Remember that bookstore that I was angsting about? Well now it’s truly all-out loathing.
After my entirely unsatisfactory attempt to try to return my books without letting my mom know (I don’t like telling people, “Thanks so much! I’m going to take this back in a few days!”), I swallowed the bullet, screwed up my pride and bit my courage and asked for the gift receipts. Without a receipt, my mom’s money was only going to waste, and that made me feel worse than bucking up and telling her that I was going to exchange her gifts to me. That turned out to be pretty drama-free (there was simultaneous, unrelated massive drama that I can’t and won’t go into, it’s much too raw) and on New Year’s day I had a gift receipt in my hands.
Today I finally had time to swing over to Books-A-Million. Yes, I’m naming the store. I spotted Vaguely-Stoned Woman out wandering the floor, and the people manning the register were much friendlier today. I got in line for my return, one of apparently many, and handed the cashier my receipt. She looked at it, and pleasantly told me that since I didn’t have the original receipt, she would put the returned balance on a gift card.
Okaaaaay.
So it appears that this bookstore will only allow merchandise transactions with an original receipt. Fine. However, an original gift receipt is not quite as valid as an original receipt with prices on it, and therefore can only be used towards store merchandise. In essence, this business has made it so that once a purchase is made, there’s no way they can lose money. The return policy sans receipt of the lowest selling price in the last 6 months makes so much more sense now. This bookstore is not in the business of (gasp!) selling books and magazines, they’re in the business of screwing over people who like to read any way they can.
I knew there was no use in arguing it. Their return policy is written in terms of “an original receipt” and my defining a gift receipt as something else, they have free reign to do whatever they like. I took the gift card because I had no choice, and the one thing I do not want is my mom’s gift to me to be useless, wasted money. But at the same time, I am so livid about this store’s policies that thinking of buying anything from them is making me physically ill. I wanted to return their merchandise so I could take my business elsewhere. Now I can’t even do that. In spite of myself, they have my mom’s money and there’s no way around it.
If I buy anything at Books-A-Million, I’m going to hate it and my mom’s gift will go to waste as surely as if I never returned the books in the first place. If I buy nothing, the money is still wasted. No matter what I do, I’ve managed to ruin a gift my mother chose for me, and it pisses me off nearly as much as it upsets me. I hate crying because of someone else’s asshattery.
My advice is to stop letting it get to you. File a complaint with the manager and use the gift card to buy something you’ve been wanting for a while anyway. If you can’t do anything about it, there’s no use letting it stress you out. Just don’t go back, and, more importantly, don’t LOOK back. Good luck.
I am petty enough that had this occurred to me, I would’ve purchased enough to cover the gift card, and maybe a dollar or so more, just to be sure, then turned around and returned it three or four days later, with the “original receipt.”
Of course, then they’d probably come up with some cockamamie policy that purchases made on a gift card could only be refunded on a gift card.
It’s funny, that’s exactly their policy.
I completely feel your pain, and really wish there was a store that didn’t behave that way. Every year my grandmother gets me very nice things that I happen not to like, and every year a certain department store makes it harder and harder for me to get anything other than store credit with her original receipt. This year they actually forced me into a gift card or the express card. Which was a gift card.
It’s honestly absurd to me. I didn’t make the purchase in their money, so why is it so hard to get the money back.
Consider yourself lucky. I received a couple of books for Christmas I didn’t want and tried to return them to Borders, as I’ve done in the past. I was told I had to have a receipt. Same with Barns and Nobles. I’m actually happy to hear I may be able get something from them from BAM.
you can always do what i do and sell the gift card on ebay. or hell donate it and use the tax write off.
I found this while looking up these guys to complain about their return policy. A few weeks ago, I bought my pregnant daughter a gift set of Frog and Toad books, completely forgetting she had a hardback set she bought as a teenager. These books are in unopened shrink wrap, and I had the original receipt. They refuse to accept the return. Seems the return policy is now 14 days!