Credit Card Policy Loses a Customer

A man buys some expensive jewelry for his wife at a downtown Saskatoon boutique. The store policy was to accept certain credit cards but not others due to the different back-end fees charged to the store by different credit card companies. The man was on his lunch break, and was informed that the card he was using could not be accepted - did he have another? He put the diamond necklace on hold, walked back to his office, got another credit card and returned to the store to complete the purchase. Management was presumably happy with this, since the cashier had followed policy, the store had saved a few dollars in fees, and they had still made the sale.

Unfortunately, two years later, this man still freely shares the story of how mad he was at being treated that way, and how he will never shop in that store again. He is freely sharing the name of the store too (though I won't) and buys his jewelry elsewhere now.

Look at your policies from your customer's point of view, not yours. Striving for success through cost cutting can be very expensive.