Target Employees Lying about Copyright Law

[The Tim]

I realize not many people will read this here, but I want to vent for a minute.

On 06/02, my wife purchased the DVD movie "Never Been Kissed" from Target in Woodinville. Saturday night we tried to watch it, and discovered after trying it in multiple DVD players that it was defective. Today we brought the DVD and the receipt back to Target in order to exchange the disc for a working copy.

Unfortunately, there were no copies in stock, and despite the fact that I had a defective product with a receipt, the employee in returns told me that Target would not refund my purchase.

Okay, so they have a stupid policy. But that's not why I need to vent. In order to explain why they wouldn't take back the DVD, the employee in returns fed me a complete LIE, attributing it to "copyright law." When I asked for a manager, they repeated the same lie. When asked "what law specifically will not allow you to refund my money for this defective DVD," the best answer either of them could come up with was "copyright law."

I did some searching online and found that the same lie about copyright law being spread by Target employees the .

There is no provision in copyright law prohibiting Target from accepting returns on defective DVDs. If there were, Costco would be in pretty big trouble, since they will gladly refund my money on a defective DVD.

If Target wants to have an anti-customer policy like this then fine, whatever, I just won't buy DVDs from Target any more, and I suppose I'll consider the $7.50 to be the price of learning the lesson about Target's horrible policy.

But what really bugs me is that the corporate policy appears to extend beyond just refusing a refund for defective merchandise, and feeding a complete lie to employees, that is then repeated unquestioningly to customers. That seems like exceedingly poor customer service to me.

I like Target on the whole, but this is a pretty sleazy move, IMO.

[Alan]

Say this: "Target sold me a defective product. If you won't accept it as a return, what are you going to do to make this right."

Write down the names of the people you interact with. Make sure they see you do this.

If you don't get a satisfactory solution the write corporate and include the details.

[Ubersalad]

Sounds like the life of those who have too much time...

Most of us just eat it and never shop there again...who has time to bitch and whine about $7.50?

[The Tim]

[rose-colored-coolaid]

I'd second Alan. Write a short letter about how disgusted you are. Include a link to your website, and this discussion in particular. It'll only take 5-10 minutes to do.

Most companies will fix the problem at that point. Or at least they'll fix it for you. If they don't, then don't shop there anymore.

[upsciLLion]

I had to do the same thing with a copy of Call of Duty 4 back in January at the Target in Redmond. For whatever reason they exchanged it. Maybe you could call some other Target stores to see what they say about exchanging it for another copy.

Also, Never Been Kissed? They're doing you a favor, brah.

[WestSideBilly]

Having worked at Target, it seems their policy has morphed a bit. When I was there (late 90s) the policy was to not accept returns on opened media (CDs, DVDs, VHS, CD/DVD based video games, etc) unless the product was defective. The policy was to discourage copyright 'violations'*, not an enforcement of copyright law (which as you note is incorrect). That was the same policy as Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.

I suspect this may be an issue where their training material for new employees is being misunderstood or misrepresented and it's propagating down the chain. The 'manager' you talked to could have been a dept lead with less than 2 years on the job. It sounds like the errant policy has infected other stores, so it may be worth a quick letter/e-mail/phone call to their customer service.

* I.E. people buying a movie, copying it a bunch of times for friends, then returning the movie and buying another...

[rose-colored-coolaid]

[WestSideBilly]

[jon]

I just want to point out that a no returns for any reason policy is sometimes actually beneficial to the consumer overall. If there is a reason to trust the store, usually because most of their sales are based on repeat business, then by eliminating the incentive for fraud the store no longer has to price in it to their product. In a competitive market, the lower price will offset the occasional loss due to a defective product. I think most of us look for a guarantee just to make sure the store or manufacturer is incentivized to produce a good product.

Law is screwy sometimes so who knows. I think it used to be that books had to have their covers ripped off to be sold at a lower price, maybe because they were damaged goods and no were constrained by some fair price law.