Our ‘bad trip’ Wednesday
THE OTHER day we went home to our farm residence in a barangay in Tugbok District, Davao City. Aside from this visit as part of our routine activity every week we also took the occasion to pay homage to the wake of a family friend who died last Saturday.
The barangay is located in the interior part of Tugbok District but is also accessible from Calinan proper. So we decided to proceed first to Calinan to buy a large bucket of biscuits that we want to give to the family so the same can be used for merienda of visitors during the remaining days of the wake. The burial is scheduled tomorrow.
We did not expect that our relatively relaxed Wednesday morning would turn into some kind of a “bad trip” after we had this experience while buying the 1.9 kilogram capacity bucket of Party Mega mix biscuits.
The bucket has a price tag of P239.00 conspicuously pasted on its cover. So we decided to buy it since the other brands and similar bucket sizes were much costlier.
When we took the item to the cashier for payment we forked from our wallet P250 expecting a change of P11. But to our chagrin we were told by the cashier after she punched the sales register machine that the money we gave her was lacking.
We had to ask her how come when the price tag was only P239. The cashier herself appeared to be surprised as she took a look on the attached price tag. She reasoned out that the P339 is the amount encoded in the computerized list of inventories. When we asked how come the price tag is different she reasoned out that possibly the store staff assigned to change the prices during the retagging could have forgotten to replace the old price tag. She called someone who could be her supervisor to help explain to us the circumstances.
Well, from the way things were explained we were about ready to accept the cashier’s and her supervisor’s clarification, specifically on the possibility that those tasked to change the price tags may have inadvertently omitted the biscuit items.
But what got the goat out from us was when she disclosed that the new price was what came out after the management made upward adjustments on the costs of their merchandise. Our blood pressure seemed to shoot up. What with the P100 difference between the amount in the price tag and the one registered in the computergenerated inventory list!
The increase is about 50 percent from the base price! Son of a…what an over-price! And to think that the same Party Mega Mix biscuit buckets on display could still be part of the store’s old inventories! We do not know if there will be any one from the consuming public who would disagree with us that the 100 peso jump from the old price is extremely unreasonable and greedy.
After we unwillingly paid our purchased item we went to the customer care center to register our complaint advising those who manned the area we would be raising the issue to the public. All the staff could say is that they were sorry for the mess and they apologized in behalf of the store management.
We do not intend to reveal the name of the store. But we feel it would be unfair for the other groceries in Calinan if we will keep its identity. So, we are sorry to divulge that the store we had this bad Wednesday experience last Wednesday is Gaisano Grand of Calinan.
And as we have earlier said in this piece we can accept the explanation of the cashier and the other store staff including those manning the Customer Care Center. Yes, inadvertent omissions can happen any time. But these can also be minimized, if not totally eliminated, if the store management and the people charged to oversee the store’s various operating activities do their jobs religiously. In this particular incident we can sense the management’s failure to closely monitor the work of their staff.
Meanwhile, we cannot help but suspect that some people at the local Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) office are sleeping on their job. The DTI is the regulating agency as far as consumer goods pricing is concerned.
We are certain that none from the said office undertake regular store inspections to check on the prices of goods