Many big chain stores in Canada has price guarantee. If something you had purchased is on sales in the next two weeks, you take can get price difference with receipt. Don’t be fooled by the two weeks only price guarantee period and thought you can’t get your money back after two weeks. Most stores also has a 90 days refund period. If the item is on sales in the next 90 days, you can always refund any unused, unopened item in original box with receipt.
Now You may ask how can you refund something if it is already opened, used and even threw away the box. Here is the trick. Most important of all, always keep your receipts. First bring your old receipt to the shop, then buy a new item that’s on sales. Make sure the bar code of the new item is the same as the one on your old receipt. Walk to the customer service straight from the cashier and refund the newly bought item with the old receipt. As long as the bar code is the same, the shop has no way to tell whether you bought the item 89 seconds or 89 days ago. If your screwed up and the bar code is indeed changed. Don’t worry, you can always refund the extra item with the new receipt.
In fact you can use this method to extend the price guarantee period indefinitely. Repeat the above steps right before the 90 days refund period expire to extend the refund period by another 90 days. As long as you remember to check the flyers every week, you can get your money back until they eventually discontinue the item or change the bar code. As long as the bar code is the same, you can even refund an newly bought item from one shop with an old receipt to another shop.
I thought I stretch things to the nth degree with my high expectation of good customer services. I think what you described may have more than what I might be willing to do. A loop hole that is legal but probably not that ethical.
Selling items at marked up non-sales price to consume is unethical too! If they can still make a profit with the sales price, you gotta wonder how much money they make from the clueless consumers paying the non-sales price.
Don’t worry about the ethics problem. If it is legal and it’s to my benefit, it must be ethical. I studied the philosophy of ethics. I can easily justify my action using any of or all of the four major ethical theories.
Your logic and ethical reasoning scare me to no end.
My friend, what logic and reasoning is this? “If it is legal and it’s to my benefit, it must be ethical.”
You are mistaking “legal” and “to your benefit” as “ethical”. And unfortunately, I know I am incapable of convincing you otherwise. Gosh, I’ve tried enough times in other things. 🙂
Ar.. that’s not the logic nor reason. It’s just a statement. What I am saying is if something is legal and to my benefit, I can work out some ethic theory to support what I am doing is ethical. So don’t worry about whether it is ethical or not, I am pretty confidence I can prove it to be ethical.