Late last year, during some festival (maybe Diwali, not sure), we had gone to Big Bazaar in Koramangala, Bangalore to do some purchases.
The bill came to about Rs. 2450. After the billing was completed and the payment was made, we were informed that there was an offer going on where a purchase of Rs. 2500 would get us a 6-piece drinking glass set!
Why couldn’t they have told us before the billing, so that we could have purchased some small item of Rs. 50-odd and availed the offer?
The scheme was that every purchase of Rs. 500 would get us a gold sticker, and 5 stickers (Rs. 2500) would get us the glass set. So for want of Rs. 50, we ended up with 4 stickers.
Anyway, we came back to Big Bazaar next week (when the offer was still on) and did some more purchasing which came to over Rs. 500, and thus got another gold sticker. Now we went to the gift redemption counter and asked for our gift.
To our surprise and dismay, we were informed that since this was the last 1-2 days of the offer period, stocks of the gift in question had been exhausted!
I got really angry and told the person at the counter why they were continuing with the offer when the stock had been exhausted? He did not have any answer for that.
He then said that they were expecting some stocks from another Big Bazaar outlet which would come by the next week, so we could collect our gifts then. He gave us the Big Bazaar outlet number and told us to call next week.
We called twice for two weeks after that, only to be told that no new stock had been received, and all the old gifts were exhausted. So much for Big Bazaar’s scheme and brilliant staff!