Thursday, February 3, 2011

True Story

Main Character: Me (Jill)
Setting: Scolari's, Wednesday at 7:30 pm
Story:
With coupons as my shopping list I grab a cart. I peer over to the checkstands to see who my checker will be. A young girl--probably okay. I grab my 3 packs of meat, a box of brownie mix, 3 boxes of cereal, 3 bags of Chex Mix, 3 packages of Buitoni,
3 boxes of Hefty baggies and milk. The club prices should add up to over $50 so I can use my $5 off of $50 coupon and then I'll give coupons. It worked before. Sure enough, things were going fine. The $5 coupon came off just fine and then I handed my stack of coupons to be doubled, hopefully to get the Buitoni, the Chex Mix, and the baggies for free. Yeah!
And then things went sour. The checker (we'll call her T) glanced at the bagger (we'll call him R) and nodded for him to come over. They grabbed a calculator and slowly began flipping through my coupons. They pulled out the register tape and looked at item #1, cereal. They held a mini-conference and at last surfaced from their collaberation to have T scan the coupon and double it. Cereal. $0.99. Then they went to work again. . .
I think--"Hello? I'm standing right here. You could certainly say something to me." So I ask, "Is something wrong?"
R says, very snottily, "Some people have been using counterfeit coupons to totally scam us."
"Counterfeit?" I question.
R replies, "Well, not counterfeit, but some people are ripping us off. They're trying to get us to double the coupons so we pay them money."
I think--"You don't just mean 'some people' You mean me, because I totally want those products for free. That's why I'm here tonight."
I say--"What do you mean?"
Anyway, T calls up the manager who says, "We cannot pay you a penny when we double a coupon. We are losing money LEFT and RIGHT.'
I think--"You're the ones who offer to double coupons. Plus, how can you be losing money when your regular prices are astronomical and I see people paying that?"
I say--"Okay."
I then say that I don't want those items I intended to get free, thus proving to T and R that I was indeed one of those 'people' who was trying to scam them.
I quickly paid my balance for the remaining items and left. As I did the walk of shame to the exit I did not think, "Scolari's--I'm special everday." I thought, "Scolari's where you're treated like a thief."
I doubled checked the coupon policy when I get home and it does say that they won't double the coupons if they go into overrage. Fine, I get that. But would it have been so hard for T, upon seeing I had coupons, to say, "I just want you to know that if you have any coupons that will exceed the price of the item when doubled, we will only accept them at face value," rather than secretly discuss the prices of items and then accuse me of being a scammer and thief.

Moral of the story: Scolari's days of freebies are over and unless you want a public hand-slapping I would encourage you to not try this at your local Scolari's.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jill,

I was there after you...and told that they had a lady trying to rip them off...I guess you..and there were people losing their jobs over takng fake coupons...He then went on to double my coupons for the hefty ziplocs, makng them free. But he did treat me pretty poorly for using coupons in their store. I am going to call them and complain actually..they should either change their own policy about doubling coupons or be polite about taking them. Thanks, Kathy

Brandi said...

I think there are several of us that this has happened to at the Scolari's on Disc. They were completely rude and even the manager came out of his office yelling and being defensive... completely rude and unprofessional.

Anonymous said...

Ditto the above comments. They either need to be courteous or stop promoting that they double coupons! Or perhaps change the promotionals to state that they double coupons but only after making you feel like junk.