Six Flags Great America accused of denying pass refund for deceased husband

We all handle tragedy differently and we all have different financial situations. I won't judge anyone who reacts differently, but I am confident in saying that I would not ask for my money back in this situation.

In fact, I'm actually going through something somewhat similar now. My parents and I bought 3 tickets to Kings Dominion last year that have to be used before Memorial Day. We had to register our names, which are printed on the tickets, and they are non-refundable and non-transferable. It was a trip we were really looking forward to, as KD was our favorite vacation spot when I was a kid more than 30 years ago. Unfortunately, my Grandmother is now ill and bedridden, requiring 24/7 care. My Mom has moved in with her and there is no way we can use these tickets before Memorial Day.

At no point in our recent discussions did we think about trying to get our money back. In fact, if they were transferable I would give them away but I'd never sell them to anyone else. I wouldn't feel comfortable making money off of my Grandmother's illness.

Yeesh, now I feel guilty for returning something to Amazon I decided I didn't need. I had to pay $6 shipping, but they gave me a full refund. I guess I should have just... thrown it away? Sold it on eBay? Or is it OK so long as no close family members died before I returned it?

(In all honesty, I would've expected them to chop off 15% or whatever as a "restocking fee," and I would've been OK with that since it wasn't their fault, but they didn't.)

Also, I'm kind of with what Fun said above -- it would be different if the pass had already been used or even just processed, but this was a voucher. And like others said, I highly doubt the corpse was still warm when the wife sought the refund; it probably came up as she was rummaging through their stuff.

I hasn't even considered that... it's like returning unused merchandise in this case. I do that all of the time for far less expensive things.

I admit that I made an assumption that Six Flags season passes were generally non-refundable based on the fact that the initial response was "no". If that is wrong, then I *may* have requested a refund in this situation. Not really sure, though, still would feel kind of icky to me.

I don't think I've ever tried to return merchandise that I had purchased under "all sales are final" type agreements.

Yeah, that's a key difference, with being told up front there are no refunds. In that situation I might have called anyway just to see, but I'm about the most un-pushy and anti-confrontational person on the planet, so it likely would've ended there.

In the case of Amazon, one of the reasons I do so much shopping with them is because I've always had great experiences with their customer service, so they feel "safe" to buy from.

You're so STUPID Bryan.

Six Flags website says that season pass purchases are non-refundable and non-transferable. Doubt many people read those terms and conditions before they buy though. Same is true for terms and conditions that people typically click by without reading for other purchases.

Stated policy for passes could allow for returns of 'unused' passes (at least before season starts) but they don't from what I have seen. Ski areas are the same from what I have seen.

In my experience, official return/refund policy is typically more restrictive than actual/real world policy. Gives the business so flexibility when it deems appropriate.

Amazon is great for returns. Even if its opened. And typically they will even pay to ship it back (even without a defect) so your only cost is to get it to your house (and with Prime, not even that). I think that is a very beneficial policy for people buying items that they do not see/have in their hands at time of purchase.

Target is a brick and mortar company with an incredibly generous return/refund policy.

Here's an anecdote from my experience that I can share:

When I was a kid I worked at a putt-putt/go-kart recreation center. One day I was working the cash register and a man and his son came up to buy a round of putt-putt. Our pricing was reduced for kids 12 and under ($4 vs. $3.50, or something like that). For situations like this, we had been trained to ask the kids directly how old they were, since they were less likely to lie when put on the spot. So I asked the boy how old he was and he said he was 13. His dad tried to get him to change his answer, but he more or less insisted that he was 13. His dad gave a frustrated eye-roll as he realized his scheme had been thwarted and that he had to pay for a full priced round of golf for the both of them.

Fast forward a few months and they come back, this time with the entire family. I recognized them and once again asked the boy how old he was. I again responded that he was 13, but this time his mom "corrected" him and insisted to me that he was 12, with kind of a "oh, don't listen to him, he's just a confused child" tone. So here I am confronted with someone whom I know is lying to me, trying to save a few pennies, but do I seriously call her a liar right to her face? And what if she stood her ground? What if he was in fact 12, despite my 99.9% confidence that he wasn't?

I talked to my boss about the incident, and he just smiled and said that you have to let those go. If I had called her on it, she would've probably been so offended that some teenager had the nerve to question her (even though she knew she was lying), and we probably would've lost a customer. The lesson I learned is that getting taken advantage of is part of the cost of doing business. You can have a robust set of rules and regulations, but it's still going to happen. So, do you chase down every fishy claim, or do you bite the bullet and except the minor loss?

Really, how often do people ask for refunds for anything? This is just my gut feel, but I'd guess that at least 90% of transactions leave the customer satisfied enough that they don't ask for a refund. Hanging n' Banging claimed that 95% of customers' issues were BS, but what percentage of the total customer base is made by these people? Is it ten percent? Five percent? I've been accused on the site before of having too much faith in people when discussing religion, but I really believe that everyone isn't out to work the system--most people have a good sense of honesty and fairness. If you preoccupy yourself with going after everyone that you think is lying to rip you off, the resulting stigma of bad customer service might do you more harm than getting ripped off (by a small percentage of people) in the first place.

birdhombre said:

Yeesh, now I feel guilty for returning something to Amazon I decided I didn't need. I had to pay $6 shipping, but they gave me a full refund. I guess I should have just... thrown it away? Sold it on eBay? Or is it OK so long as no close family members died before I returned it?

