14 DAY TRIAL // Customers at a Harris Teeter grocery store in Charlotte, North Carolina, will definitely come back to the supermarket, after being awarded up to hundreds of dollars in free merchandise.
The store gave away free groceries at their Morrocroft Village location, and it wasn't for marketing purposes.
Sunday morning, November 18, lines were full of clients making Thanksgiving preparations. A “minor glitch” in the system rendered all the cash registers out of order for an hour and a half, Charlotte Observer notes.
Danna Jones, spokeswoman for Harris Teeter, explained that the store couldn't accept cash transactions, so they decided to make their customers feel comfortable while they waited.
Store attendants served turkey and ham sandwiches and snacks – pimento cheese crackers and sushi rolls. In addition to that, the 60 to 70 people who were left waiting got to take home their groceries for no charge.
“Rather than inconveniencing our customers, we did allow complimentary groceries to approximately 60 (to) 70 customers who were in the store trying to check out,” Jones states.
In some cases, the bills amounted to hundreds of dollars. David Coburn was one of those who waited in line. In took 40 minutes until it cleared up, but it was worth it, as he walked away with $110 (€86) worth of free groceries.
“I think Harris Teeter handled it really well. They showed how much they cared about their customers and even the customers were – for the most part – taking it in stride,” Coburn says.
This weekend, a glitch in the computer system also made some Bank of Scotland clients happy. An ATM machine malfunctioned and spat out twice the amount they asked for. The police had to be called in, as a crowd gathered after news spread on Twitter.