Staples: Three Strikes in a Single Transaction

This one happened a long time ago — maybe 15 years –  but to me, it’s like it happened yesterday.

We purchased a printing calculator from a Staples store — they were known as Business Depot back then — east of Toronto.    It was $49.95 with a sign advertising a rebate of $15; bringing the cost down to $34.95; although you pay tax at the higher price.

From the beginning Staples knew there was a problem.   The same sign was hanging in every one of their stores, but there was no rebate available on that item and no correction notice was posted or published in the newspaper. The manager of the store we visited was on the phone to another store, and clearly the signage was wrong.

We only bought the thing because we wanted it for the $34.95 price, and so, after much deliberation, they decided to give us $15 in store gift certificates.   We didn’t have money to do a lot of spending back then, nor was there a local outlet; but eventually we found our way back to the store with a list of needs and took our purchase to the cash register with the gift certificates.

The Staples adjustment was not to be.

They sent us a $10 gift certificate and a $5 gift certificate and their policy back then was that you could only use one certificate on one purchase; and the items we selected could not be split between my wife and I in such a way as to render the $10 certificate useful. So we only got $10 back that day.

We had no money for impulse purchases back then, and no desire to simply spend the certificate on things we didn’t need; even if it was only $5.   That amount was a big deal to us 15 years ago, because we had nothing.

About a month later though, we did need a few more things and we went back and collected our purchases and presented the smaller, $5 gift certificate.

They would not accept it.

They said it had expired, something that is actually illegal now in most Canadian jurisdictions.    We said it wasn’t really a gift certificate but an adjustment on a previous error, and showed them clearly that the “sender” was their own head office.

They still refused.

I took it up with their head office a couple of times over the next few weeks, but eventually realized that, although my overall average was good, this was a fight I was not going to win.

Our financial situation changed in the intervening years and we purchased several computers and much more office equipment for our business, but never from them.   I’d estimate their $5 blunder probably cost them about $5,000 in lost business.   (And I can say that with confidence, because even more recently; having let bygones be bygones — but for this blog post — our family has spent about that much with them over the last two years alone.)

They finally opened a store here in our smaller town.   To celebrate the opening, they sent our business a coupon redeemable for a welcome package.    I took it to the store a few days after it arrived.

They showed me the fine print where it had expired — actually it had expired before I first laid eyes on it.

Although, as I mentioned, my wife and kids have allowed them to sell us a whack of stuff lately, I still give as much business as possible to the local computer guys who aren’t part of national chains like Staples.      Who needs that attitude?