Musings of a Punk Rock Father

Mel, Aidan and I went to the mall to get return some stuff and do a little shopping. And we have vowed never to return.

Our shopping began at Toys R Us. We had a few items to return, and were looking for a new highchair. While I checked out the highchair selection, where several employees cut in front of me as I tried to navigate their narrow aisles with my baby in the shopping cart, Melanie tried to do our returns. One of the returns was a matching shirt and pants, but apparently the clerk who issued the gift receipt to the purchasers neglected to put them both on the gift receipt. The customer service rep called a manager or supervisor over to see what they could do. "Jen" told Mel that it wasn't her fault they didn't issue a gift receipt, and walked away. At least the person Mel was dealing with was good enough to see that the outfit was a matching set, and managed to get it squared away and gave us a gift card, for about $40.

We found a high chair we liked, and pulled one of those tags that they have for large items to take up to the cash register. We gave the cashier the gift card, which she promptly put in a pile of other cards. She then rang up the highchair using the card we brought to her, and told us there was $2.92 on the card. After a bit of aquabbling, it turns out $2.92 is what we owed after using the gift card. Okay, fine, she's probably so busy that he made a small mistake.

We are told to take the card, which now shows that we paid for the item, to customer service and they will retrieve the highchair froom the stockroom. I hand the card to the guy at the desk, who promptly turns to his co-worker -- he doesn't address me the entire time -- and tells her she needs to do it because he doesn't know how to, and walks away. It is now up to the same employee who finally got Mel the gift card. She calls for her supervisor, the same Jen who freaked out at Melanie once already. Jen puts her index finger up, and walks away again. So the poor customer service lady tries her best. But she finds out that the item we just bought isn't even in their store.

I yell, "This store sucks," and walked out with Aidan. Since Melanie was more calm, she stayed there to collect our refund, which turned out to be just a store credit. So we have to go back there to use it.

Our next stop is Sears, again to return some baby clothes that don't fit. I go to the photo studio to pick up some photos we had taken while Melanie goes to take care of the returns. At the photo studio, they tell me the photos were taken "before we used digital," and were probably disposed of. After a bit of searching, the employees found the photos listed under the name David. Whatever.

I go back to the kids section to find Melanie, and hear the clerk tell her that the refund from the clothes we returned is being re-applied to the credit card originally used to purchase the clothes.

We say, "Wait, we have a gift receipt, we want to exchange these!"

The clerk said, "Our policy just changed. The refund is put back on the card that was used to buy this."

I said, "So, what the heck is the point of a gift receipt, then?"

I don't know what happened after that, because Aidan was getting fussy, so I took him for a little stroll. Somehow Mel got the exhange and the balance of it put on a gift card, which we again have to return to this lousy store to use.

So now you know: if you have a Sears gift receipt, and you choose to use it, you are basically forfeiting your right to the gift given to you, since the amount is debited back to the person who bought you the gift.

I need to stay out of malls.