shame on me
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
They say, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
I let the local aquarium store fool me a second time. The shame. First they sold me more things than I needed when setting up my aquarium to begin with. Not a big deal, and it certainly didn't involve a lot of money. It was when I tried to return one of them (an unopened bag of gravel for pete's sake!) that I ran into the trouble: they had an 80% restocking fee. 80%! I kept that bag of gravel of course and began to do my shopping elsewhere, including purchasing fish, medications, filter items, and some plants. Lots of lost sales.
But today I thought I'd save time and pick up a new bulb to replace the one that stopped working this morning. I popped in, bought the ¥3,000 bulb, and brought it home. It wouldn't work.
Suspecting something more complex than a simple bad bulb, I went back with both the bulb and the hood that holds the bulbs. The fellow who helped me showed me that the light bulb I'd bought worked just fine in their test unit, so we had a look at my hood. Sure enough, the cause was just a ¥180 fuse. I'd not needed to buy a new bulb to begin with.
I asked to return the old bulb. Nope. I pointed out that I had made the purchase only fifteen minutes earlier, and that it was in perfect working order. Nope.
I explained that they were being unreasonable, and that if they wouldn't take the bulb back I'd rather make a trip to other parts of the city rather than shop with them, even though I lived only 500m away. Nope. They were happy to stick me with a ¥3,000 unneeded bulb rather than keep me happy.
My partner are bending over backwards to make sure the customers of our new business will be happy because we understand the concept of word of mouth working in our favour. Meanwhile, this aquarium products store is happy to throw away a customer over a return that doesn't even cause a loss—they could happily restock and resell the bulb.
So yes, shame on me. I should have brought the hood in the first place (who knew that the thing had fuses!) and saved myself the effort of having to go back (and spend the extra money). Ah, it all reminds me of: