One woman wanted to wear Prada but thought she could use a popular scheme to avoid paying for it: Purchase the goods, then wear and return them.
What she didn’t expect was that she would get caught by an employee turned private investigator.
In a viral video that has amassed nearly 794,000 views in one day, TikToker Ben Blue (@benblue01) explained how he caught a customer trying to return items she already wore to a luxury retailer.
@benblue01 #stitch with @Jordyn Aaliyah ♬ original sound – Ben Blue
“The first thing you need to understand is we work on commission,” Blue said in the video.
He explained that his job pays a base rate, but workers can also earn commission on purchases when they assist customers. However, if a customer returns an item, the commission they earned is deducted from whoever puts the return through, even if that employee didn’t do the initial transaction.
The first time the customer in question returned expensive items Blue sold her, he wasn’t working, so one of his co-workers had to take the hit.
“Hey, do you remember that person you sold Prada to?” his colleague asked shortly after the sale. “Well, she just came back and returned what you sold her.”
A week later, the customer showed up to return more items she purchased from another of Blue’s colleagues. Upset that a co-worker’s commission would be deducted yet again, the TikToker decided to do some digging to ensure the return was legit.
“So at this point, we ended up looking up her sales history, and it was from a different store, but it was basically like bought then returned, bought then returned,” Blue said.
Apparently, the customer was a serial abuser of the store’s return policy; she would always make purchases right before the weekend and then return them right after. When Blue looked up her name on Instagram—which he warns other retail workers not to do—he said he found pictures of the woman sporting the items at events.
“She would buy expensive stuff to wear to these events, and when the events were done, she’d just return it,” he alleged.
Because the store had a pretty lenient return policy, the manager’s solution was to flag the woman’s name so that other employees wouldn’t sell anything to her.
That didn’t stop the woman from trying, though.
Years later, Ben changed stores and forgot about the drama but re-encountered the woman.
“This lady comes into the new store, and I’m putting a sale through for her, and then boom, this note pops up,” he said.
He decided to disregard the note and still put the sale through, just to see what would happen. Lo and behold, the customer returned the items a few days later.
When he checked her profile with his new store manager, they discovered she had still been bouncing between stores with her purchase-and-return scheme.
In the comments section, people were more concerned with the store’s pay and commission rules than the customer’s behavior.
“That salary system is seriously messed up!” one viewer said.
“I’d support her 100% if it didn’t hurt the employees :/,” a second wrote.
“That’s WILD that they can deduct commission from somebody who didn’t even make the initial sale,” a third remarked.
“Yah it’s pretty crazy!!!” Ben responded.
“I mean I don’t see the problem if the return policy allows it,” another user argued. “This sounds like the company needs to change the way they do commissions.”
In similar news, another TikToker went viral a few weeks ago after complaining about Saks customers who return items after wearing them and posting photos on Instagram. The clip amassed over 1 million views.
The Daily Dot contacted Ben Blue via email for comment.
