Crappy Christmas Shopping

“ ’TIS THE SEASON FOR A WONDER-FULL GIVEAWAY,” announced the cheery advertising copy. “EXTRAORDINARY PRIZES AWAIT. You could be an instant winner every time you buy GODIVA!”

Then the ad gave instructions on how to enter GODIVA’S contest and included coupons at the bottom of the page that arrived with the Sunday edition.

So, like a diehard — yet gullible — fan who still believed the Vikings could actually win The Super Bowl, I scurried off to a store that sold GODIVA chocolates and actually believed I could use those coupons…In no time at all, though, my holiday shopping descended into that familiar nightmare of miscommunication and misunderstanding that befalls Larry David every week on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” (Sigh) I hate saying that because it’s supposed to be “the most wonderful time of the year.” But it isn’t. And it’s not the fault of the supply chain or the pandemic or the Internet or all those moms who quit their jobs in the fall, either.

No, the blame rests entirely on Corporate retail itself — and how it has decided to treat its customers.

I know because I experienced the surreal murkiness of disinterest and disinformation when I tried to find a simple Christmas gift of GODIVA dark chocolate. Don’t roll your eyes, dear readers. My quest was not as easy as you might think.

In the metro area where I live, GODIVA is only sold in selective stores. But even if retailers do sell GODIVA, their offerings of dark chocolate are either very limited or nonexistent. In fact, the stores I initially visited (Target, Walgreens, Wal-Mart) didn’t have dark chocolate at all in the GODIVA Signature Bars I’d wanted.

Of course, I could have checked out the inventory at a few candy stores in the nearby colossal super mall. But I didn’t feel like walking over 6 miles just to see if any dark chocolate was in stock, or paying higher prices if it was indeed available. I also didn’t want to risk getting carjacked or robbed there. So I went to the store where I’ve been buying my Christmas chocolates for the past four years because they usually have a lot of GODIVA products on hand.

I’m not going to use the real name of this big retailer here. Why? Well, crappy stores with crappy employees get really crappy whenever any customer tries to hold them accountable for their crappy customer service and policies. So let’s just call this store Crappy’s.

When BFF and I walked in Crappy’s, we spied all kinds of chocolates by the store’s South entrance. Computer tablet signs on the shelf also indicated the price of these assorted chocolates(WHICH INCLUDED GODIVA) were discounted. Great! Even more GODIVA items were positioned behind the check-out counters. Not only did I find dark chocolate, but there was a great selection of it in Signature Bars, gift boxes, and bags. Perfect! More importantly to this narrative, there were no signs anywhere informing customers that Crappy’s wouldn’t accept GODIVA coupons or participate in GODIVA’s nationwide promo or contest.

Filled with joyful appreciation and goodwill, I picked out some dark chocolate treats, then stood in the check-out line. When it was my turn, I presented the candy to the cashier, along with the the coupons.

Right away, she announced, “We don’t take these. We don’t take coupons.”

“Why not?” I asked.

She immediately made contact on her earphone device and began another conversation: “We don’t take coupons, do we? Uh-huh. Yeah, that’s what I thought.” After that contact ended, she turned to me and repeated, “We don’t take coupons.”

I turned around and took the escalator upstairs to another check-out site, one that was supposed to help customers with pick-ups, online orders, complaints, problems, or anything else that the staff downstairs couldn’t(or wouldn’t) handle. Note the words “supposed to help?” Didn’t happen for me.

The employee who couldn’t help me was a pleasant, though clueless, guy with long, flowing hair who looked like one of those warrior-elves from “Lord of the Rings.” But I hesitate to use the word elfin to describe him because that would make me seem anti-elf. I’m not. I am, and have always been, pro-elf.

Anyway, I showed him what I’d wanted to buy, then asked why Crappy’s wouldn’t take coupons.

He carefully picked up the coupons I’d set down and looked them over, as though I was trying to sell him fake IDs. “We don’t take these,” he said. Then he looked up at me with a mixture of pity and admonishment. “They look like they’re from Wal-Mart,” he observed.

“Wal-Mart? No, They’re not from Wal-Mart,” I told him. “They’re from the Sunday paper. I cut them out. They’re manufacturer’s coupons.”

“Oh…We don’t take them.”

“Why not?”

“They’re excluded.”

BFF, who had accompanied me upstairs, finally broke his silence. “So why won’t you take these coupons? Why are they excluded?”

The guy just repeated, “They were excluded.” Then he added, “Maybe you could go to another store and they’d take them.”

“We’ve already done that,” I said impatiently. “Walgreens and Target have GODIVA, but they don’t carry their Signature Bars in dark chocolate. Crappy’s is the only place around here that does.”

That info prompted him to make a phone call. He asked someone(on the other end of the line) to come up and intervene. Then he said, “Uh, yeah, I know you’re busy. But maybe you could explain…Uh-huh…” After he hung up, he announced, “The manager will be right up.”

But no one really wanted to “be right up.”

After more time passed, I brought that reality to his attention. All he could say was, “We’re really busy today.”

