Corporate Meanness
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Update: 01/31/05 Having seen nothing yet of my refund from the L.A. Times, I called the number from the Sunday Times ad, and then the 2nd number that they referred me to, and finally spoke with a rep who assured me that my non-subscription as detailed below would finally be refunded to my credit card. We'll see...
Every year for some time, I anticipate the holidays for one major reason: C H O C O L A T E
Sometimes the local SavOn drugstores dump huge amounts of Reeces and Nestle and Hersheys, etc. at 25 cents on the $. It varies from store to store and year to year. This year the local barrio Stater Bros. made my day, putting everything out there at $0.99, including the 22 oz. bags. I generally can't afford to spend retail on this wonderful stuff, as retail is more than steak, or even fish, even for the bagged chocolates, much less the boxes. But I check for garbage like Palm oil or coconut oil or partially hydrogenated fats. Brachs and Palmers brands seem to be invariably larded up with the unhealthy junk. The best stuff, both health and tastewise is the almond chocolate candies.
My general secret in living cheap is to buy ahead. Chocolate lasts just fine for at least a year, so I stock up for the coming year for myself, and for any parties or events where I may want to bribe people. Anyway, this year I bought 25 pounds at Stater Bros., cleaning them out of the best-buy large bags.
Then I went to the Albersons at Bristol and Dyer in Santa Ana, where they have, in previous years, usually had even better deals than the above. Last year, during the nationwide strike, they had a LOT of candy left over, and so I braved the picket lines - and gave the picketers several bags of chocolates to share as I left. This year was different.
It started out reasonably OK. Everything was 1/2 off. And, again, they had a LOT of candy and ornaments, wrapping paper, etc. So I bought a few choice items and left, assured by the store personnel manning the aisles that the price would likely drop in a day or two. I had my eye on the large quantity of Nestle almond chocolate as well as the Hershies almond kisses. However, on the 2nd day of checking back, I ran into a no-nonsense, hard-nosed, utterly unsmiling lady manager, who assured me in Scroogelike tones that seemed to me to indicate that I was not Albertsons' preferred type of customer, that it would be a week more before the price fell any further.
This was disheartening, as I didn't know whether to believe her or the previous info. That meant I would have to waste my time repeatedly checking back. As I was about to leave the store, I was hailed by a couple of guys standing behind a little podium. They offered to sell me 20 weeks of the "L.A. Times" for $20. What a deal. Unfortunately, in my neighborhood, I have never been able to get the paper, as it is invariably stolen off my front landing, except in the case that it is hurled like an incoming scud missile against my door at 5 AM, thereby depriving me of $10 worth of sleep, which is not such a deal any price. However, the salesman assured me that I would be given a lock box to take care of that problem.
Even so, despite liking the "Times" overall, I have had several universally bad prior experiences with subscriptions, such as a jerk "Times" phone salesman some years back who would call me repeatedly at all hours of the night, insult me gratuitously, and make it clear that this harrassment would continue until I signed up. Finally I did, and simply ignored the bill, after which the calls stopped.
So then the Albertson's-based salesman delivers the kicker. He is going to GIVE ME a $20 gift certificate for Albertsons if I subscribe. By then I was starting to come down with the nasty little cold that made life miserable for the next several days, and my head was spinning, so I figured, what the heck, it's Christmas, make the guy happy. When I looked at the receipt, later, however, I discovered that the $20 had now become $40 - i.e., $20 subscription plus a $20 gift certificate that I had to use at Albertsons. Oh, well, the "Times" wins again on sleaze. I figured I would spend it on chocolate anyway within the week.
Meanwhile, I stopped by one other Albertsons later that day, which had much less candy, and thus few hopes for deep price cuts. I did ask about the flowers. At the first Albertsons, the small 4-inch box Poinsettias were cut to $0.50. The lady at the 2nd store said she would match that, but I was just curious about pricing policy.
\When I asked her about the candy prices, her face suddenly got grim. That would depend, she informed me on the decision of the SCAB!!! (pronounced with a twist of the mouth as if suddenly haven bitten into a bug in a candy) manager in charge of that. Oh.
THAT's interesting...
Back at the first store on Bristol I discovered on Monday afternoon a week later, straight from work, that indeed the prices had been cut. However, there were no pricing signs, so I asked a passing manager and she assured me that the price was $0.99. Great! A lot of the preferred items were gone, such as the almond candy, which had been there the day before. 99% of the candy had sat there all week unsold, costing Albertsons precious store shelf for no sales to speak of. So, my favorite candy was gone as of Monday, without benefitting Albertsons in the least, and having cost me several useless stops. They could have sold it just as easilly the week before at that price and freed up the shelves, and I would have had my almond chocolate.
