Operational Failure & Loss Of Consumer Trust

I periodically buy groceries at a local, smallish chain called Kings. It was, some years ago, acquired by Marks & Spencer of the UK, then sold again, to whom I don't recall. The chain is known for good-quality produce and an upscale selection of merchandise, as well as very good and pleasant service.

The chain used to encourage customers to use the chain's affinity card, but that stopped some months ago. Recently, perhaps to challenge Stop 'N Shop's policy of giving a 2 cent credit for each bag brought by the customer, Kings announced that, henceforth, they would give a 4 cent/bag credit.

Stop 'N Shop has self-checkout of two varieties, about one of which I wrote in that linked post. Thus, it's easy for the customer to enter the number of bags they have brought, and receive the credit.

Kings has no self-checkout. Only human cashiers.

Thus, it's been my experience over the past few months, that perhaps as often as 4 times in 10, the cashier won't remember to ring up the 4 cent bag credit. Typically, it's a teen-aged employee who neglects to do this, despite my prominent display of one of the chain's own distinctive mesh plastic bags upon checking out.

This has caused an interesting reaction in me. While realizing that we're only talking about 4 cents, I never the less find myself annoyed when the cashier fails to notice my bag and deduct the paltry amount.

In the past six months, my attitude toward the chain has gone from one of respect and overall positive image, to one of increasing annoyance at their inability to execute on their own bag credit policy.

Better, in my opinion, that they simply drop it, or assume you have a bag and just show a deduction, than cause minor disappointment by failing to implement a policy they chose to rather publicly trumpet.

Now, I feel like I'm being lied to by the chain, since the odds of the cashier correctly implementing the policy is not different than a coin toss, unless I start selecting older cashiers for a 4 cent payoff.

Hardly worth the effort.

But Kings' management has now, well, managed to make me believe they are becoming as inept as Stop 'N Shop's own management team. Only the latter is much larger, headquartered in another state, and more understandably incapable of sensible behavior.

Kings isn't.

It's clear that Kings' managers aren't making the bag credit policy important to cashiers, because they don't seem to pay much attention to whether a customer has a bag, or not. So it's a failure of training, monitoring and rewards for competent cashier behavior.

I wonder how many other customers are beginning to slowly, subtly change their opinions of the chain from this small but very noticeable failure?