So out of curiosity I decided to inquire further into Banana Republic’s price protection procedure as it just seems rather silly and makes me wonder what they are thinking. So as a memory refresher, I brought my receipt back to the store in hopes to get a simple price protection due to a sale price where the manger insisted that you have to actually bring all the items back to process it. So I emailed the official customer support site and at first they stated the following:
“We do offer a one-time price adjustment as a courtesy to our customers for items marked-down within 7 days of the original date of purchase at any Banana Republic. In order to receive a price adjustment, only the original sales receipt must be presented at the Banana Republic. To remain fair and consistent to all customers, we have made a company decision to adhere to the terms of the 7 day time limit at every level of our organization.”
Okay, now that makes perfect sense and is exactly how I thought it should be. Basically, if the price drops all you need to do is bring back your receipt within the indicated time period and they will credit you accordingly. As well, this would imply the person at the store was dead wrong about how the product has to be unused for the item to qualify for a price adjustment. Then they indicated another line which stated the following:
“However this is only if the posted selling price goes to a lower price than when you originally purchased. If the new price is because of a new promotion that started since your purchase, you would need the item and the receipt present. At that point the associate would have to return the product and repurchase it with the new promotional sale that is going on. We apologize our registers do no have the ability to perform promotion adjustments. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.”
Now that point about returning and reselling is exactly what most stores do when they need to adjust the price for a product. I even mentioned that to the guy about this too and how it shouldn’t be that difficult. The only reason why you would ever need say the original product due to technical issues are things like a upc code. But that is why you have all that information on the receipt.
It makes me think about efficiency when people create systems and procedures for a business. In this case, it just seems like an unnecessary tedious step that costs the company more time in labor and like in my case a loss of sale. Don’t just spend all that time any money on ways to try and get the sale for your business. With this example you need to invest time and money in making sure you maintain the sale as well. The customer experience doesn’t just end when the sale is made.