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Have you ever been excited to use a coupon or discount code that seems like it’s going to give you a great deal, only to find out that actually, it’s too good to be true? Honestly, it’s a familiar feeling, because whether intentionally or not, it often turns out that these things actually end up not saving you that much money – or even costing you more or leading you to buy things that you wouldn’t have actually purchased. It’s a clever sales tactic, since we’re all excited when we think we’ve got a good discount, only to sometimes realise we’ve been duped out of our cash down the line.

And that sucks – but it sucks even more for the retail workers like the one in this story, for whom these confusing coupons and deals lead to even more customer confusion, even more customer frustration, and even more headaches in an already taxing job. Because some customers – grown adults – don’t take it well when they are disappointed. And when you find out that the great deal you thought you were going to get isn’t actually a good deal at all? Yeah, that’s incredible disappointing.

Read on to find out what happened here.

Yes, you get $20 off of $100 purchase… of family apparel, NOT toys.

In the mobile application for the store I work at, we have a function where you can scan any item and the app will bring up a coupon for that item. For example, if you scan a dairy coupon, it’ll bring up coupons for any items related to that department.

Thing is, if we have no coupons for certain items out, then it’ll bring out whatever is in the system. If you scan an item from the sporting goods department, it’ll bring up coupons for general merchandise if there are no coupons for anything in sporting goods.

While I was attending the self scan registers, I was called over to by a lady and her family who had $100 worth of toys (and way way more than twelve items…) and she was inquiring why her $20 dollars didn’t come off of her purchase.

We didn’t have any specials going on at the moment, so I was curious as to where she was getting this idea that she was supposed to get $20 off.

Let’s see what the customer was expecting the discount for.

She pulled out her phone, pulled up the application… and scanned the biggest toy that she had sitting in the bagging area (which was some humongous bouncy castle with a ball pit), and there it was!

To see it closer with my own eyes, I pulled out my phone and pulled up the app, and scanned it too. A coupon was brought up.

The coupon stated: $10 off of $50, $20 off of $80, $40 off of $120, or more

I looked closer at the small writing below as she pointed at the coupon for me, saying “See? I’m supposed to get $20 off of my purchase and it did not come off!”

But the customer hadn’t read the small print.

Below, it said “Men’s, Women’s, or Kids apparel purchase (Excludes Jewellery & Accessories, Shoes, Sporting Goods, and Clearance.)

I explained, “Ma’am, this coupon is for a purchase in apparel, not toys. And the purchase is for $80 dollars worth.”

She replied, “Yes, I know, but it still did not come off! I am supposed to get $20 dollars off!”

She then clarified, “When I want coupon, I scan the item like this.” -boop- “And this coupon is for this item.” She showed me her phone after she scanned the castle, jabbing her finger at it.

Let’s see how the worker responded to that.

I told her, “Aaaand if you look at the writing below, that coupon is for a purchase in apparel, not toys.” I pointed to small writing below. “When you scan an item, the application only brings up the closest related deal in the department. It does not mean that it’ll work for that item.”

The lady then insisted, “But the $20 is supposed to come off!” And this went back and forth with me explaining the same thing more than four or five times to her.

She realized that I was not going to budge, and she had me pull in my co-worker from the systems department, who basically explained THE SAME THING to the lady, which to no surprise she argued about it with her too.

Systems friend refused to budge as well (she’s stubborn and I love her for it), and the lady gave up and forfeited her order. I cancelled it off of the machine and had to grab a large cart to put all her stuff in.

Honestly, it sounds like this system is quite confusing.

It would make sense for the woman to be confused by this, since she scanned the item and a coupon came up – really, if the coupon isn’t valid for that item, it shouldn’t be bringing up coupons for different things, because this is always going to happen.

It seems more like a miscommunication than anything here.

Let’s see what folks on Reddit made of this.

This person agreed that the company’s app had made this more confusing than it needed to be.

While others had similar experiences with confusing coupons.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a bank employee who immediately resigns after being denied a bonus.

Meanwhile, this Redditor suspsected the customer was just trying to persuade them to give her the discount anyway.

When companies make these coupons – whether they’re paper coupons or in an app – they really should be making things as clearly understandable as possible. Because there are plenty of folk out there who might struggle to understand coupons with fine print or confusing rules – after all, some people’s vision might not actually be able to read tiny writing, other folk might not have sufficient fluency in the language, and there are folk who lack the cognitive abilities to fully process the implications of the small print too. And all these people are prone to being misled by confusing or unclear offers – as well as plenty of folk who are doing their shopping in a rush or while stressed too.

This isn’t just a problem for customers, it’s clearly an issue for workers in the store too, who have to either slowly and patiently explain to confused or distressed customers, or they have to deal with customers getting more stressed and frustrated, maybe even ending up taking the brunt of their irritation. Which isn’t fair because it’s not their fault – but it’s not necessarily the customer’s fault either. Who is really to blame? The stores for trying to catch out their customers, leading to them paying more.