So, I rummaged through the 15 or more shopping carts full of the leftovers from the buying frenzy I had already missed while at work, and found a number of 22 oz. bags with about 20 minutes of work. Some of them had $1.99 written on the back with a Majik Marker, but I trusted the manager's word. Still, I specifically asked the checkout clerk to flag anything that didn't come up as $0.99.
She informed me that the bags were priced as marked, despite what anyone had told me. So, I had her take all the non-$0.99 bags off the bill, while a crowd of unhappy shoppers waited behind me, mostly for the delay, however, as the computer went through gigabytes of processing to verify my three $5 Albertsons gift certificates, which also required two verifications each from me as well as a special procedure that had to be called up on screen separately for each $5 certificate. All told, I spent about $13 of my "gift" certificates, and wasted probably $10 of my time, and $30 of the time of the unlucky customers behind me in line.
Since there was still a HUGE amount of candy sitting unsold, I came back on Tuesday and Wednesday, with no appreciable change in the candy carts and today, when I discovered that ALL the candy was now gone. I was informed it "had been donated." No info available on to whom. I had bought a couple more of the small 12oz. bags on Tuesday, and while I was paying, the clerk who had served me the day before made a point of describing loudly to her manager how I - not their idiotic certificate handling software to be sure, had held everyone up the day before, casting hateful glances my way for emphasis, and to make sure that I was hearing her.
So much for patronizing Albertsons. I figure that the nasty, incredibly long strike, and the nasty attitude of management - who "won" the strike - is paying nasty dividends now and for the foreseeable future, now impacting the customers. Somehow I will have to spend the remaining $5.50 of my "gift" certificates, but if Albertsons is expecting my additional future patronage, forget that.
Not that Stater Bros. comes off like a rose either. The candy was a nice deal, for sure. However, I used to be able to stock up every week on near-dated or out-dated food from Stater Bros. Quart containers of yogurt would be discounted to $.99 and apparently the local Hispanics don't go much for egg nog, as I could always buy it really cheap during the holidays, along with buttermilk year round.
Those days are gone. For the past year or so, none of that stuff - or the packaged meats - has been discounted. I assumed that it must be bought up by local homeless charities or the $.99 discount stores, but last night I finally got an answer from a store employee, who informed me that they have some kind of product return policy going on with the suppliers now.
Great. So now the merchandise - still perfectly edible (yogurt will actually keep for MONTHs past the due date) - is either thrown away or jobbed out to unknown discount operations. Either way, it's probably resulting in a net cost to the Stater Bros. customers. Nothing is free. Certainly not my patronage.
While I still like Stater Bros. prices overall, I find that I'm buying most of my food now at the 99-cent store. Same products as a regular grocery, just a lot cheaper, and slightly older. Big deal. However, if enough customers are like me, then more and more out-of-date or near-dated merchandise is going to end up being jobbed to discount outlets like 99-Cent, and this means both my having to shop two places - as 99-Cent rarely has good produce - and more lost income for the grocery stores who go this route. About all I'm buying at Stater Bros. now is the fruit, where their prices are nearly competitive with Food-For-Less, but with better quality and I don't have to put up with the pig-sty conditions at the two nearest barrio-based Food-For-Less outlets on Bristol, nor deal with unfriendly non-English-speaking clerks.
The thing that bugs me is not the honest attempt to cut costs and increase profits, which all of us should applaud, but the kind of mean-spirited hostility to the price-conscious customer which I ran into at Albersons. Like so many of us nowadays, I depend upon my being able to find bargains in order to get by on a fixed salary (which was even cut a couple years back). Eliminating the opportunitys for discounts at the grocery stores will not change my priorities. It will simply force me to find cheaper sources, meaning lost time for me, and lost $$$ for the groceries.
And I have yet to see an issue of the L.A. Times, but my bank account has been debited $40, for sure - and my bank told me politely that I was a fool to let those guys have my debit card number, as the bank does not necessarily write off theft thereby on the card that they mailed me, unrequested. It almost turns me off chocolate altogether. Almost....
Update: 01/11/05 I talked with the L.A. Times subscription people today - having still not received a single paper. This time they did not hang up on my and they assured me that there were no lock boxes provided by the Times and, after hearing my story, agreed to refund my money. Now we'll see if my carrier can get the check to me, or will she - more typically for her - deliver it to a random neighbor.
Update: 01/20/05 Got a call at work from someone - I think one of the guys who took my $40 - asking if everything was ok with my subscription, in response to which I explained that I was getting a refund, as I had not seen a single paper, etc. No checks in the mail as yet, however.
