October 9, 2007
Steven Scott Sather carried a badge.But the 46-year-old California man was a building code enforcement official, not a policeman. Prosecutors say he claimed to be a cop and threatened to arrest a Target store manager who refused to refund his money for a defective computer game.
As reported by the Modesto Bee, a September trial resulted in a hung jury; prosecutors are deciding whether to take Sather back to court.
Sather's troubles began on Independence Day, 2006, when he tried to return Cars after being unable to get it running on three separate computers. From the Bee:
A store security camera shows Sather at a customer service counter, flashing his badge for about one second as he spoke with a manager and another employee.
Store employees told police Sather identified himself as a police officer three times and insisted that they were breaking the law by not giving him a full refund for a defective product.
They said Sather promised to return to the store in uniform, with handcuffs, to arrest the manager, who would offer only a replacement video or a game of equal value.
Sather's attorney called it "a customer service situation that went awry."
Comments
Because no one likes not being able to return a defective product. But I admit it was rather foolish of him to try and use a badge to get the refund. I would hate it even if he was a real cop.
E. Zachary Knight
Divine Knight Gaming
OK Game Devs
Random Tower
quite. As i understand it, shops are legally obliged to refund a product up to 1 year after selling it, on producing a legitimate reciept. after that, its up to them.
strange how most game shops dont adhere to that.
He then continued, under his breath "...due to my client being a dumbass."
And no, it's not illegal to refuse the refund. Most stores that sell PC games have a strict policy of not refunding them, but rather exchanging them. This keeps people from buying games, copying them, and then taking them back to the store.
And I agree with E. Zachary Knight, this would piss me off even if he was a real cop.
I've rejected a fair number of people expecting refunds for games that had more scratches on it than a chopping board when I used to work in retail...
what these stores should do is advertise this fact more readily, but other than that they're not wrong.
@ some guy
I think my local GameStop will give you cash for a returned game, but its only half of what they offer as a store credit which is half of the retail price. Not completely sure, but I think they do.
I don't think anyone is legally obligated to take anything back after a purchase, 'All sales are final' - and nor should they ever be.
I'd guarantee you I could get that game running on his PC, assuming his hardware will support it, and if his hardware's not - maybe he should read the box first - not the companies fault he's incompetent.
I agree with you that it was probably his computers not having the correct requirements to run the games. Funny how the specs for his computers are never mentioned.
http://www.enotes.com/everyday-law-encyclopedia/purchases-and-returns
In short, most states say that retailers should (or must, in some cases) post a list of their returns policy if it strays from the common social belief of what it should be.
Even if a merchant says that the sale is final, and the product being sold is advertised as, "As-Is," the consumer may still have a remedy if the item is substantively different from what the seller says it is. Yes, this means that an XBox being sold as "Works - As-Is, no returns," can legally be returned if it arrives DOA.
Despite Walmart's policy a manager can override it and give you the money back. This has happened to me twice in at least 4 years time of buying moves and games there. I have had some really strange cases at Wal-Mart. My first copy of GTA: Vice City had no game inside. I had to go all the way back and get another one. The game had been sealed and everything, just empty. I opened the other one there in front of them. No worries there. However, sometimes you cannot get a replacement disc to swap out. There was no copy of one movie I had bought but was ruined by another customer and repackaged for sale. They gave me the money back no problem. This was the local store.
Once in Charlotte I had bought some Stephen King box set that was missing the worst movies in the package. It seriously had all the good ones accounted for, but was missing "Kujo" and others. So my wife and I had to drive back to Charlotte and by then I was not keen to getting it replaced. The quality of the discs inside was horrible. I could have printed different labels. The packaging was in shambles once you opened the plastic and it just not worth the money. They had other copies exactly as poor shape as this and I demanded my money back on those grounds. The manager balked and I told him he could not sell me such horrible merchandise that was deceptively not what you were led to believe it was. This was not a cheap $20 box set, but more than $45+.
After nearly ten minutes of arguing, him telling me the DMCA made it illegal to sell since it could have been copied and me refuting that the issue had anything to do with the DMCA and instead POS quality packaging, discs, potentially missing items, and false advertising I had the money back and he was left with his crap back in his hand.
The only time Wal-Mart has ever denied a return on an item that they had a policy on was some karaoke discs I bought. I had bought an Apex 3 disc machine that said it played karaoke discs. No mention of whether it did CD+G or DVD based discs. The clerk wasn't sure and I got a couple of discs to test it. It was my fault to not have done more research on videohelp.com on the model or read the manual THEN opened the discs. The model only played DVD karaoke discs it seemed. They offered to take the DVD back without question but not the software. So, in reality I would have been better off had I taken that offer. The DVD player lasted far less than a year and taught me a lot about discs. If you don't know if it will run on the machine, do the research. Come back and if it's still there buy it. If you don't find it again, an Internet purchase will likely be just as cost effective.
I told them that was my main reason for purchasing that version, and since exchanging for another box would result in the same problem, I convinced the manager to let me return it. It was essentially misleading advertising about the contents of the package, which should never be the basis for a sale.
BUT this is a case about pretending to be a police officer and acting in a way that would have been abusive of power for a real police officer...
The guy got lucky that someone on the jury hates target or software return policies enough to ignore his clear guilt in this instance....
true we have enough bad cops we dont need fake dumb ones, still I would liek the system to move back to keeping a consumer list and black listing thos that go over the store limit than the woefully one sided retarded you bought it you broke it menteailty..