M and S voucher with no expiry date

LilElvis

The-Truth wrote: »

I'd put money on the fact the store cannot claim any value from trying to bank the voucher and it would go down as a full £16 loss to the store itself.

And how much do they "lose" by marking down food every single day?

marliepanda

Zandoni wrote: »

I would be I know him very well and I can assure you he does get involved directly with his customers.

I can can also assure that M&S have no such policy and managers can override any of their staffs decisions. Of course they don't give things away but £16 is small change.

I worked there, and that was the policy.

You know someone intimately well who tells you every detail of his job.

A manager of a large store will simply not have enough time to get involved with his customers. Thats why they have multiple section and floor managers to help them. No store manager will deal with minutia like this. They do not have time. Perhaps your friend is a section or 'floor' manage.

I am not saying they 'cannot' override decisions, of course they can, but the policy is NOT to override correct decisions as that belittles the staff, and makes a mockery of giving them decision making power especially when making correct decisions. If you are asked for ID, even if you clearly look 50, no store manager/section manager or floor manager will then serve you alcohol. THAT is store policy, regardless of what your extremely well paid manager friend who tells you the day to day of his job every night.

Although a store manger would not be interested in the day to day customer complaints. They delegate that to about 20 other people who again delegate down to section coordinators, who delegate to customer assistants.

marliepanda

LilElvis wrote: »

And how much do they "lose" by marking down food every single day?

Thats a quantifiable loss and they have waste percentage targets to hit. They also have a percentage to try and reach of the mark downs, like getting say 50% of the price back through reductions. This is built into the business, taking expired vouchers isnt.

Zandoni

marliepanda wrote: »

I worked there, and that was the policy.

You know someone intimately well who tells you every detail of his job.

A manager of a large store will simply not have enough time to get involved with his customers. Thats why they have multiple section and floor managers to help them. No store manager will deal with minutia like this. They do not have time. Perhaps your friend is a section or 'floor' manage.

I am not saying they 'cannot' override decisions, of course they can, but the policy is NOT to override correct decisions as that belittles the staff, and makes a mockery of giving them decision making power especially when making correct decisions. If you are asked for ID, even if you clearly look 50, no store manager/section manager or floor manager will then serve you alcohol. THAT is store policy, regardless of what your extremely well paid manager friend who tells you the day to day of his job every night.

Although a store manger would not be interested in the day to day customer complaints. They delegate that to about 20 other people who again delegate down to section coordinators, who delegate to customer assistants.

All I can tell you is that I spoke to him last night about these vouchers and he told me he would very likely honour them rather than upset a customer.

At the level you probably worked at I doubt you would know all the policies of the store. The store manager has the power to override any decisions by his staff and he does get involved with some customer disputes especially when the customer asks to speak to him.

I can confirm he is the manager and not a dept manager.

You must be aware that £16 is very small fry and it's very unlikely to open the flood gates.

marliepanda

Zandoni wrote: »

All I can tell you is that I spoke to him last night about these vouchers and he told me he would very likely honour them rather than upset a customer.

At the level you probably worked at I doubt you would know all the policies of the store. The store manager has the power to override any decisions by his staff and he does get involved with some customer disputes especially when the customer asks to speak to him.

I can confirm he is the manager and not a dept manager.

You must be aware that £16 is very small fry and it's very unlikely to open the flood gates.

I know all the policies that related to my job, which involved dealing with customer complaints. Again, I am not saying they 'cannot' override a staff decision, but a GOOD manager would not come down and override a correct decision by his staff, to please a customer or not. As I said, it completely belittles the staff and does not help the situation in anyway. That is, and still is, policy with regards to decisions regarding customers which are correct. Obviously if a manager or customer service assistant made a mistake that would be rectified, but there is no 'going over peoples heads'

Once in the entire time I worked there did the store manager get involved, and that was because a customer was irate and causing a scene. We were a very large four floor city centre store. If we phoned up for him to come and sort out expired vouchers.... yeah that wouldn't be a good conversation.

I agree £16 is small, however, I still do not think a store manager, certainly not even the floor manager of our department, would override the decision of a till operative, section co or section manager in this instance.

foxtrotoscar_2

Zandoni wrote: »

I know a M&S store manager and I asked him if he would honour the vouchers, he said he would rather than upset a customer.

I'd suggest you try another store and if they refuse to accept them ask to speak to the store manager and see what they say.

Zandoni wrote: »

All I can tell you is that I spoke to him last night about these vouchers and he told me he would very likely honour them rather than upset a customer.

At the level you probably worked at I doubt you would know all the policies of the store. The store manager has the power to override any decisions by his staff and he does get involved with some customer disputes especially when the customer asks to speak to him.

I can confirm he is the manager and not a dept manager.

You must be aware that £16 is very small fry and it's very unlikely to open the flood gates.

So that's a maybe then?

Zandoni

foxtrotoscar wrote: »

So that's a maybe then?

Unless they were abusive.

Zandoni

marliepanda wrote: »

I know all the policies that related to my job, which involved dealing with customer complaints. Again, I am not saying they 'cannot' override a staff decision, but a GOOD manager would not come down and override a correct decision by his staff, to please a customer or not. As I said, it completely belittles the staff and does not help the situation in anyway. That is, and still is, policy with regards to decisions regarding customers which are correct. Obviously if a manager or customer service assistant made a mistake that would be rectified, but there is no 'going over peoples heads'

Once in the entire time I worked there did the store manager get involved, and that was because a customer was irate and causing a scene. We were a very large four floor city centre store. If we phoned up for him to come and sort out expired vouchers.... yeah that wouldn't be a good conversation.

I agree £16 is small, however, I still do not think a store manager, certainly not even the floor manager of our department, would override the decision of a till operative, section co or section manager in this instance.

If you read the OP's original post, they said that the store didn't know what to do with them so in this instance the manager wouldn't be overriding any decision. Although I will state once again he still has the power to do it if he wants to.

marliepanda

Zandoni wrote: »

If you read the OP's original post, they said that the store didn't know what to do with them so in this instance the manager wouldn't be overriding any decision. Although I will state once again he still has the power to do it if he wants to.

I'm not sure I ever said a store manager 'cannot' override a price.

He could sell everything for 5p if he wanted to, but he would have to answer for it if questioned. Randomly taking £16 off a customers order would cause questions to be asked, only certain staff members can authorise price overrides/till openings so that these things can be kept track of. Small things like price corrections are easy, as you change an individual price of an item, but taking a blanket £16 off a total would be difficult and would look more 'out of place' than someone changing £2.19 to £2.00 due to a ticketing error.

Zandoni

marliepanda wrote: »

I'm not sure I ever said a store manager 'cannot' override a price.

He could sell everything for 5p if he wanted to, but he would have to answer for it if questioned. Randomly taking £16 off a customers order would cause questions to be asked, only certain staff members can authorise price overrides/till openings so that these things can be kept track of. Small things like price corrections are easy, as you change an individual price of an item, but taking a blanket £16 off a total would be difficult and would look more 'out of place' than someone changing £2.19 to £2.00 due to a ticketing error.

All I can tell you is that he would so I'm sure he is thoroughly confident that it would cause any problems. I'm sure it wouldn't look out of place because he has the power to do it.