The Esso/Zellers Face Off

Today must have been Friday the 13th, even though the calendar says it is March 16th. I overcame minor trips, glitches and stumbles throughout the morning. Then, the mail came, with a $50 gift card for Esso. Is this a great life or what?
I trundled over to Esso, where I bought gas, the obligatory lotto tickets, and, as a treat, a $25 gift card to Zellers. There’s not much available at Esso, aside from lotto and gas, but at Zellers, YAY, all sorts of treats. Perhaps I should have been more mindful of the Esso cashier’s warning: “Better hang on to this receipt, just in case there is a problem.”

Problem? What problem? I am an old hand at gift cards. I give them all the time, and have received my share. Great invention. Better than receiving a box of six candles in a shade that makes you extremely depressed.
I patted myself on the shoulder for my canny use of a gas gift card. I practically beamed at myself in my rearview mirror as I sped to Zellers to have $25 worth of fun.

However, once I got to Zellers and planted my purchases at the checkout, I was greeted with the news that my gift card was “inactive”. I trotted off to Customer Service, where an extremely efficient and ebullient clerk who has solved many a problem for me in the past, with great style, examined the dead gift card, and told me that the Esso staff was scanning the wrong bar code.

So off I went, back to Esso (luckily I drive a cute little Yaris which uses very little gas) and found a different cashier, who was bewildered by my problem. About eight people fidgeted in line behind me (I couldn’t help it, I kept turning around and saying, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” even though this attached blame to me, when I felt, quite rightly, that I was blameless in this little drama.) They were all deadpan, in the way people are when they are fantasizing about throttling you and throwing your remains into the trash bin by the pumps.

Finally, the young clerk and I agreed that she would simply give me a new gift card. I had paid for it, after all. TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS. Which maybe ten years ago, would have seemed like coffee money, but in today’s economy, seems like a rather large sum to meeeeeee. She had called her co-worker, who insisted that the Zellers staff was at fault.

So off I went to Zellers with my NEW gift card. Same old, same old. It came up ‘not activated’. Ebullient clerk insisted that the Esso staff were swiping it wrong. It took all my will power not to lie down on the floor and weep piteously, “I am not going back to Esso. How much do you expect of a person who just wants to get through the day and come out at the end with a few little treats from Zellers?” I was a big girl and resolutely cheerful to the Zellers staff. As I love Zellers, my personal bias was that they were no doubt in the right in this exchange. And besides, only an idiot thinks she makes the world a better place by stamping her Aerosoles and screaming at all and sundry.

I drove back to the Esso, reminding myself how wonderful it is that I drive a Yaris. Once again, the Esso cashier tried to activate the card and informed me it was already activated. I suggested she simply refund the cost of the card back to my Esso gift card, as this driving around the city was exhausting me. She put me on the phone (how germy was this phone? how many people have used it?) with her boss, a rather crisp woman who told me that she had no way of knowing what Zellers had said to me. Excuse me? I had just told her what the Zellers staff had told me. Obviously, that was not good enough for her. Perhaps she imagined a gum chewing, tattooed, drug addled criminal at the other end of the line, instead of a respectable woman with a whimpering Yaris.

I wasted a few moments of the prime years of my life longing for the good old days, when the customer was always right. Remember those days? When businesses actually believed you, or pretended to believe you, when there was an issue, because (GASP) they actually valued your patronage.

The way we left it (after she reproached me for not addressing this earlier in the day, before the end of business hours in the east, even though all this had transpired in the past hour) was that she would ‘look into it’ , contact her bosses and Zellers, who, I gather, in her opinion, were clearly at fault, and call me on Monday.

I am Not Hopeful.

This is the Esso/Zellers face off. I somehow think I am not going to come out even in this. I am thinking that Esso is going to eat my $25 and try to make Zellers take the fall.

Stay tuned. I will post an update when and if I hear anything. In the meantime, I think I will take a little bouquet of flowers to the nice woman at Zellers, who seems to know what she is doing. I hope she isn’t out of a job when Target takes over. If Target has any brains, they will make her a store manager or national vice president.
Linda (who has done way too much driving and whining today)