The North West Company (North Mart)

I am sick and tired of being screwed by North Mart - one of our local grocery stores. The company started as a Bay store years ago. I am sure many of you heard about my problems with The Bay when I was trying to deal with them about missing gifts from my bridal registry, but it seems that their customer service is taught at a central location and extends all over Canada!

This is a copy of a letter I wrote to the Supervisor, Customer Contact Centre at The North West Company:

As per our conversation of Monday, December 19, 2005, I am writing to describe the event that took place in the Inuvik North Mart store on the same day.

As I have unfortunately grown accustomed to do at that store, I was checking prices for my grocery items being scanned by the cashier when I noticed that the mushrooms I was purchasing scanned in at $3.79 instead of their sale price of $2.29. I mentioned this to the cashier who looked them up in the weekly flyer. The flyer had a different picture of packaged mushrooms with the heading "Cello Mushrooms - $2.29". She told me they were different, so I walked to where the mushrooms were on the shelf and did not see any other mushrooms - only the sign above the ones I was tr! ying to buy that read "This week - Mushrooms - $2.29". I told her that the "cello" probably meant the way they were wrapped and may not have been a brand name. None of this, however, is the problem.

The problem began when she called the manager over to 'help'. The manager, J. S., came over and when the cashier started to ask about the mushrooms, he interrupted her and said, "Yeah, the packaging was different than in the picture so they didn't get priced properly." I can only assume that, since he interrupted her and knew exactly what she was about to ask, he knew that the price was wrong and hadn't done anything about fixing the error. He told her to give them to me for $2.29 and walked away. I though for a moment about your store policy (regarding not paying for merchandise under $10 that was priced incorrectly) but decided to just let it go...that was until I walked out of the store and got to our truck. I was angry at the thought of the store manager not following store policy, so I went back in to speak with him.

I found him at the far end of the store putting cookies on the shelf. I told him that I was not a stupid customer and that I knew he should have told the cashier to simply give me the item. (By the way, I am yet to see a sign up about this policy in the store.) I told him how incredibly disappointed I was to have the manager treat the customers in this way. He then asked me if I wanted a refund or to take another package of mushrooms. I decided that instead of confusing anyone by asking them to do a refund, I would just take a second package of mushrooms.

J. S. walked to the other side of the store with me following him. Without looking at me, he handed me a package of mushrooms and said "you're welcome"...funny...I didn't remember saying "thank you", nor did I get an apology!

Besides this unprofessional behaviour, when he came to the register for the price check he did not leave the cash register to change the prices of the mushroom so that the next customer buying them would not be overcharged, instead he went to stock cookies. I wonder how many people were charged $1.50 more for their mushrooms and never knew it!

A concerned (now infrequent) customer,

(My signature followed)

I have only heard back from him to say that they are dealing with the problem and will get back to me...Hmmm.....I wonder if J.S. owns shares in that company?