There are always two sides to everything. On the one hand we have the consumer who is trying to make his/her dollar stretch as far as possible by buying at the lowest price possible for merchandise/service that they can live with. On the other hand is the merchant/service provider who wants to get as much for his/her product/service as they can. The funny thing is that almost everyone is both of these individuals. We all want to make as much as possible, while giving up as little of it as possible.

Things become a problem when, in the consumer guise, people start trying to take advantage of the merchant/service provider. David recalled a perfect example of his customer who returned merchandise minus the "free" gift. Others have brought up the point that some service people/clerks have been rude or indifferent to them at times. All it takes is one bore like David's customer to turn a person off to giving friendly service for that day.

I used to have a customer at my store who made in excess of $500,000, but bought on the internet if he realized a savings of even 10%. The kicker with this guy was that he would come into the store, taking up sales peoples time, to kick the tires and get all the info he could before clicking on the buy button online. Eventually, the staff got wise to him and started casually ignoring him when other people came into the store. He had the nerve to call me and complain about the lack of personal service he was getting. I looked up his purchases over the previous 6 months and pointed out that $0 spent didn't qualify him for exulted customer status and that perhaps calling the CS line at his online store of choice would give him more satisfaction. His response was that they only took orders and didn't know anything about the merchandise, and that he would have to leave his phone# and wait for a callback to talk to someone who could answer his questions. A perfect example of someone who wanted to keep his cake, but eat it too!