Not a week’s passed in 2012 where C and I haven’t debated the pros and cons of offering kegs to go at the ol’ beer shop. While it’s nice to offer kegs of beer to customers who are good, there are some that behave badly, putting us through the wringer, quite literally.

Cases in point—

It’s MY keg; I bought it!

When you buy a draft beer, you’re LEASING the keg shell and BUYING the beer in the keg. This is something that I continue to struggle with in conveying to customers. When I hear them imply they’ll be keeping the keg, I remind them, “You are not buying the shell. The shell is the property of the brewery and needs to be returned in good working order — after you drink the beer.”

It’s especially important that those buying kegged beer from small, local breweries return the empty shells in a timely manner. Little breweries don’t have a lot of shells laying around and by not returning the shell in a timely manner, they’re put in a stranglehold.

Despite calling and leaving messages for a customer who purchased a local craft beer, the keg was never returned. To keep a good relationship with the local brewery, we paid them $180 so they could purchase a new 1/2BBL keg shell, which our customer never returned. (As I post this, it’s been nine months, with no return despite calls.) This customer is now on my “No orders from this person” list as by not returning the empty shell he stole the keg from the brewery…and he also stole the party pump tap he rented from us.

I ordered that, but not that!

Woman calls in. Orders four half-barrels of Budweiser for an event. As this is a lot of beer — one 1/2BBL is 15.5 gallons — and she’s ordering 62 gallons worth! I repeat the order three times on the phone, making sure I have everything correct. I always let folks new to ordering for events that it’ll take a little time to fill out their Washington State Keg Registration forms when picking up the kegs, as well as the information needed for the forms (driver’s license, storage address, serving address). She’s cordial on the phone, and since it’s for a nonprofit event, requests an additional discount. Since it’s FOUR kegs (bulk) and helping support efforts to cure cancer, I extend 15% discount (that’s equivalent to 50% off our gross margin, very generous on my part!).

We place the order, the beer comes in. She is called and notified of the Budweiser kegs’ arrival.

She comes in to pickup the kegs, is harried. Despite having been told in advance that it takes time to complete the state-required forms, she’s parked illegally and left her child waiting in the auto. She tells the beer clerk, “I’m here to pick up my Bud Light kegs.”

…did you catch that? She just changed her order to Bud Light at time of pickup! I know she ordered Budweiser as I was the one who took her order and confirmed the beer with her three times on the phone. I step in and re-confirm, “Budweiser” and she nods ‘yes’ at me. She runs out to mover her vehicle; again, leaving the child waiting. I complete each of the forms, writing “Budweiser” at the top of each; she signs each form in receipt of each keg of Bud. I review the receipt with her, again, confirming “Budweiser.”

The next day, during her event, she calls and complains, “I ordered Bud Light and these are Budweiser kegs. I want you to refund me for one of these kegs.” You gotta be kidding me! Ugh. I really can’t take calls like this. She has just called me a liar on the phone, and I KNOW I am in the right here. This is a case of: “The customer is always right, even when they’re wrong.” I hate this about retail. I really do! I got her what she ordered. I can’t help that she may have changed her mind, that she accepted and purchased what she originally ordered, but tried to get out of it later because someone else at the event was unhappy that she’d ordered the wrong thing. Now her error has become my error, even though I did it totally right! Double-Ugh!

The following day, she returns three empty kegs, and one unused keg, and asks for full refund on the empty. I already depleted all my “play with” money on her sale because I agreed to give her nonprofit an extra discount, but C still gave her a little extra refund on the kegs. She’s still not happy. So what’s done to make her happy? My husband gives her $40 cash from his own pocket. That’s his pay; and as a small business owner if you calculated his pay vs. hours worked he doesn’t even make minimum wage. And he’s giving her $40 of his pay. WTH?! She’s still not totally happy, and I’m not sure I want customers like this.

We invoke a new company policy: No special discounts on kegs for nonprofits.

My eyes are bigger than the kegerator.

Customer has a new kegerator and orders a 1/2BBL keg. They get it home, it doesn’t fit into their kegerator. They attempt to force it, call in saying they had to “bungy cord their kegerator door closed and it’s still not working right,” then demands return and full refund. Shopkeeper takes the keg back, resulting in nearly a $200 loss to the small business. If you’ve got a kegerator, be sure to know its dimensions as well as dimensions of kegs BEFORE you go buying the keg… check out keg dimensions on MicroMatic. We will not do this again.

New policy invoked: Customer acceptance of keg before it leaves the store.

I’ll make it fit!

Customer orders a European keg. The keg goes on backorder because some Euro kegs are hard to get, two weeks later we get the keg in for the customer. At time of order we asked the customer if he needed to rent a Euro tap. “No, I have the Euro tap already,” he replies. When the keg comes in, I ask him when he’s picking up the keg if he’s got a tap for it already, and he again confirms.

Customer returns later with two keg couplers in hand, frustrated. “I can’t get my Euro tap to work on the keg.” I look at the coupler; he has the wrong kind. There are five styles of Euro taps/couplers and he’s got the wrong kind for the beer he ordered, despite having told us he had one. I hesitate to rent him our A-style coupler as I’ve had customers tear apart ours for use on their home kegerators despite them not being able to work on those systems due to the absence of the CO2 valve. He agrees to leave the hand-pump intact and rents it for his weekend party.

Later he calls and says his keg is damaged, claims it was the handpump which works perfectly on that style of keg, but we clearly realize that he FORCED either his other Euro style or an American Sankey style coupler into the keg, breaking the keg.

We take the keg that left our store in 100% operational condition, and is returned in broken/damaged condition full of beer that’s now gone flat because the customer damaged in, and we lose nearly $200 in the deal. Again, WTH!?

We haven’t yet established a new policy for cases like this. If it were up to me, he wouldn’t have gotten a dime back for destroying the keg, not even his keg deposit. But C felt that he didn’t want bad publicity (scathing online review) from the customer. “But it was the customer’s fault,” I argue. I really, really, really hate this part of retail.

What did this customers learn from the experience? That he can buy a perfectly good item, take it home and damage it to the point that no one can use it, and then get his money back.

As a retailer, what did I learn from this? That I don’t want to work with customers like this. He just cost me nearly two weeks of grocery money for my household.

And the discussion question continues:
“Kegs to go, or not…?”

All this also leaves me wondering, “Should the retailer take a financial hit in effort to avoid a bad online review by a customer who’s been behaving badly?”

My dad’s question echoes: “Are you sure you want to go into retail?”