Company Blog

What’s your guarantee?

by Adam Zack — August 7, 2019

Some grocers look at returns with suspicion.

I guarantee that you guarantee all the food you sell. If a customer is not happy with the quality, taste or freshness of what you sold them, you give them a prompt refund. With a smile and an apology. After all, you really want to know if berries are getting moldy or lettuce is slimy. You need to know if the tuna salad was a little sour, the chicken has a bad smell or the fish tastes fishy. We’d pay to find these things out before our customers got them home, only to have to return to the store to get it replaced. Having to do that is pretty much more irritating than the actual bad product. New Seasons Market in Oregon has one of the best written returns policy I’ve seen:

New Seasons Market Product Returns Policy

If it’s not exactly what you want or if you don’t like it for any reason, bring it back for a no-hassle return. We’ll replace it or refund your money with a smile. We promise.

It’s posted at the entrance and I guarantee you don’t have to have your receipt. It’s one of the cornerstones of great service. We unconditionally guarantee everything we sell or your money back. Having said that, there are still some grocers who look at returns with suspicion. They make the customer feel like they are committing some kind of crime for returning things: “What was wrong with it? When did you buy it? Whose line did you go through?” I’ve seen the questioning go on and on. And most likely the store owner does guarantee his foods. Emphatically. He just hasn’t communicated it to staff. And yes, there will be people who take advantage. The old lady who brings back just the lamb chop bones and says the meat was tough. Over and over. (True story. I finally had to tell her after about 6 times, politely, that obviously our lamb was not up to her standards, and she’d probably have much better luck buying it somewhere else.) But basically it’s part of the cost of doing business. Just like the fact that there will always be some kind of theft. When you’re dealing with thousands of customers every week, you’re going to get some bad apples.

Domino’s has been running some commercials about free carry-out insurance. If you drop or somehow damage your pizza after you pick it up, bring it back and they’ll remake it for free. Kind of a ridiculous guarantee to spend all that money on, but it goes to show that some companies don’t guarantee their products. Now if Domino’s could just guarantee that their pizza tastes really good, that’s a guarantee that would get my attention.