Today I walked into borders with 3 dvds, which i had gotten as a gift in the past month or so. The clerk, Jamie, seemed to be a jerk about it. I didnt have a receipt, since it was a gift, and when i walked into the store the alarm sounded. When I took the items up to Jamie, he scanned them and yes, they were sold by borders, and they were still active, from the anti-theft tags. After little while he kept scanning them, and I asked "Is there a problem?" and he just seemed very sarcastic and prickish. "No, no problem." Just a bad experiance with borders to say the least. Personally, I can see that it may have looked like I walked into the store, took the items off the shelf, and was returning them, but I went from the door to the line, and was still looked at like a criminal. Anyone esle have similar problems?

Similar thing happened to me when I went into Virgin Megastore - the alarms went off. Only 1 was found to be active. But they seemed to be cool about it. One of the clerks near the door told the, I think, manager, that the alarms did go off when I walked in, but she was cool. Also there was 1 or 2 they would not take because they did not carry anymore and the cashier, a different employee, said that we'll just debug these others just to be sure you will not set off the alarms on the way out.

Otherwise, let me do direct exchange. No problems or pretty cool about it.

Borders hires some real assholes sometimes.

This was about a year or two ago, but I was shopping in a Borders I visit quite frequently. I had a magazine and a couple of books, and I was at the front of the store by the registers where they have the common feeder line (it's where there's just one line with a "LINE STARTS HERE" sign where you get in line and go to the next available register when you're up).

So there's one cashier, and she's waiting on someone. I'm not ready to check out yet and I start to walk up by the registers where they have the bookmarks and journals because I was looking for something to get my cousin for her high school graduation.

Anyway, this FAT UGLY BITCH cashier starts screaming at me "THE LINE STARTS OVER THERE! THE LINE STARTS OVER THERE!" Everyone in the store turned and looked at me. I was so pissed off I threw my books down on the ground and said Fuck you, bitch and walked out of the store. I hope her boss saw the episode and fired her fat, pimple-encrusted ass.

Yea, its kinda crazy how angry people are selling books. Lighten up everyone. I just felt this suspicion...Borders is supposed to be a classy place, I don't know if ill be going back anytime soon.

Not to negate anyone else's experiences, but everyone at my local Borders stores, all around the Los Angeles area, has always been cool. Sure, some of them are slightly disgruntled college-age folks, but I was once there too -- working in a different bookstore chain in high school and college -- so I cut them a bit of slack. But they're mostly pretty friendly and easy-going. No complaints here.

Were the DVDs originally bought at that Borders store, or is that just where you wanted to return them? I ask because you say the security tags were still active, which indicates they were either bought online, or at a store that doesn't use a system to activate the tags. If they had been bought at a store with that security system (like that Borders) they would have been deactivated at the time of purchase.

Since they set the alarms off, the clerk was probably tipped off that they had not been bought at that store in the first place, and he probably was taking them back begrudgingly.

Lets see you walk into a store with 3 DVDs probably bought somewhere else, looking for a store credit, and you don't expect to get hassled? Then you try to portray yourself as a victim?

Blame all of the people you have abused the system for years, not the employee.

This isn't always true. I bought Monk Season 3 from Targets last summer and walked out the door without the alarms going off. I returned it to a different Target about two months later and the alarms went off. I've also bought DVDs from Borders before where they didn't deactivate the security tags and the alarm went off. I turned to go back and have the cashier deactivate the sticker and they just waved me out the door.

You shouldn't portray yourself as the victim if you did buy them somewhere else, but you shouldn't get hassled at Borders for a receiptless return. They have an awesome return policy if you don't have a receipt. As long as the DVD is sealed and they currently have it in that particular store's inventory, they will issue a store credit for the lowest price that they sold it for in the last 12 months. The great thing about Borders store credit is that you can use them to buy books, CDs and DVDs at Amazon.

nice. i hate people like that.

If you've never worked retail you might not understand this but people do walk into stores and pick stuff off the shelves and try and return them, or they stole it from somewher else and try to get money back for it at a different location. If they werent cautious about returns without receipts, they wouldnt stay in business very long.