I needed to buy a 12-inch 10W fluorescent tube to replace an old one.
I thought I’d take the old one with me, just to make it easier when asking.

Went to HomePro. A staff member found someone from the electrical lighting department for me.

I asked her if they had a tube like the one I showed her. She walked a short way and picked up another 12-inch 10W tube. It wasn’t a brand name I’d heard of, but never mind.

I asked her if the new tube was daylight or warm white. She looked at the Thai writing on the side of the box and and said daylight. Great.
I asked her just to test it for me, to make sure it worked. Told me they don’t have anything to test the tubes with any more.
Never mind. The tube was 59 Baht.

Paid and came home.

Fitted the new tube. It had a strong blue tint to it – not white at all. (It wasn’t a UV ‘blacklight’ by any means)

Straight back to Home Pro. Explained to customer services I’d been given the wrong tube.

She called someone over from the electrical department who took me to look for what I wanted - I took the old tube with me again. She instantly found a Philips daylight white tube - exactly the same as my old one.

.
Back to customer services who told me the Philips tube was only 42 Baht, so I needed to pick something to the value of 17 Baht (59 – 42 Baht).
I said no, I wanted the 17 Baht back, as I didn’t select the wrong item, their staff did that themselves based on the old tube I gave them.

After some discussion, the electrical staff member took out a 100 Baht note and gave it to the cashier to change, and gave me 17 Baht in cash.

 

It's not just the 17 Baht, before someone calls me a cheap charlie, but some shops do try to avoid their responsibility when their staff make a mistake.

Maybe I'm reading this wrong. Are you saying that the HomePro staff member got a 100 baht note from his/her own pocket and changed it with the cashier, then gave you 17 baht (from his/her own money) ?

14 minutes ago, bluesofa said:

After some discussion, the electrical staff member took out a 100 Baht note and gave it to the cashier to change, and gave me 17 Baht in cash.

 

Edited August 1, 20205 yr by chickenslegs

30 minutes ago, bluesofa said:

before someone calls me a cheap charlie

Cheap Charlie .. and make your mind up yesterday you wanted to be known as pedantic .. 

 

32 minutes ago, bluesofa said:

asked her just to test it for me, to make sure it worked. Told me they don’t have anything to test the tubes with any more

Hahahaha .. there is a obvious smut cake there worthy of Frankie Howerd but for fear of smuttyfying yo' thread I'm not availing myself of it .. I agree customer service leaves a lot to be desired sometimes .. oh alright all of the time .. 

27 minutes ago, chickenslegs said:

Maybe I'm reading this wrong. Are you saying that the HomePro staff member got a 100 baht note from his/her own pocket and changed it with the cashier, then gave you 17 baht (from his/her own money) ?

 

Thai people are very generous with those less well off, especially those in need of 17 baht more than they are. Well done shop assistant good karma coming your way for helping the needy.

Well, the worst of the cheap charlie farang and old Thai-Chinese customer mentality certainly seems to have rubbed off on you.

PM me your bank account number, I'll send you enough to get your light tubes for the next year. If you could also give me the name of the customer service member who attended you I'll be sure to send him a big lunch as a thank you for being the bigger man in a country where shooting someone for embarrassing them is the norm.

Protip: although it's too late for you to avoid being ridiculously abrasive; you should google what "bulb temperature" is, and then, armed with the technical knowledge of how to buy a basic light-bulb (including, hopefully, the idea that "Daylight" and "Warm" are a range of frequencies and will be different for each brand and bulb series depending on the exact K specification), you'll hopefully avoid taking 17 THB out of the pocket of a chap that probably couldn't afford to pay his lunch that day.

I’d be embarrassed not being able to find the aisle with the lightbulbs and finding what it is I need by myself.  I certainly wouldn’t ask them to test something that costs less than $2 to see if it works either.

Unbelievable. 

 

Get a life!

 

How stingy can a person get.

1 hour ago, chickenslegs said:

Maybe I'm reading this wrong. Are you saying that the HomePro staff member got a 100 baht note from his/her own pocket and changed it with the cashier, then gave you 17 baht (from his/her own money) ?

Far easier to settle up the 17 baht than suffer a death by a thousand cuts at the hands of the OP, particularly on a Monday morning.  

Research specific items needed at HomePro on the English website before you go so you can show them what you need.  Probably a loss in translation to what you need or the tube was no longer in inventory and showed you a similar specification that showed up on the website. 

2 hours ago, 473geo said:

Thai people are very generous with those less well off, especially those in need of 17 baht more than they are. Well done shop assistant good karma coming your way for helping the needy.

its the spirit of covid shut down times, i see it all the time they support the less fortunate in these times

Edited August 1, 20205 yr by scammed

2 hours ago, chickenslegs said:

Maybe I'm reading this wrong. Are you saying that the HomePro staff member got a 100 baht note from his/her own pocket and changed it with the cashier, then gave you 17 baht (from his/her own money) ?

Looks that way. Another embarrassment to all us farang. No wonder Immigration has tightened up visa rules and extensions. Not enough, obviously. 

3 hours ago, bluesofa said:

It's not just the 17 Baht, before someone calls me a cheap charlie, 

Just think, if you had taken 2 back you could have got some 7/11 rice and a 6 baht water

Being stranded in the Uk now close to 6 months I'm haggling of the price of a carrier bag and stealing one when I can ????