Every year for some time, I anticipate the holidays for one major reason: C H O C O L A T E
Sometimes the local SavOn drugstores dump huge amounts of Reeces and Nestle and Hersheys, etc. at 25 cents on the $. It varies from store to store and year to year. This year the local barrio Stater Bros. made my day, putting everything out there at $0.99, including the 22 oz. bags. I generally can't afford to spend retail on this wonderful stuff, as retail is more than steak, or even fish, even for the bagged chocolates, much less the boxes. But I check for garbage like Palm oil or coconut oil or partially hydrogenated fats. Brachs and Palmers brands seem to be invariably larded up with the unhealthy junk. The best stuff, both health and tastewise is the almond chocolate candies.
My general secret in living cheap is to buy ahead. Chocolate lasts just fine for at least a year, so I stock up for the coming year for myself, and for any parties or events where I may want to bribe people. Anyway, this year I bought 25 pounds at Stater Bros., cleaning them out of the best-buy large bags.
Then I went to the Albersons at Bristol and Dyer in Santa Ana, where they have, in previous years, usually had even better deals than the above. Last year, during the nationwide strike, they had a LOT of candy left over, and so I braved the picket lines - and gave the picketers several bags of chocolates to share as I left. This year was different.
It started out reasonably OK. Everything was 1/2 off. And, again, they had a LOT of candy and ornaments, wrapping paper, etc. So I bought a few choice items and left, assured by the store personnel manning the aisles that the price would likely drop in a day or two. I had my eye on the large quantity of Nestle almond chocolate as well as the Hershies almond kisses. However, on the 2nd day of checking back, I ran into a no-nonsense, hard-nosed, utterly unsmiling lady manager, who assured me in Scroogelike tones that seemed to me to indicate that I was not Albertsons' preferred type of customer, that it would be a week more before the price fell any further.
This was disheartening, as I didn't know whether to believe her or the previous info. That meant I would have to waste my time repeatedly checking back. As I was about to leave the store, I was hailed by a couple of guys standing behind a little podium. They offered to sell me 20 weeks of the "L.A. Times" for $20. What a deal. Unfortunately, in my neighborhood, I have never been able to get the paper, as it is invariably stolen off my front landing, except in the case that it is hurled like an incoming scud missile against my door at 5 AM, thereby depriving me of $10 worth of sleep, which is not such a deal any price. However, the salesman assured me that I would be given a lock box to take care of that problem.
Even so, despite liking the "Times" overall, I have had several universally bad prior experiences with subscriptions, such as a jerk "Times" phone salesman some years back who would call me repeatedly at all hours of the night, insult me gratuitously, and make it clear that this harrassment would continue until I signed up. Finally I did, and simply ignored the bill, after which the calls stopped.
So then the Albertson's-based salesman delivers the kicker. He is going to GIVE ME a $20 gift certificate for Albertsons if I subscribe. By then I was starting to come down with the nasty little cold that made life miserable for the next several days, and my head was spinning, so I figured, what the heck, it's Christmas, make the guy happy. When I looked at the receipt, later, however, I discovered that the $20 had now become $40 - i.e., $20 subscription plus a $20 gift certificate that I had to use at Albertsons. Oh, well, the "Times" wins again on sleaze. I figured I would spend it on chocolate anyway within the week.
Meanwhile, I stopped by one other Albertsons later that day, which had much less candy, and thus few hopes for deep price cuts. I did ask about the flowers. At the first Albertsons, the small 4-inch box Poinsettias were cut to $0.50. The lady at the 2nd store said she would match that, but I was just curious about pricing policy.
\When I asked her about the candy prices, her face suddenly got grim. That would depend, she informed me on the decision of the SCAB!!! (pronounced with a twist of the mouth as if suddenly haven bitten into a bug in a candy) manager in charge of that. Oh.
THAT's interesting...
Back at the first store on Bristol I discovered on Monday afternoon a week later, straight from work, that indeed the prices had been cut. However, there were no pricing signs, so I asked a passing manager and she assured me that the price was $0.99. Great! A lot of the preferred items were gone, such as the almond candy, which had been there the day before. 99% of the candy had sat there all week unsold, costing Albertsons precious store shelf for no sales to speak of. So, my favorite candy was gone as of Monday, without benefitting Albertsons in the least, and having cost me several useless stops. They could have sold it just as easilly the week before at that price and freed up the shelves, and I would have had my almond chocolate.
So, I rummaged through the 15 or more shopping carts full of the leftovers from the buying frenzy I had already missed while at work, and found a number of 22 oz. bags with about 20 minutes of work. Some of them had $1.99 written on the back with a Majik Marker, but I trusted the manager's word. Still, I specifically asked the checkout clerk to flag anything that didn't come up as $0.99.