PINOCCHIO ALERT: Not really. The store wasn’t THAT busy. Crappy’s was merely operating with a skeleton crew during the noon hour, during the busy holiday shopping season. So employees who did show up for work were either stocking shelves or going on lunch breaks. That was the real reason none of Crappy’s employees could provide customer service by ringing up purchases or resolving concerns like mine.

More puzzling than their lackadaisical customer service, however, was their attitude towards the products Crappy’s had been selling for years around Christmastime. Now that GODIVA had introduced a nationwide promo to increase sales of their chocolates with legitimate incentives of “Extraordinary prizes” and coupons, Crappy’s didn’t want to get involved? As a consumer and faithful store customer, I couldn’t figure it out.

“I don’t understand,” I told the guy. “You’d still be making money if you accepted these coupons.”

He repeated his script, emphasizing GODIVA’S “exclusion.”

It then occurred to me that maybe Crappy’s wasn’t accepting GODIVA coupons because they were already offering discounts on it.

“You know,” I began, “I only would have saved around $5.50 if I could have used these coupons. Couldn’t someone just give me a discount on this?”

“I couldn’t,” he said, “Only managers could do that.”

PINOCCHIO ALERT: Well, not really. Not if the manager didn’t feel like it, anyway. That became apparent when the so-called manager finally showed up. Not only did she put holes in the company’s script through her own contradictions and omissions, she really didn’t know much about her own employer’s M.O. After she came upstairs and began talking, it was obvious she wasn’t a real higher-up with the background and skills that most managers are supposed to have. She was just a “supervisor du jour” — one of those worker bees who gets to play the role of supervisor when the real supervisor gets sick, goes on vacation, doesn’t show up, or DOESN’T WANT TO DEAL WITH CUSTOMERS.

Right away, she echoed the same script that her co-worker had used, almost verbatim. “No, we don’t take coupons. We stopped doing it two years ago…We don’t take these.”

“Well, then, couldn’t you give me a discount on this?” I asked, motioning to my would-be purchases still on the counter.

“No, we don’t do that on excluded merchandise.”

“Why was it excluded?” I asked.

“You’ll have to ask them. They just didn’t want to be included.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Why would they — why would GODIVA — want to do that when they’re promoting themselves the way they’ve been doing and printing all these coupons? Why even print all these manufactures coupons if no one can use them because they’re excluding themselves from all the stores that sell their products? Why would they spend all that money promoting sales when they don’t want Crappy’s to use their coupons?”

When no answer was coming from this faux manager/supervisor, I posed the initial question to her again: “Why can’t you give me a discount?”

Her reply? “We can’t. They don’t want us to.”

“Why?”

“You’ll have to ask them about it. Nike’s is the same way. They don’t want us to do any discounts.”

They don’t? Oh, really?

Then why does Crappy’s have a sign downstairs that lists regular prices, then lists discounted prices that the store will give customers who purchase Godiva chocolates? Wow. Sure sounded like this “supervisor du jour” didn’t know what was going on in the very store she was supposed to be supervising. I would have pointed that out to her, but she kept piling on so much BS in her script I couldn’t get a word in. Anyway, it wouldn’t have made any difference. She clearly cared nothing about my concerns as a customer.

A real manager would have simply told a customer something helpful like this: “I’m sorry about the misunderstanding here. I really don’t know why Crappy’s stopped accepting coupons. But I’d be happy to give you the e-mail addresses and phone numbers of our store manager and corporate office in Wisconsin. Would you like that?”

But she cared so little that when I turned to talk to BFF, she just took off, never to be seen by us again. Not very courteous on her part. Also, not very helpful in terms of customer service.

It’s one thing to show no real interest or offer any tangible help to your customers. It’s quite another, however, to literally not know how your employer’s store operates, then BS customers instead of being honest with them.

Look, retailers don’t have to accept coupons if they don’t want to do so. They have every right to operate in the way they choose. But if stores want to stay in business they must consider the wants and needs of their customers. During this big holiday rush, customers like me want and need CLARITY. We desperately crave consistent, accurate information from retailers so we can navigate the surge as we descend upon stores like Crappy’s to buy stuff.

So how about some signs notifying customers that Crappy’s won’t accept GODIVA coupons? How about making up your mind about whether Crappy’s will offer discounts on GODIVA chocolates? How about making things a little easier for your customers? Without such shopping clarity, time is wasted as we scratch our heads with confusion when we should be buying and increasing your year-end profits.

Oh, I did end up buying some GODIVA chocolates at Crappy’s…but not as much as I’d wanted. Certainly not as much as I’d initially intended to buy. Forget about the coupons. Forget about the discounts. I would have bought more candy and made Crappy’s more money if their employees had been nicer and more helpful to me. They weren’t. So their store lost money that day.

Let me put it another way. If a sign downstairs advertises price discounts for Godiva chocolates, but a manager upstairs insists the store can’t give me discounted prices, that’s NOT clarity. That’s just another death knell for retail.