Now here is a case for the most callous customer service abuse given to a serious physically impaired wheelchair-bound “special needs” Culver City High School student.
I have been a substitute teacher, extensively dealing with special needs students in the Culver City School District since 2007. I never have heard of any special needs student being so callously treated by a retail establishment in our city.
I cannot give you the name of the student, whom I will identify as “G” for confidentiality reasons. However, I can say he is admired by students and teachers alike. I have known and substituted as an aide for this young man for the past 5½ years, and I can tell you he is one of the most polite and gentle human beings you could know.
Today I was substituting for G's aide. G asked me to take him to visit a teacher during nutrition so he could borrow money to get a haircut for an important function. This kindhearted teacher loaned G the money, no questions asked.
Later G told me the reason he didn't have money: A certain retail store in this city would not give him a $20 refund for the purchase of a tee-shirt that he was returning and never had been worn.
You would think that as a matter of building goodwill and good customer service, the store would refund the paltry amount of $20 to a physically impaired special needs kid whose only mode of transportation to the store was in his motorized wheelchair.
The store personnel never bothered to tell G that “all sales are final” when he was bought a tee-shirt he obviously did not need and later realized he could not use .
When G tried to return the shirt and get his money, he was treated rudely. He was told he shouldn't have been in the store in the first place.
I was incensed that anyone would try and take such advantage of such a kid.
You see, sometimes people take advantage of vulnerabilities and weaknesses of our special needs kids who sometimes have difficulty in making purchase decisions.
I thought there must be some mistake. I went to the store to ask if a refund could be given for the $20 tee-shirt. I was told the owner was out of the country for a week. There was no manager. The two clerks acknowledged that they refused to give G a refund because it was store policy to not give refunds. They pointed to a sign that said “All Sales Final.” They didn't care that G had not seen the sign nor was he told about the policy when he was “enticed” to buy the tee-shirt.
Surely there could be an exception to the “All Sales Final” policy in consideration of the disabilities of the person not being aware of it. The employees were rude, dismissive and insisted that they did not legally have to give a refund.
When I told them that they had a moral obligation to return money to G, they got angry with me.
I tried to tell them how stupid it was on their part to deny a $20 refund with the risk of losing customer goodwill. If they refused to refund the money, I told them that I would let other people know what they had done. They said I was making a threat, and that I should leave.
I will wait for the owner to come back next week and try to convince him that it doesn't make sense to be so rigid and deny a special needs person a $20 refund. If the owner does not return the money, I will have no choice but to publicize and expose his store name to the special needs community. I will also be calling for a demonstration against this store in this paper and throughout the Culver City community and high school.
If anyone is interested in helping out please call me at 310.487.7408.
Mr. Zirgulis also may be contacted at zirgulisr@yahoo.com
