Generally speaking, I don’t enjoy being taken for a ride. It’s never a good feeling. Especially when it’s done by a small business owner who should know better because chances are that same business owner has been taken for a ride or two in their lifetime.
Well, I was taken for a ride today. For the first time, I visited a large local farmer’s market. It was an amazing experience in and of itself, soured only when I decided to break my own rule and purchase from a vendor before making the full first round.
Let me back up and say I went in with a plan. The plan was to walk the entire market, take photos of the places I wished to revisit or farmers I wished to purchase from, and only take out the money on the second pass.
This particular vendor had some exotic produce I’d been looking for and overcome by joy and stupidity, I decided to take out the money. I picked out my fruit, placed it in her care, she weighed and rang it up and boom I was hit in the face with a huge price tag. That, however, wasn’t what rubbed me wrong.
When I paid with my credit card, instead of charging me the exact amount she quoted, I learned later when I checked my account that she’d rounded up the total, thus stealing $2 from me.
Now, that’s not a lot of money by any stretch, however, that’s still $2 I could have used at another vendor to purchase a couple avocados or several oranges or some other fruit. Not only that, she didn’t offer me any type of receipt, not even when I asked. She and her daughter were too busy fighting with each other to focus on decent customer service.
What rubbed even more salt in that wound is had I waited and gone two more sections down, I would have saved a couple dollars per pound on two of the produce items I purchased from her. All in all, I ended up spending $10 extra dollars with her and she provided no service that would justify the extra cost either.
Needless to say, I won’t be returning to that vendor again. Period. Plus, she won’t be getting a great review from me either, which is a shame because her produce was actually quite nice.