17 baht?  Reminds me of my wife's old Vietnamese grandma. She would send a kid (my wife) to the market to buy something, get the change and palm a bill.  Claimed she was short-changed and the kid owed her.  True story.  But granny made some of the best bean sprouts in town.  She bought a bag of mung beans from a farmer client of mine and tried to beat down the price.  40+ years ago, 17 Baht was almost a US $. 

Who has the desire to return a bulb? JHChrist, ahahaa

This is what i do after i come back from shopping in local shops, i have this bare concrete wall at our our apartment and i keep banging my head against it until it dawns on me that i have chosen to live in this country and this is as good as it get... until the next time of course...

the gossip about you when you left would of been priceless to hear. 

27 minutes ago, mr mr said:

the gossip about you when you left would of been priceless to hear. 

 

As i get older,  and taking inflation into account.........  i have now raised my amount from 17 baht to

26 baht before i cause a big scene   ????????

7 hours ago, DaftToPutRealName said:

shooting someone for embarrassing them is the norm.

Protip: although it's too late for you to avoid being ridiculously abrasive;

do you really believe it is the norm? or are you being ridiculously abrasive? 

Hells teeth Bluesofa, you need to get yourself a hobby, as it appears you have have too much time on your hands.????

How much fuel did you waste going back?

If you are that short of a few baht, let me know so i can set up a go fund me for you.????

Edited August 2, 20205 yr by colinneil

7 hours ago, Airalee said:

I’d be embarrassed not being able to find the aisle with the lightbulbs and finding what it is I need by myself.  I certainly wouldn’t ask them to test something that costs less than $2 to see if it works either.

Couldn't agree more. If I couldn't find the appropriate bulb, especially in HomePro or Global House, I'd be too embarrassed to ask. I can't recall ever having seen a bulb, tube package, without English writing. I'm wondering how the OP found his way to & from the shop.

He should team up with Liverpoolfan be a laugh a minute

7 hours ago, Scouse123 said:

Unbelievable. 

 

Get a life!

 

How stingy can a person get.

I don't think it was being stingy...it was being pigheaded stubborn....leave that attitude back in your home country....those behaviors are what get foreigners labeled as difficult to deal with. Go with the flow....your life will be easier and less stressful

17 minutes ago, malt25 said:

Couldn't agree more. If I couldn't find the appropriate bulb, especially in HomePro or Global House, I'd be too embarrassed to ask. I can't recall ever having seen a bulb, tube package, without English writing. I'm wondering how the OP found his way to & from the shop.

Most HomePros have so many vendor reps in the aisles you can't walk 2 meters without someone offering to escort you to another person who handles that product line....quite annoying but it's the reason I go to ThaiWatsadu instead if I can

How many Bluesofa's does it take to change a light bulb..............................    ????

8 hours ago, chickenslegs said:

Maybe I'm reading this wrong. Are you saying that the HomePro staff member got a 100 baht note from his/her own pocket and changed it with the cashier, then gave you 17 baht (from his/her own money) ?

 

I'm not certain if it was her own money, or if it was part of some internal transaction.

I know it came out of a HomePro plastic wallet around her neck, with some other paperwork in it. For all I know, the staff member could have been the supervisor for the electrical department.

I had to sign two forms for exchanging goods, one of which went to her.

 

 

 

I see there's quite a few posts about the 17 Baht.

In my OP I said I took the first tube back once I'd realised it was the wrong one, and wanted to exchange it for the correct one.

 

I see someone even derided me over it, asking 'Who has the desire to return a bulb?' Well I do, when I wanted a white one and was given a blue-tinted one, despite having taken the old one with me to show what I wanted.

I didn't take it back purely for a refund, but in order to exchange it for the one I wanted.

 

Nobody has mentioned that a large store initially didn't want to refund the difference between the two items, even though they mis-sold it to me, but instead wanting me to select something additional, to avoid the refund.

 

I was there anyway changing the item, so the 17 Baht was part of that. It was the principle, not just the 17 Baht.

I suppose if it was 1,700 Baht, or even 170 Baht, there may have been less criticism in the replies.

 

 

The comment: 'I certainly wouldn’t ask them to test something that costs less than $2 to see if it works either.'

In the UK that wouldn't be something that's done. It's quite normal in Thailand for electrical shops to do this when you buy a lamp - without even asking.

Previously I bought a florescent fitting complete with tube, from a Lamptan distributor locally. They made a point of showing me it was working, I didn't ask them.

In HomePro the reason I asked to check was to see if the tube was warm white or daylight. If they still had the board to lest lamps, then I would have seen straight away it was blue.

 

What that mentality of yours i kinda worry how smoothly things are going between you and your thai neighbors back in your moobaan.

4 minutes ago, GBW said:

How many Bluesofa's does it take to change a light bulb..............................    ????

Apparently the answer is ten: One to change the light bulb and the other nine to complain about it.

5 minutes ago, bluesofa said:

I suppose if it was 1,700 Baht, or even 170 Baht, there may have been less criticism in the replies.

that's chump change to all the thai visa millionaires. 

1 minute ago, bluesofa said:

Apparently the answer is ten: One to change the light bulb and the other nine to complain about it.

and 3 Homepro apprentices to hold the ladder....................????