I'm just trying to understand what about the circumstances would make it difficult to get a refund in the UK. John Lewis offer returns within 35 days for any reason, Hughes 14 days, Tesco 30 days, Sainsburys 30 days, Currys / PC World 21 days, and those are the only ones I've bothered to look at. The Sam's Club policy posted just upthread says just to bring an item in for a refund, and that they prefer a receipt but they'll try and process a return without one. (I can imagine it might be difficult to get a refund once the police started the confrontation, but that wouldn't explain why the confrontation started.) So why would you "be hard pushed to get a retailer to accept a return under the circumstances we see here"?
Dave
I worked at Sam's Club for eleven years as an electronics associate and wireless associate, and then almost three years as a Member Service associate with some marketing duties thrown in, until Jan 2018. I'm literally an expert and trained many people at the selling, and returning, electronics specifically. It was also my 'duty' (it was totally not my responsibility, but I could figure out systems better than the people whose job it actually was) several times to get video evidence off our systems to give to police (my favorite being the several times I pulled video off of the display video surveillance systems to help id people stealing video surveillance systems).
When someone buys a large tv they can't
safely fit in their vehicle (there are times where the box will fit, but on larger sets it's best not to risk torquing them and cracking the screen in the middle), the process is to make a photocopy of the receipt and tape it to the box. The box is put locked in the 'cage' where Club Pickup carts are also stored. I don't know the layout of this club specifically, but it appears they were pointing towards where the 'cage' is in the video before the cops come in. The woman in the green vest is likely the COS (check-out supervisor) who also has duties such as being responsible for the keys to the cage (Member Services like I was tends to have a copy as well, and of course the Club Pickup shopper).
The customer keeps the original receipt and we would make explicitly clear that whoever came in with the original copy of the receipt would be the person we would release the item to. In the case of televisions the receipt matches not only with all the data you'd expect such as register, time, amount, member, but also the serial number of the specific television. This is also on the box. We had a log in the cage with who put a hold cart in, and who took it out when, so if an item was released and someone else came in for the same one later we could track down what happened. My club was especially good at this though (and I'm told we were outstanding at tracking down issues and keeping these policies working, but we were also a small club with the record for longest time without an accident due to staffing being inadequate, but more adequate than elsewhere). It's probably this club was not utilizing this log.
Now I don't know exactly what happened here. Some people would take these processes as personal accusations, especially regular business members. I often had to enforce rules against very angry employees of business members, and often saved the businesses in question a lot of problems with their employees trying to steal from them.
However, that doesn't sound like what was going on here. It doesn't even sound like the normal 'don't you trust me!' trying to pick up mom's tv without the receipt. For whatever reason some associate or just the cop convinced themselves this gentleman was trying to take someone else's tv, despite the process help ensuring that doesn't happen. They might have thought they were trying to get a
second tv with the same receipt. But again, the receipt has the serial number that you match to the copy AND the box, that is in a
locked cage. This or the member taking umbrage at the standard security process and the cop's spurious accusation of theft the first time pissed the member off enough to just want to return the tv. It is possible they let him take the tv without the normal process because the second associate remembered the transaction. I doubt that unless that club is WAY more lax than policy directs.
I could go through the return process (even without the receipt we could use the membership number to pull up enough information to process a return if the physical item is being returned, if we can't find it in system then it either can't be returned, or we make judgement calls that often involved taking back clothing years old and not even from Sam's Club to please some Karen). It doesn't matter though, because they didn't even get that far it looks. The Membership desk isn't in view in the video, so it is possible the TV is already there, but then the argument should be happening at the desk (which could also be in the direction they're pointing) if that were the case.
The members are upset, but I've dealt with way worse
many times. I've seen small old women deal with worse many times. To be fair, the COS seems to be dealing with emotional members pretty well.
Now we're outside my actual expertise, but when the cop instant insists on cuffing the man he done goofed. It's sad that minimum wage Membership desk people and a bit better paid COS can deal with emotional members like that every day, but a cop comes in an he needs cuffs to deal with the upset dude. Sure, I can't hear what upset dude is saying, but if it wasn't enough to get the associates defenses up, it wasn't enough to need cuffs. I've dealt with members who needed cuffed, and no associate would have the posture here if that were the case.
If the associates were trying to eject the members from the club and deny the return for cause, that will come out. If the members were making threats, that will come out. Sam's Club has horrible associate practices and defer to member
to a criminal degree, but that doesn't look to be the case here yet.
I'm provisionally going with an associate or two got it in their heads these people 'must' be scammers and ignored evidence to the contrary (I've had to deal with that a lot in the past too, and clean up from another associate's 'gut feeling'). It's easy enough for such associates/management to steamroll everyone else if no one stands up and say 'no, they're right, policy says do the return'. I've also been the one refusing to process what I found to be a clearly bad-faith return (missing parts or an out-of-date associate return usually, and I didn't want my numbers on the return record). If that isn't the case, it will be trivial to show. The documentation that Sam's Club has would have falsified many of the assertions of these member if those assertions were in fact not true, so I'm going with everything up to the cop coming in and trying to cuff the guy as being as stated by the members.
