Terry
broke a store’s computer system today.
The
full story is much longer than I’m going to detail, but the idea
that she needed to have some pictures printed covers it. By some,
I mean a lot. Multiple orders. Multiple days. Thousands of pictures.
A
store nearby had a great price, so that’s where we went, and lo
and behold, all of the information programmed into the registers
was never designed for that many pictures to be requested. (One
of the staff members helping us out on one of the days we stopped
in told me that Terry had topped the largest one-stop order he’d
ever seen by more than eight hundred prints.)
So,
she wanted a lot of pictures. I had placed two orders on one day.
Had one amount in my mind when I walked in to pick both up, and
it was a rough total because I wasn’t sure of the exact amount
taxes would create. But this was the largest order so far. And
to get it to work on the register, they had to break both orders
down further into multiple entries, and even then had to run those
entries as separate transactions.
Funny
thing, it wasn’t like they just cut the bill in half. They didn’t
ring each order up on its own. They didn’t use what you would
expect to see as numbers that even remotely resembled the charges
on the receipts from the orders I placed. It was more like:
You
ordered $48.50 and $27.90 in pictures. To pay for that, please
give us $17.92, $12, $29.37 and $17.11. Will you be using cash
or card?
This
essay’s about trust.
For
the pictures, I never really doubted we’d work it out. I knew
the cashiers weren’t trying to take advantage of me. They were
simply sorting it out and trying to do so in a way that both worked
as settlement for the purchase while not frustrating me. It happens.
Not a problem.
But
what happens when it is?
I
absolutely hate making large purchases for the home. Not always.
But in general. If you find a difference in a cost that favors
one store over another, you often find that delivery charges equalize
the final total. It’s like a magic trick. One has a lower cost
for the dishwasher, but then there’s delivery and installation
and taking away the old dishwasher. Oh, and if you want the warranty
to be valid, the installation must come from that store’s highly
trained team of certified installers.
(Wave
wand, pull two estimates out of a hat) Even with a difference
of one-hundred dollars or more for the washer, you get two estimates
with exactly the same amount on total due line. (It’s magic!)
Now,
let’s step to the side for a moment. I have no issues with the
charges in general. If you want to tell me that a purchased-from-us
dishwasher needs to be installed by a purchased-from-us representative,
and I want the purchased-from-us brand and no other, then I follow
the idea that I’m accepting such conditions.
What
I don’t like is when it seems like things are being hidden. Such
as, not from any true experience but just off the top of my head,
oh, say, a new power cord or water hoses. When it is explained
you need new ones, it makes sense, but it almost always seems
to be an extra twenty-dollars here and forty-dollars there and
a charge to take the old one away and suddenly the great deal
doesn’t add up as such a great deal when the time comes to settle
the bill.
Want
a better example? Ok… airline tickets. You want round trip, so
do they give you round trip? Nope. Not really. The web site shows
multiple options for picking two one-way segments, so you can
select a departure and a return, each with a separate cost associated
with it. Then we move along to seat selection, boarding preferences,
carry on fees, checked luggage charges (and even the luggage charges
can be broken down into first bag and second bag and additional
bag amounts). There never seems to be any way that what you believed
you were getting as you went through the purchase process could
possibly add up to the cost you are presented when you reach the
point where you are going to finalize your order. (And good luck
getting a beverage and a snack.)
Ugh.
There
used to be an old joke about the people that championed the ways
for always getting the very best deals. When I was a kid it involved
coupons, and these days I suppose the equivalent would be shopping
online with promotional discount codes. The idea is simple enough,
there is always a deal to be found. Discount champions though,
they never pay full price. The trouble was, if you were looking
for orange juice, occasionally being a champion meant you needed
to drink grapefruit juice as an alternative.
In
the end, there is a really simple concept that we all need to
understand. If you’re the one responsible for ordering what you
wanted, then it’s up to you to make sure you get what you expected.
I
think we need a return of those great public service announcements
from my youth. When in doubt, listen to Magnolia the Ostrich and
the Abominable Snowman: “Always count your change.”