Deals Stores / Dollar tree Cashier and Manager On-Duty Humiliated and Treated Horribly Springfield Missouri

First I would say that this is a store I have been shopping at for quite some time, without issues and without problems. This is a first, but this first was so objectionable as to justify my first report here. 

The store wasn't terribly busy and I was buying all but a couple items with an EBT card using the food stamps program my state offers. Times are tough, people who never thought they would be on them have come to use this program and I am one of those.

Checkout went fine until the end, when the informed me that the EBT balance would not cover all of what my purchase required. I had been holding two cards (with my debit) for just this reason and so, was ready to pay cash for the balance the register would ask for, as this normally works for a split purchase, and this is where things went poorly.

The cashier allowed me to swipe the EBT card, informed me that the balance of my EBT Food Stamps were not sufficient and I would have to make good on the balance owed in some other way. She not only informed everyone in line and nearby with her loud tone that I was using an EBT card, but used a hard edged tone that suggested I might have been trying to get away with something. 

Upon explaining that this would be no problem, three times, (as she didn't seem to understand the process of a split EBT purchase with cash items or a balance issue), she directed me to swipe my card for the balance not covered by Food Stamps. No Problem, as this is how it was supposed to work.

She watched me swipe it, then asked me to swipe it AGAIN to cover the other part. Other part? This was paying the other part......

This was the first time I learned that my initial swipe of the EBT card was not valid, she had cancelled it, and she had failed to tell me that fact before directing me to swipe my other card. This caused a serious issue for lack of communication...and had just forced me to charge the whole purchase on a cash card which wasn't available for that purpose.

A manager came over and I thought it might solve something, until she also took a more confrontational tone than her cashier, right from the start, and got worse with it when a customer behind me suggested they owed me an apology for shoddy treatment and the miscommunication costing me what it did. 

After I completed the transaction and went to leave, the manager informed me that "my kind" were not needed at her store and that I need not return. 

Unfortunately, I am left upset, confused and frankly put off from dealing with any of their store locations or the Dollar Tree locations after this. Deals is in process of being absorbed by Dollar Tree, as employees there have said for weeks now, so it seems a mix of the two right now.

If this is their level of customer service, and they feel humiliating and seriously inconveincing a customer is the customer's fault, I would at least warn anyone using EBT of the experience I had at this location. Respect for their custoimer and a desire to do right by them seems entirely lacking and to a profound degree in this instance.

It may not be characteristic of my experiences at this store, but it was a store manager who reaffirmed the mistreatment from a cashier, and followed another cutomer's suggestion of apology with even more fierce and hostile attitude all around.

This is a store which deserves neither the money, time or tolerance, if this is to be their new way of doing business as they transition to a new brand and sign on their door. 

- A Very Disappointed Deals Customer