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Coupon Disaster!
Yesterday morning I diligently made my grocery list. First, I wrote down the items we had to have. Then I went through the sales flyer for Food Lion and chose the items we would be getting for the coming week. Then I went through my coupons. I had four or five that matched with what I wanted to purchase this week. Two were particularly good. We don't buy ice cream too often (don't need it and it is more and more expensive all the time). But the store was running a special on Breyer's - buy one get one free, and I had received a 2.00 off coupon in my email from the grocery store. So two things of awesome ice cream for 3.00, that's a deal! I also had received a coupon in my email from Food Lion where I could buy 15 cans of DelMonte products and get 5.00 off. Another excellent deal.
Went to the grocery store and bought all that we needed and even treated ourself to an extra two containers of Breyer's (after all 8.00 for 4 containers of ice cream is a very accepatable deal). We got up to the register and I laid down my coupons. While I was unloading the groceries, I noticed that the clerk was looking at my coupons. A bit odd, since they usually don't pay them any attention until they have run everything up. Then I noticed an assistant manager came over and looked at them. Since I knew they were legitimate coupons, I figured the clerk was new and they would check them and say, 'yep, these are fine.' I mean after all, the Food Lion company sent them to me in my email box. I printed them out. They are legitimate.
Anyway...next here comes the manager. He gets a piece of paper and starts writing something down. I turn to him and ask what the problem is. He tells me he can't accept the coupons and he is writing the information down from them to figure out where they came from. I tell him these coupons were sent to me from the company and that I have been getting coupons like them every week for months and using them without problem. He says they can't find out where I got the coupons from and he is sorry, but he can't accept them.
At this point, all of my groceries have been processed and bagged. I am not a happy camper and I tell them, they will need to unload the cart and the things that I had coupons for would be staying (I am so proud of the children for not pitching a fit about the ice cream). I wouldn't have bought these items today without the coupons. They weren't things I needed right then and I wasn't sure I would have the money to cover the bill without the coupons. Plus I was more than a bit miffed! Instead of just taking off the 19 items that I no longer wanted, they voided the transaction and then rerung all of the groceries. Needless to say the people in line behind me weren't very happy either.
Before leaving I went to the manager and told him I would like an email where I could forward my email that I get from the company so they could see these were legitimate coupons. He gave me the email address of someone in the corporate loss recovery department.
I emailed her this morning when my email for this week arrived. She just emailed me back and assured me that they were indeed legitimate coupons and she apologized for the inconvenience. And she hoped I would continue to shop at their store. Did she offer to replace my expired coupon with some kind of gift certificate? Heck no...HMPH! They did return the coupons to me and the one for the canned goods is good for another couple of weeks. But the ice cream one expired yesterday and the buy one get one free sale is done too. HMPH!
I can feel your pain! How mortifying! Wishing you a nice pint of icecream goodness real soon!
February 6, 2008 12:04 PMI'd be making a big fuss I'll tell you. I'd be on the phone with the store manager and then the corporate headquarters until I got that darned ice cream for free. That's ridiculous that they turned away perfectly valid coupons. Have you spoken with your store manager since receiving the confirming email? Don't let this pass!
February 6, 2008 12:37 PMI would DEFINITELY talk to corporate again and insist they do a little more than give you a gift certificate to replace the coupons. I also believe an honest apology and explanation from the store manager is in order. I would be talking to people higher and higher up until I was satisfied. I realized you don't want to take advantage of Food Lion, but I also believe they should extend good will efforts to you. That would have been quite humiliating, and I would not be shopping there again unless the situation was completely rectified.
Meanwhile, what's changed to make the manager accept the coupons next time??
February 6, 2008 12:47 PMWell you know me. I'd take the emails in, and insist they honor the coupons - it's their fault not yours.
But, like I said - you know me.
I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS HAPPENED. PLEASE ACCEPT MY SYMPATHY TO YOU FOR WHAT YOU & KIDS WENT THRU.
SINCERELY,
TAMMY, MOM OF DD BRANDEE 8 YRS OLD
Girl,
You are better than me because forget the manager, I would cause a stink with corporate and I will be writing letters to columns about how they treated me and I would tell others what happened! And to be honest with you, I don't think that I would go shop at THAT particular store anymore or for a while anyway.
I would have written another letter of complaint - very loudly that was incredible the way they treated you - an apology with a gift certificate is in order in my opinion.
How embarrassing too.
said:
I want to say thanks to everyone who has voiced their support of me and given me suggestions on how to handle the situation. I am not a confrontational person by nature. Also, after years of good experiences at this store, I am not ready to make a big deal over this. My plan is when we go shopping next week, I will speak with the manager. I will show him the coupons, speak to him of the email I received and if he offers some sort of apology/compensation, great. (He was very apologetic when the incident occured, but unwilling to take the coupons due to a rash of counterfeit coupons in the area in recent days). If he doesn't, I am not going to insist that he does. To me that is kind of like when you have to remind someone to say thank you - it loses its meaning.
Should this incident occur again, I will take more 'drastic' measures. And contact the corporate office and so forth. He should have known about these coupons. The girl from loss recovery that he was speaking on the phone with should have known. But we are all human and under stress, we are prone to make mistakes. So I shall give them the benefit of the doubt.
February 7, 2008 8:41 AM
