I was standing in the check-out line of a locally owned outdoor store when the person ahead of me walked up to the cashier and announced…

“Nordstrom sells this jacket for $139.  I’d like you to match their price.”

The cashier responds…  “we’d be happy to match their price – except that I don’t think they sell this particular product”.

The cashier then goes on to ask “why didn’t you buy it there?”

The customer responds “because they didn’t have my size”.

I couldn’t believe the nerve of the customer asking a store to match a competitors price on a product that the competitor is actually unable to sell (because they don’t have it).

I fully expected the cashier to decline to match the price based on the customers own admission that she couldn’t have actually bought one.

Instead, the cashier picked up the phone and called Nordstrom.  After waiting on hold for a while, the cashier learned that she was right initially – Nordstrom didn’t even sell the same jacket.  (They look similar, but have different features.  The outdoor store predictably sold a better version).

Did it end there?

No.

The customer became insistent that the jackets looked exactly the same and thus the price should be the same.

After some extended discussion the customer became increasingly obnoxious.  The cashier relented.  The customer left with a better jacket than she came in for at a lower price.

I wanted to slap them both.

Attention retailers… don’t get bullied by unreasonable customers whose twisted, idiotic logic causes them to stretch the meaning of your policies in absurd ways.

Marc Bluestone