I could turn this into quite an extended rant, but I’ll keep it short. These kinds of businesses are everywhere, but I’ve discovered they’re something of the norm up here in small-town New England. The first type knows it all because they’ve been running the place for 35 years (when their parents didn’t run it for 40 years before that), and has absolutely no clue about how to judge business, traffic, customer feedback, reviews etc. and fix problems (and keep up with the times - maybe people ate gloppy pasta with bland sauce over it in the 1960s, but…)
The second type is much worse… they start from much the same position and then attend seminars, read E-Z marketing books and godelpme faithfully follow “expert” webinars… and slavishly follow every Secret Trick, Business Tip and Marketing Must they’re presented. Totally by the numbers, totally without a clue… and totally without effect on their shitty pizza, service, presentation or attitude.
A lot of these businesses are two or three simple (not necessarily easy) steps from success beyond their wildest dreams - they have location, an amortized plant and decades of reputation to build on. And they just keep crapping all over it and admiring their webinated biz smartz.
ZULILLY!! (or however you spell it) - they’re all over my phone with ads (free games), they’re all over my yahoo mail and sometimes I see something cute and I forget and surf on over and there it is “WHAT’S YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS?” And you can’t X past it or do anything about it. So I sign in with “fuck you at fuck you dot com” but now I am too pissed to check them out.
My Home Depot underwent the invisible orange aprons to the ubiquitous ones change about 2 yrs. ago. Now it’s like Safeway - “Find everything you need?” 100 times. But I prefer that to stalking down an orange apron.
I will never see a show at your venue if I can’t walk up to it and buy a ticket at face value from an actual person. Ticketmaster and the like will never get another dime from me.
Had a power outage one time for 6 hours. Our cable went out for two weeks. Charter not only tried to charge us for the full month, but actually tried to tack on extra charges! That was the most egregious of many mistakes Charter made during my year of hell as their customer. Fuck those guys. I don’t care if Charter IS ten times faster than the shitty DSL I currently have (it sure as hell wasn’t fast when I had it), they will never get another cent from me or my descendents as long as my bloodline continues to exist.
There’s an even more irritating variant of this on some specialty online merchants. You get all the way to checkout… and they will not show you totals, tax, shipping, fees, anything until you’ve completely filled out the billing and shipping info. I can’t think of a time I actually completed a sale on one of those sites, even if I likely paid more going somewhere else.
Such klever marketing weens… ha ha ha they want to see our prices so we’ll CAPTURE THEIR ASSES!
“My fortune devolves unto my heirs and their heirs for all time to come UNLESS THEY GIVE ONE CENT OR MORE TO THESE IDIOTS in which case all the rest of my fortune will go to the Home for Retired Squirrels in Lincoln, ME”?
Those people are, of course, morons. I use my Amex whenever possible. But I always always always have my MasterCard debit as backup because I know there are places that don’t take AmEx. I’m totally fine with that.
But what his coworker would do? That would piss me the fuck off. If the owner believed it wasn’t worth any extra fees to accept AmEx, he can stop taking AmEx. And I’d be totally fine with seeing Visa/MC only. But if your shop accepts AmEx, treat it the same as any other form of payment. The annoyance does NOT come across as directed towards AmEx; it feels directed at YOU, the customer. And if I get that when I go to your store (especially if it’s more than once), why the fuck would I want to go back? I wouldn’t.
No, not a Groupon policy. But every coupon I’ve looked at has a litany of specifics and restrictions that the seller has set about the way you can use the Groupon. Like Joey P said, the place usually ends up losing money on it so they are trying their best to cover their asses. A Groupon already is a discount so no place wants to give you more discounts when you use it.
This. If he wants to use that blue square as a come-on, he has to stand behind it, no complaints.
That said, I find it mystifying why Amex has any users and merchant base outside the mid- to high-end travel, entertainment and accommodations industries. Between their ludicrous user fees, painful merchant fees and restricted acceptance, it just doesn’t make a good general charge/credit card. Yes, if you travel and entertain a great deal, especially on a corporate account, Amex is an optimized tool. But their insistence that ultra-premium, $150-600/year posh rewards cards are for evvabody is just nuts.
I used to live near a gas station that had a peculiar one-way policy, even though it was a regular place with two islands and eight or so pumps with enough room for people to drive around
I was unaware of the OCD Gas Nazi and as I was about to unscrew my gas cap, they came out yelling at me for going the wrong way. I said “Sorry about that, I’ll go somewhere else.”
I got my Amex with my Costco membership, no additional fees beyond the ones I would have been paying for Costco anyway. I imagine most Amex cardholders got their card under a similar deal. The card is free for me, and comes with better rewards than any of my other cards - so why not use it as a general card? It’s taken at 90% of the places I go.
