 One
shopper's tale of two receipts - the before and the after, the receipt
you couldn't read unless you already knew what you had purchased and
its cousin - the crisply printed and completely legible one.
It's also
the story of a high volume retailer that apparently doesn't think the
customer needs a receipt that can be read and what to do about it (if
you have the time and patience to persevere).
Stop & Shop graciously responded to the article posted on their Facebook page promising to right the wrongs.
Going Shopping on New Year's Eve
Just before noon I purchased about 15 items at the South Bay Stop &
Shop and paid for them through a self-checkout register. When the
payment cleared, the receipt printed - barely. "Not again!"
The receipt wasn't legible.
I would love to approach the printer in advance of checking out: "How are you doing today?" I would love to KNOW the
printer is working before I place my groceries on the scanner scale. Where is the "Test Print" button?
The South
Bay Stop & Shop used to have five self-checkout lanes, a master
terminal and a master assistant to help anyone with self-checkout
problems. In fact, you could move your order to the master
terminal and print the receipt there. When Stop & Shop more
than doubled the number of self-checkout lanes, the master terminal was
eliminated.
Stop &
Shop checkout systems are certainly connected to the internet and to a
UPC / product description / price database. However, it would
appear that the individual transactions by terminal do not
automatically update to a store system. In fact, the registers
update only periodically, what store personnel refer to as "24
hours." As a result, your transaction, which you see documented
on a receipt, is not available to anyone in the store, including store
managers, until the once-a-day cycle upload occurs except at the terminal where the purchase took place.
This means
you cannot ask for your receipt to be reprinted unless you wait enough
time, return to the store and request a new receipt. Come to
think of it: if the receipt is illegible, how do they know how to
locate the original data?
Requesting a New Receipt
 So
here it is December 31, 2013, around noon, on a day when the store
closes early and is filled with shoppers buying New Year's Eve
accoutrement. "I can't read my receipt," I said after waiting 10
minutes in the long customer service line. "I need you to print
me a new one."
Customer
service reps are not good at dealing with these situations. Lines
at the Stop & Shop Customer Service counter are long and service
reps are busy all the time. What they don't need is somebody walking up
to the counter asking for a copy of a receipt that they cannot
generate, at least not at that moment.
Mr.
Customer Service Rep looked at the receipt I had just handed him and
replied in a sarcastic and somewhat demeaning tone of voice: "You
can't read this? I can read it."
It's best to ignore such comments.
"Still," I thought to myself. "Do I really want to wait through
this agony? How much time am I willing to waste on this? Do
I really need this food?" You see, I have been through this same
play before. I know what their options are.
No one in
the store likes me under these circumstances and vice versa. "I
remember you from the last time," he said. Well, aren't we both
lucky!
"You can
give me my money back," I said. He took my receipt over to the
cash register and stared at it. Why, I'm not certain. I
suspect he was trying to figure out what to do - his mind weighing
strategies while his dazed eyes were fixed, unfocused, on my receipt.
From prior
experience, I know that the only way to get a new receipt is to return
the merchandise, then buy it again. "No! I'm not going to
do that." On November 12, 2013 the Customer Service rep refused
to cooperate with my ridiculous strategy for getting a legible
receipt. "Call the Store Manager," I said.
Escalation to Upper Management Works
This time, my request to call the store manager was met with the "Cash
Office" door opening. Out walked Celsa who, after listening
briefly to my story, returned to her office, door shut. Back in
November, Customer Service told me: "All receipts in the store look the
same. There is something wrong with the ink on all the registers.
We have new ink on order." Hmmm - sounds made-up to me.
Why is
Stop & Shop so negligent / careless / unprofessional in its
attitude toward check out registers and towards its customers? Probably the answer is that
people don't much care about receipts and few customers complain. They go shopping to buy
food, not receipts. I, on the other hand, go to the grocery
store for both. If I need to return an item (rarely happens), I want to
make sure I can read the receipt. I also pay with a debit card
and use the receipt to reconcile my bank statement.
Perhaps
five minutes passed and the Cash Office door opened again. Celsa
said a cashier was on the way and would be generating another receipt
for me. James Poreria, Store Manager, soon appeared looking
nonplussed - same person who helped me out the last time. He and
another familiar looking employee asked me to come over to register #1.
"Training" mode was the plan - a receipt with the word "TRAINING" at
the top and a procedure that wouldn't affect my bank account.
"That's fine," I said and placed my items onto the conveyor.
When all
was said and done, the new receipt "Total" differed from the prior
receipt "Total." What had been charged to my debit card was
$34.22 while the "Training Total" showed $33.92. Both receipts made use
of the Stop & Shop card discounts so it's not clear what I, the
self checker, did wrong.
What had
been charged to my time clock was an extra 20 minutes. Worth
it? Yes, on New Year's Eve, on a day when I wanted to make sure I
started the New Year right.
When I saw
the difference in price, I laughed and said: "Close enough. Thank
you. I'm happy to pay the extra $0.30 for a receipt I can
read. Have a Happy New Year." They wished me the
same.
Stop & Shop Responds via Facebook
On 1/1/14, this article was posted to the Stop & Shop Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/StopandShop
Stop & Shop checkout
printer not working. Funny story on how customer service and management
respond.
http://www.uphamscornernews.com/stop-and-shop-tale-of-two-receipts.html
And what a surprise, by noon on 1/2/14, Stop & Shop had responded with a helpful and courteous message.
Nancy, we apologize for the
way your experience was handled at your local Stop & Shop. Both of
the receipts should have rung up the same. We ask that you please give
our Customer Care team a call at 1 800-767-7772, option 3, option 6, if
you would like to discuss your experience further. In the meantime, we
will follow up with store supervision to ensure their printers are
working properly and receipts are being printed clearly. Once again,
thank you for bringing this to our attention.
UC News Editor Reply:
Hey, I will definitely
follow up with them. If you could get our local management to commit to
quality printers, then my experience at S&S would be close to
PURRFECT. Thanks for your gracious response. Oh, and I did enjoy
writing the story.
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