She informed me that the bags were priced as marked, despite what anyone had told me. So, I had her take all the non-$0.99 bags off the bill, while a crowd of unhappy shoppers waited behind me, mostly for the delay, however, as the computer went through gigabytes of processing to verify my three $5 Albertsons gift certificates, which also required two verifications each from me as well as a special procedure that had to be called up on screen separately for each $5 certificate. All told, I spent about $13 of my "gift" certificates, and wasted probably $10 of my time, and $30 of the time of the unlucky customers behind me in line.
Since there was still a HUGE amount of candy sitting unsold, I came back on Tuesday and Wednesday, with no appreciable change in the candy carts and today, when I discovered that ALL the candy was now gone. I was informed it "had been donated." No info available on to whom. I had bought a couple more of the small 12oz. bags on Tuesday, and while I was paying, the clerk who had served me the day before made a point of describing loudly to her manager how I - not their idiotic certificate handling software to be sure, had held everyone up the day before, casting hateful glances my way for emphasis, and to make sure that I was hearing her.
So much for patronizing Albertsons. I figure that the nasty, incredibly long strike, and the nasty attitude of management - who "won" the strike - is paying nasty dividends now and for the foreseeable future, now impacting the customers. Somehow I will have to spend the remaining $5.50 of my "gift" certificates, but if Albertsons is expecting my additional future patronage, forget that.
Not that Stater Bros. comes off like a rose either. The candy was a nice deal, for sure. However, I used to be able to stock up every week on near-dated or out-dated food from Stater Bros. Quart containers of yogurt would be discounted to $.99 and apparently the local Hispanics don't go much for egg nog, as I could always buy it really cheap during the holidays, along with buttermilk year round.
Those days are gone. For the past year or so, none of that stuff - or the packaged meats - has been discounted. I assumed that it must be bought up by local homeless charities or the $.99 discount stores, but last night I finally got an answer from a store employee, who informed me that they have some kind of product return policy going on with the suppliers now.
Great. So now the merchandise - still perfectly edible (yogurt will actually keep for MONTHs past the due date) - is either thrown away or jobbed out to unknown discount operations. Either way, it's probably resulting in a net cost to the Stater Bros. customers. Nothing is free. Certainly not my patronage.
While I still like Stater Bros. prices overall, I find that I'm buying most of my food now at the 99-cent store. Same products as a regular grocery, just a lot cheaper, and slightly older. Big deal. However, if enough customers are like me, then more and more out-of-date or near-dated merchandise is going to end up being jobbed to discount outlets like 99-Cent, and this means both my having to shop two places - as 99-Cent rarely has good produce - and more lost income for the grocery stores who go this route. About all I'm buying at Stater Bros. now is the fruit, where their prices are nearly competitive with Food-For-Less, but with better quality and I don't have to put up with the pig-sty conditions at the two nearest barrio-based Food-For-Less outlets on Bristol, nor deal with unfriendly non-English-speaking clerks.
The thing that bugs me is not the honest attempt to cut costs and increase profits, which all of us should applaud, but the kind of mean-spirited hostility to the price-conscious customer which I ran into at Albersons. Like so many of us nowadays, I depend upon my being able to find bargains in order to get by on a fixed salary (which was even cut a couple years back). Eliminating the opportunitys for discounts at the grocery stores will not change my priorities. It will simply force me to find cheaper sources, meaning lost time for me, and lost $$$ for the groceries.
And I have yet to see an issue of the L.A. Times, but my bank account has been debited $40, for sure - and my bank told me politely that I was a fool to let those guys have my debit card number, as the bank does not necessarily write off theft thereby on the card that they mailed me, unrequested. It almost turns me off chocolate altogether. Almost....
Update: 01/11/05 I talked with the L.A. Times subscription people today - having still not received a single paper. This time they did not hang up on my and they assured me that there were no lock boxes provided by the Times and, after hearing my story, agreed to refund my money. Now we'll see if my carrier can get the check to me, or will she - more typically for her - deliver it to a random neighbor.
Update: 01/20/05 Got a call at work from someone - I think one of the guys who took my $40 - asking if everything was ok with my subscription, in response to which I explained that I was getting a refund, as I had not seen a single paper, etc. No checks in the mail as yet, however.
ierced ears, plastic surgury and since at least the 60s young women give their precious virginity away. For thousands of years young people were matched at age 14 because they were ready for sexual relations. They were matched by elders or matchmakers who were granted priveledge with Artificial Intelligence and matched couples based on favor.