stuff on the roof of my SUV.

I never have to go looking for assistance, they come looking for me.

My guess is that HD's system has automagically flagged Red as a customer who gets a "special" receipt for some reason.

They may not be upset that they have now lost him as a customer.

Returns anywhere else? When you use a credit card, your entire history may be called into play. Target knows what you bought at Walmart.

Sometimes not.

I returned two sets of hinges to Lowes and they gave me back more than I spent!

Seems the price went up during the week I was warehousing their merchandise...