Show Me The Money!

   Life on the front lines of retail is usually all about dealing with customers.    

   On the other side of the coin, we merchants also have to deal with suppliers who assault us from the rear with missed deadlines, incorrect shipments, false promises, and other ineptitude for which we have to answer to the customer.

   One of our suppliers, a humongous conglomerate, whose name I will not mention for fear of swift retribution, has hit us with a new angle. In addition to supplying business like ours they own a nationwide chain of 700 stores whose name I also will not mention but whose last name is akin to Metropolis and whose first name is something to do with Celebration. So you get the idea that this is a pretty big outfit.

   My wife always mispronounces their name and it sound like some kind of scam. Lately I’ve come to believe she’s right. They require us to prepay our orders by credit card. That’s no problem but what they do with the credit card is. Say we order $500 worth of merchandise. If they’re out of stock on half of it, they still charge $500 plus shipping to our card and hold the balance until our next order. No big deal, right? Well, sometimes we don’t reorder for a couple of months and we sure could use that extra $250. Plus, if they do this to a thousand businesses, that’s $250,000 of our money this mega supplier is collecting interest on.

   I have recently started a campaign against this policy and it seems to have had the desired effect.

   There appears to be only one person there to answer the phone. She’s a very nice lady who must have drawn the short straw and has to deal with every phone call, whether it’s an order, question, or complaint. She must have mixed emotions when she sees us on the caller ID. When my wife, Judy, calls, it’s to place an order. Judy’s always very pleasant and our phone lady is relieved beyond all telling to hear from her. She’s told my wife that she’d much rather deal with her than me. Maybe that’s because I’m not quite as pleasant when I call. A typical call might go like this:

“This is Jim at Riley’s Trick Shop. Where’s my money?”

“You know we’re holding it til you order it again.”

“Yeah, well I’m not gonna order any time soon, if ever. I want it now.”

“We’re good for it. We’ll credit it to your next order.”

“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear. I want MY money back NOW.”

“I’ll see what I can do about getting it credited back to your card.”

“No! I want you to mail me a check. And I want it now.”  

   This forces another drone at the company to write a check, put it in an envelope, stamp it, and get it in the mail. The check usually shows up in a few days because they don’t want to deal with me again. They know I won’t be so pleasant the next time. If every other merchant is making these demands, it adds up to a lot of extra work and expense for our supplier. That puts a dent in the bottom line, which gets the attention of the bean counters, and eventually works its way up to the honchos in the ivory tower.

   They appear to have reconsidered. With great fanfare they recently announced that they are changing their policy and charging us only for merchandise shipped. Woo-hoo!! They’re giving us our money back! How magnanimous. And for that they probably expect to be nominated for some kind of supplier of the year award.

   Don’t get your party hats out just yet.