Do you ever...

[AngryChris]

I have a few locations that I use to get rid of my short-date items.  These few locations buy everything I put in but the shortage is anywhere from 20-35% usually.  I avoid a complete loss by selling the short date items, but I feel as though I am doing them a total favor by providing my service.

 

Do you ever have these customers approach you and COMPLAIN about the service?  I usually laugh at them and tell them that I will remove the box if they don't like the service but I am trying to do them a favor.

 

I had one customer call a full-line vendor (a competitor of mine in the full-line business who is also a friend of mine) and asked if they could provide an honor box instead of me.  It was hilarious!!  He actually told me that he laughed at them because he didn't do honor boxes and I was probably the only honor box guy in the area.

 

One customer approached me on location and complained about a bag of chips being out of date.  Sure enough, the bag of chips was out of date.  The funny thing was that it wasn't a bag of chips that I put in there, and when I counted the money, the box was $1 short.  Someone had traded their 1oz. bag of chips for my 2oz. bag of chips.... or should I say they STOLE my 2oz bag of chips and "gave me" a 1oz bag of chips.

 

I have had different customers on several instances complain about the box having no snacks in it.  Of course, the boxes were always short on money whenever that happened.  The customer's idea?  Put more snacks in it so they don't run out.  Who cares if I make a profit or not?  My job is to provide them a service where they can try to tell me how to do my job regardless of whether I make any money or not, right?

[Rick]

Let me see if I have this right.  You sell these guys your short date items...items you'll otherwise be throwing away in a week and, in return, they "buy everything you put in" with 25%-30% shortage (about 5-10% higher shortage than the standard honor box anyway).  Unless I've misread, which is entirely possible, how are they not doing you the favor?  I can see your dilemma though.  There's no way you can service these boxes every week, but the product you're putting in is only good for 1-2 weeks, so obviously there's gonna be quite a bit of outdated snacks no matter how you play it.  It would help if you had some way of advertising this as the "bargain bin" or somehow letting them know the only reason these are even here is because they have looming expire dates.  

[AngryChris]

Let me see if I have this right.  You sell these guys your short date items...items you'll otherwise be throwing away in a week and, in return, they "buy everything you put in" with 25%-30% shortage (about 5-10% higher shortage than the standard honor box anyway).  Unless I've misread, which is entirely possible, how are they not doing you the favor?  I can see your dilemma though.  There's no way you can service these boxes every week, but the product you're putting in is only good for 1-2 weeks, so obviously there's gonna be quite a bit of outdated snacks no matter how you play it.  It would help if you had some way of advertising this as the "bargain bin" or somehow letting them know the only reason these are even here is because they have looming expire dates.  

 

The account that complained about the service has an average shortage of just over 50%.  No, they are not doing me much of a favor.  I am doing them a favor.  The other accounts like that don't have shortages so high but they do get better service from me and they haven't complained about anything.

By the way, my current average shortage rate throughout all of my honor boxes is about 10%.