It's been hit on already, but different situation - especially at Amazon where the return policy is a chunk of the business model.

With that said, how do you end up buying something you don't need? I couldn't tell you the last time I returned something that wasn't a problem because of fault on the other end (broken, mislabeled, etc.).

In fact, I almost mentioned one of my pet peeves earlier - those people at the home improvement stores who are returning pallets of boxes of tile or laminate flooring or whatever. Why did you buy so much?

It's like rather than take the responsibility of determining how much they need, they just go buy a ****load and bring back what they don't use. That's incredibly ignorant to me. Just how I am, I guess. I'm not going to put the burden of making sure I only bought the right amount on the store.

I generally estimate and if I'm under go back for the difference or if I'm over, hold on to the extra - it's never much and it makes for matching repairs.

But I digress.

As far as the other side, I tend to see what Hanging n' Banging is saying. I think the difference between him and slithernoggin is the cost of the product. There's a decent difference in price between a movie ticket and a park ticket. Make the price of the product a $150 hotel room and you'd be amazed at what people try to do to get something for nothing. Do you accomodate? Of course. Does that make it any less a burden? No.

And I imagine the percentage of bogus refunds differs everywhere, but reagrdless of what it is (1%, 3%, 5%, 10% - whatever), you have to figure that over the long haul, that's how much more you're paying for yours because of them. Whether or not that's significant or matters is in the eye of the beholder.

I dunno. I see it as common courtesy - which is why I initially compared it to arguing with a ride op over which seat you can ride in - I really see these two a similar situations. Returning merchandise at a store like Target or Amazon barely qualifies as being a valid comparison. There are certainly times that returning stuff makes sense and is the right move. There are also times it doesn't.

To me, a season pass is the latter.

At the very least, I know how to start a discussion, don't I? (smile)

Lord Gonchar said:
With that said, how do you end up buying something you don't need?

Heh, just buyer's remorse. Once I got the item and it didn't quite live up to expectations, I thought "Really? You spent $122 on this thing?" Technically there wasn't anything wrong with it that was Amazon's or the manufacturer's fault (maybe dubious claims that the technology actually works vs. just relying on placebo effect) and I read plenty of reviews of this and similar products before buying. If it weren't for the generous return policy, I probably wouldn't have bought it at all -- so that's where you're right about it being part of their marketing/business model.

Of course now I'm sure everyone's wondering what it was. ;)

Oh, do tell!

Just to be clear, tickets for our show (Blue Man Group, for the record) top out at $99, bottom out at $49 (obstructed views of the stage), with a VIP experience at $150 a ticket.

I assumed movie theatre.

No worries.

Lord Gonchar said:

It's like rather than take the responsibility of determining how much they need, they just go buy a ****load and bring back what they don't use.

But why? If the store offers a full refund with no restocking fee, then as the customer, I'd much rather buy too much and bring the extra back than too little and have to make another estimate. And the store is probably happy with my business because of their return policy.

Isn't this exactly the other side of the coin of "accepting the others' established conditions."

For no other reason than what I've been saying all along. It feels like a dick move.

Not sure it's the other side of the coin or not. Feels more like, "I'm taking advantage of your policies to be lazy...if I'm off in my estimate, I'll just bother you and expect you to fix it."

I don't take their return policy as an invite to not give a ****, it's there for legitimate reasons.

Again, nothing more my personal feelings. Who knew? For as much as I have a rep for being blunt or a dick, I'm courteous to an annoying, incomprehensible level in reality.

Lord Gonchar said:
At the very least, I know how to start a discussion, don't I? (smile)

1. Controversial news topic with an emotional appeal is posted.

2. The vast majority of the responses line up on one side of the topic.

3. Gonch posts a contrarian position.

4. Pages of discussion follow.

5. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I think the stores don't complain too much about people who buy too much with an idea of returning the extra because the stores know that at least some of those customers won't bother to bring back the excess. So you sell more to them than you would have had they carefully planned out what they needed. And in my experience, store estimators tend to overstate the amount of most products that you need. So the stores in a way are actually encouraging the "overbuy and then return excess" approach.

Different stores in different industries will make different determinations in terms of return and refund policies which, at least in theory, are aimed at maximizing profits. Often more of an art than science so they may get it wrong. And as has been noted here, I suspect that some stores underestimate the value of an upset customer in terms of where they draw lines for various policies. Often times those are difficult dynamics to measure. You often times do not have a control group on which to base difference approaches.

I just can't imagine there are a lot of people who buy way more than they need because they can return what they won't use.

It seems more likely to me that there are a lot of people who aren't very good at estimating how much they'll need.

bigboy said:

1. Controversial news topic with an emotional appeal is posted.

2. The vast majority of the responses line up on one side of the topic.

3. Gonch posts a contrarian position.

4. Pages of discussion follow.

5. Lather, rinse, repeat.

If only it were that easy.

I didn't really take a contrarian position to what was posted prior to my jumping in, I think Six Flags should have refunded her for ALL of the passes - especially after they screwed up initially and told her no on the husband's pass - and said as much a couple of times.

The thread took off when I posted an opinion unrelated to the disucssion up to that point. The key is to have an interesting opinion.