Walmart Fiasco

***sorry, i'll warn you ahead of time...this post is long, rambly, and kind of whiny...so you can feel free to skip this***

Yesterday, Stephen and I tried to bring back some of our duplicate gifts to Walmart (since they sell everything...). It was an ordeal. We got there around 6:40, and had 2 big baby bags full of gifts to have them scan. The greeter stopped us and wanted to scan EVERY INDIVIDUAL ITEM before she would let us to to the customer service area. Add to the fact that she didn't know how to work the scanner, and it kept just beeping and every thing she scanned took about a minute (even with me holding out the bar codes for her to scan). Finally, after scanning about 10 items, the little scanner just broke.

I consider this a blessing.

So, we just counted up the rest of the items and she wrote on the last sticker that we had 20 more items.

OK, success, right? Stephen was holding a place in line for me at the customer service line for me, so I was thinking that this would go smoothly. We would make it to our friends' surprise birthday party on time.

WRONG.

We get to the front of the line, and apologize for having so much stuff to scan, but we just needed to know if it came from Walmart or not.

"Do you have a receipt?" the Walmart lady asked.
"No...this was all from a baby shower" I responded.
" Well, without a receipt, we can only refund up to $50 dollars, and then we can't do any more refunds on your ID for a month."

REALLY? Has this always been Walmart's policy? I've always thought that Walmart would take anything and everything back.

Me: "OK, well I want to return $50 dollars worth on my ID and then HE (pointing at Stephen would like to return some stuff"
Walmart Lady: "I can only refund up to $50 dollars on your ID"
Me: "I understand. He can use his own ID to return some of the gifts."
Walmart Lady: "Well, but this stuff came in with you, so I can only use your ID to return things."
Me: "We are MARRIED...we BOTH got the gifts. They are equally his and MINE!"

Walmart Lady starts to refuse again, and then her manager sees this crazy pregnant lady, and comes over and asks what the problem was.

Keep in mind, I really don't think that I was being rude, but I had already spent about 30 minutes with another Walmart lady, who was taking forever to scan items...and stop people at the door to check their carts...and talking to everyone...I was kinda past my limit of patience.

I just explained that we were trying to see if the items came from the store and to return the gifts that we had duplicates for, and she was really sympathetic. She explained that she had a little boy 8 months before and went through the same thing. She told the lady to just override the machine and she helped us scan everything that we had to see if it came from Walmart, and even gave suggestions of where the other gifts might have come from.

Good. Settled, and we were ready to leave to go to our friend's dinner party. Then we hand her the Birthday card we wanted to buy for our friend. (so they could just take it off the gift card they just gave us) Well, the Walmart lady obviously thought that we were returning the card too, so she put the money for the birthday card on our shopping card. We explained, "no, we wanted to BUY the card, not return it".

So, then the Walmart lady got it right. She said, "OK, so we need to take that amount off the card, and then pay for the birthday card with the shopping card."

Yes...sounds right.

Then the manager steps in..."No, you just need to pay for the card with the shopping card and everything will be made right"

I think at that point I had a really confused look on my face, but she was so adamant (and me being the art major/horrible at anything math related) I was not going to try to correct her.

So we start to walk out of Walmart to try to make it to the birthday party on time.

Before we reach the door, Stephen stops, holding the receipt and says, 'I still don't think we paid for that card."

I kinda feel relieved at this point, because I just thought my math skills were horrible and we review the receipt. Sure enough, they just added the money to the card and then took the money back off the card, leaving the first balance of all of our returns.

We REALLY didn't want to go back and make a big deal out of it, since the whole process took us so long in the first place, but we did want to pay for the card. I just told Stephen to go to one of the quick lines and just buy the card with our gift card.

I hope we didn't mess any one's register up by doing that instead of going back to that first Walmart lady, but I don't think I could have handled it.

At least our conscience was made right.

And we were only a couple minutes late for the party...

I think I'm starting to understand my friend, Jean Marie...who adamantly HATES Walmart.