Usually you hear the mantra, buyer beware, when going shopping.  Well, add another dimension to that saying - gift recipient beware.  There is nothing more maddening than dealing with the tricks played by some retailers to nickel and dime their customers out of their hard-earned cash.  Believe it or not, these tricks include the gift receipt that is supposed to make it easier for the gift recipient to return or exchange the gift.  For obvious reasons, the gift receipt does not include the price paid.  However, some retailers have turned that to their financial advantage.  Case in point - a friend of mine received a Christmas gift purchased at the “lacoste” store.   She went back to the store with the friend that gave her the gift to exchange it for another item.  She picked out something else that was priced above the original item and brought both items to the cashier with the gift receipt to make the exchange.  Suffice it to say that my friend was floored when the store clerk said that she owed more than the difference in price between both items.  My friend asked the clerk why she owed more than the difference in price.  The store clerk explained that because the original item was now “on sale,” she would have to pay the difference between the sale price of the original item and the new item.  My friend naturally asked why, given that she had the gift receipt, which should show that the original item was purchased at full price.  The clerk replied “no” that was not the case and that when an item goes on sale, the store will only issue a credit for the item at the sale price, even if the customer is bearing a gift receipt. 

The interesting twist here is that my friend was able to obtain a full credit for the gift item, because the store had her friend’s credit card information/transaction history on file and the clerk was able to confirm that her friend had indeed paid full price for the gift.  There are two problems with this situation.  One, had the gift giving friend not accompanied my friend to the store, she would never had known that her friend had paid full price for the gift.  Two, if the store was so easily able to look up the credit card information regarding the price paid for the gift, why hasn’t the store tied that information to the gift receipt?  Essentially, the store is looking the other way and using the fact that no price has been printed on the gift receipt to make a FEW EXTRA BUCKS at the customer’s expense.  I shudder to think how many times this actually happened, post-Christmas.

 If asked about this practice, retailers may say that they incur costs in restocking returned or exchanged items and that this is a reasonable manner in dealing with those extra costs.  Maybe so, but the real problem here is that RETAILERS ROUTINELY FAIL TO DISCLOSE THIS PRACTICE TO THEIR CUSTOMERS, probably in the hopes that gift recipients and gift givers will never find out what happened.  As a result, retailers make a little extra easy money at everyone’s expense.  So if you are concerned that retailers may pull this stunt on your gift transactions, inquire up front when you are purchasing your gifts to find out if they have such a practice.  Learning this information gives you the choice of giving your business to a more customer-friendly retailer.