Oct 07
4
KMart: Our Disorganized Stores Make You a Thief
Here is a ridiculous story that appeared in the WSJ. This woman was shopping at a KMart in Bridgehampton, NY with her family looking at flip-flops, among other things. Per the account in the article, the area with the flip-flops were a mess, with some in boxes, some not, some not in the right boxes. She goes through and finally finds her size, but since they weren’t in a box she searched through the mess to find the box. She finally finds a box with the right size marked she assumes is the right one, puts the flip-flops in the box, and proceeds to checkout.
She checks out with the flip-flops and is walking through the exit when she gets the tap on the shoulder from the loss prevention associate for the store. Apparently the box she put the flip-flops in was not the right box, and she had accidentally short changed the store a whopping $8.00. Instead of allowing her to pay the difference for the honest mistake, they detain her for over an hour accusing her of shoplifting. Apparently they thought she was doing a shoplifting scam where tags or boxes or switched to get high priced goods at the price of a lower priced item.
The long and short is that she was finally allowed to leave, but not before being banned from KMart. She sent a letter to the KMart Director of Loss Prevention, who backed up his employee claiming that they did nothing wrong.
The saddest part of this is they didn’t even let her keep the flip-flops! They ended up processing a return for the flip-flops refunding her money for the lower price paid.
Keep that story in mind the next time you are considering buying something from a poorly organized store where you aren’t sure what is the right box.
