Retail Workers Share Secrets That Their Company Does Not Want Its Customers to Know

Reddit users recently took to the web to share their best kept industry secrets, ranging from food service deception to academic fraud. Many of these former employees spilled the beans on what was overlooked or blatantly lied about and how customers were treated behind-the-scenes. These insider secrets will probably ruffle some feathers when their bosses find out…

This Side Up

I worked at UPS ages ago. The word “FRAGILE” on a box meant nothing to us, so make sure you pack your stuff properly.

Credit: Reddit / @Kevoguy

Customer Rating System

It has been several years, but when I worked at a certain satellite TV company, they had a value system for customers.

You are valued at 1-5 stars, based on how much you spend, and how much they value you as a customer. If you are a higher star value, they will do basically anything to keep you. You will get a ton of services and equipment for free, and they will bend over backwards to keep you from cancelling.

If you are a 1 or 2 star, they don’t care about you. Especially 1 stars, because it usually means that you are late on payments all the time, or that you don’t spend very much. If you call in asking for deals or credits, they won’t give them to you. If you threaten to cancel, no one cares.

Also, there are special phone lines for people they consider “VIPS.” They never have to wait on hold, and only special employees are allowed to take the phone calls.

Credit / Reddit: @mermaidsthrowaway

Salt Scrub Price Gouging

A “high class” spa I worked at used epsom salts and vegetable oil for their $65 salt scrubs.

Credit: Reddit / @captnfirepants

Smartphones Aren’t That Smart

I used to work for a large smartphone company.

During development, we used to go through phases, Engineering Verification testing stage, Design Verification Test, Production Verification Test, and finally Mass Production.

Each stage was meant to have checkpoints in order to ensure that the final product was built with good quality and any known bugs would be able to be ironed out before the product launch. Any buy that was not resolved would potentially have the ability to delay the launch.

Except that there is a thing called Waivers. So, the product manager could request that certain bugs be granted a waiver delaying the fix of the problem to a later date. No big deal, every project has a few minor bugs, right?

For each stage there would be hundreds of waivers. Some would be minor, to be fair, but sometimes they were definitely not minor.

I will never, ever, buy an electronic device in the first 3 months of mass production. Wait for the second wave of production, the quality of the product increases ten-fold.

Credit: Reddit / @Project2r