Publix Promise Question

[jonah-bonah]

I went to Publix last week to purchase the Buy Theirs, Get Ours Free products, along with a few other groceries. My cashier failed to make the Publix items free and also rang my Juicy Juice Apple juice twice when I was only purchasing one. I called the store and was told to bring my receipt in and it would be taken care of. I did this.

One of the shift supervisors refunded me for the Publix items I paid for and the additional juice. My concern is in the Publix Promise. I wouldn't even worry about this, since the refund was given, if there wasn't a policy in place that guarentees that items will ring up correctly.

Under the Publix Promise should I have received refund on the Brand product as well?? The sale was to buy theirs and get ours...since the "OURS" was already to be free my thinking is that the "THEIRS" would fall under the Publix Promise. Am I right??? I didn't want to make a fuss at the counter if I was completely off base...

[pennywatcher]

Originally Posted by jonah-bonah I went to Publix last week to purchase the Buy Theirs, Get Ours Free products, along with a few other groceries. My cashier failed to make the Publix items free and also rang my Juicy Juice Apple juice twice when I was only purchasing one. I called the store and was told to bring my receipt in and it would be taken care of. I did this. One of the shift supervisors refunded me for the Publix items I paid for and the additional juice. My concern is in the Publix Promise. I wouldn't even worry about this, since the refund was given, if there wasn't a policy in place that guarentees that items will ring up correctly. Under the Publix Promise should I have received refund on the Brand product as well?? The sale was to buy theirs and get ours...since the "OURS" was already to be free my thinking is that the "THEIRS" would fall under the Publix Promise. Am I right??? I didn't want to make a fuss at the counter if I was completely off base...

I don't think so. The name brand item rang up at the correct shelf price. It was the Publix brand item that should have rung up for $0 and didn't so it's the Publix brand item to which the Promise would apply.

[danivdp]

Nope, Publix Promise only applies to products that ring up with the wrong price. The only things that rang up wrong on your order were the Publix brand ones. The other brand rang up with the correct shelf price, right?

[elanning]

A few things to help clarify:

#1 - Ironically, the cashier has to manually adjust these items with these types of sales. The register prompts the cashier to "verify price". They can override the normal price for '0' assuming you bought the correct product. It is an absolutely astronomical amount of programming to program the POS to handle this type of sale automatically.
#2 - Your situation is very similar to a BOGO "error". While BOGOs never ring up wrong, sometimes signs are left up accidentally from the previous week. Should you be given a Publix Promise on this item, you just aren't making any money off of Publix. The value of the item should have been $0 but it rang up [for example] $2.99. Publix will adjust it to $0 which IS the Publix Promise. The issue at hand is that some people interpret this to mean they get BOTH free.

[jonah-bonah]

Thank you all for helping me understand.

[STERLINGJEANNE]

Thanks! Until I just read this thread, I'd forgotten about the promise guarantee. Yesterday I got Kashi cereal & it rang up wrong (and I didn't catch at the register b/c a friend had come up & we were talking :sad:). I bought 10 and they rang up @ $3.59 instead of $2.50. Will the promise guarantee make all 10 free or just 1? I was going back today to get the difference refunded.

[nrpeace17]

The Publix Promise allows for one free item if a price mistake was made on an advertised price, you will be refunded the difference for the rest of the items.

[jonah-bonah]

Just an FYI...I emailed Publix and got a call right away from my Publix. The manager said that since the Publix item was supposed to be free and it did not ring up correctly that I would get both free. It's hard to explain but in the end he gave me a GC for the 2 brand items that I bought AND for the apple juice that was rung twice. EXCELLENT CS!!!

[specialk1st]

Originally Posted by elanning A few things to help clarify: #1 - Ironically, the cashier has to manually adjust these items with these types of sales. The register prompts the cashier to "verify price". They can override the normal price for '0' assuming you bought the correct product. It is an absolutely astronomical amount of programming to program the POS to handle this type of sale automatically. ...

FYI, this is wrong. It is not a lot of programming at all. I would know, it's my job.

Truth be told its actually really simple, but just was not a part of the original mock-up.

[elanning]

Originally Posted by specialk1st FYI, this is wrong. It is not a lot of programming at all. I would know, it's my job. Truth be told its actually really simple, but just was not a part of the original mock-up.

This is not very simple. At the item scan event (Publix item), you would need to validate the scanned GTIN as a numeric value and do one of the following:

1. Loop through all known GTINs to see if the scanned Publix item is one on promotion (more work on the server) OR
2. Have a prepopulated list of Publix items on special that is read into memory at form-load and validate the value against those pre-read GTINs (more memory usage)

THEN you would need to loop through to look and see if one of the matching national-brand products was in the order and, if it is, deduct the value of the coupon. This is all assuming that the national brand item was scanned first. Obviously that doesn't always happen. To account for this, you must constantly be looping through the order looking for matching items or do it once at the "tender/total" event at the end of the order. Doing it at the end is better for processing/memory usage but an inconvenience for the customer because they can't see if the item's value was deducted or not.

Obviously there are 100 ways to accomplish the same thing in programming but this is just the simplest way I could think of. You are definitely talking about a large amount of code here.