Amex users tend to be… well, *defensive *isn’t quite what I mean, but they tend to be strenuous supporters of the card and brand. I find it quite peculiar. After all, Amex’s entire reputation and marketing base is about how incredibly exclusive and special they are - you’re really arrived when you can whip one out. Since you spend your entire life in airports, resort cities and Fifth Avenue, the bennies for spending in those places are just the bee’s knees. See a lot of high-end entertainment? The exclusive ticket service will make you feel warm and special all over. Etc.
So handing it out with Costco memberships is a bit… huh. But in reality, the card is a shuck for about 90% of its users and 99% of the merchants who take it. Like everything else that can only hold its position with endless marketing effort, the whole thing - or at least the parts outside the tiny niche it really serves well - gets a little questionable.
ETA: I’ve been suckered into green, gold, platinum and black cards over the years, and each time it takes me until about the first pricey renewal to figure out that it’s marketing-driven nonsense. Been 12-15 years now and I still throw away two or three come-ons a week from them.
They’re a monopoly. They don’t HAVE to care. One thing ALL cable companies do is keep their prices fluid. Their contracts typically run from six months to a year, if you keep the service beyond that, they don’t bother you at all, they just up your prices to whatever their normal (very high) charges are. This means every six months to a year you have to spend 45 minutes or more (often more) navigating their phone tree with the stupid robot voice and then arguing with a “customer service rep” who will EVENTUALLY offer you a deal that’s close to your old one, but not after RELENTLESSLY trying to upsell you to a more expensive package that offers you more, more, more that you don’t really want. If you’re not alert to changes on your cable bill, or willing to do the equivalent of haggling with a used car salesman every month, you get stuck with some really high cable bills.
We recently went through this deal with every single effin’ day at exactly the same time AT&T called up and tried to hard-sell us their U-verse thing. Every. Single. Day. THEN it became multiple times per day. I don’t blame the service reps, they’re just doing their job. But the company would not understand that
we do not have smart phones, therefore, that part of their “bundle” is completely useless.
we do not have cable
we do not want cable
we don’t want your effin’ “bundle” because 2/3 of it is useless to us
STOP CALLING US!!!
I finally, after two months a week and three days (yes, I was keeping track) got through to someone who could FINALLY take us off the goddamn phone list.
Now they’re filling up our mailboxes.
Thank Og we still have stupidphones or I’m sure they’d be sending us texts all the time.
When I was at Target they would teach us to NEVER mix food and chemicals, keep frozen/cold stuff together, and do fabric separate from things that might ruin it (get it wet, rub off, etc.)
So the bagging complaints make sense because I usually end up with 50,000 bags myself, but it at least has a rhyme and reason to it
That bugs me too, and it relates to one of my other pet peeves–emails to customer service where they rationalize their bad service.
Half Price Books won’t show shipping until you’ve completely filled in address and CC info. I emailed customer service saying that I thought they needed an easier way to show shipping since there are many other placed to buy used books which don’t make you jump through a lot of hoops. Their reply was basically “Yeah, that’s how the website works. Oh well.” I’m like, No Kidding! I know your website sucks. At least tell me you’ll forward the request to IT for consideration (where I know it will go to die anyway).
I disputed (successfully) a charge with an online company who adjusted the shipping charge afterwards. I called them up about the charge (I had a printed out receipt) and they said “Well, that’s just an estimate, we source the parts from all over the place and we don’t know that the shipping is going to be until after you order it”. Over and over I continued with “But my receipt say that $98.34 (total) and you charged me $123.22, you can’t just charge me $25 more after I’ve checked out and not tell me about it” it went back and forth a few times and I eventually submitted the receipt to the CC with the dispute.
Unfortunately, they’re really the only people in the country that sell parts for this machine so I still have to go back to them, I just know that I’m going to pay more than what my receipt says.
Well, AmEx has branched out a bit, which has (IMHO) answered part of your question but kinda raised another.
AmEx traditional cards are charge cards, not credit cards. You have to pay off the balance every month, so the customer fees and higher merchant fees offset the fact they don’t make money from interest charged on your account.*
But now they have actual credit cards in addition to the charge cards. This is what I have and I love it. No fees, low interest rate (though we pay it off each month), a free annual credit report plus score and cash back via AmEx gift cards. I also get the exact same excellent customer service AND AmEx adds a year onto manufacturer warranties and it’s as close to hassle free as a warranty claim can be.
So that’s why I think AmEx has wider appeal. On the other hand, I’ve wondered why AmEx can’t have “tiered merchant fees”, with the usual higher fees for the charge cards but lower fees for the credit cards. Unless that’d be too much of a hassle, maybe.
Just including this for anyone who may not be familiar with AmEx.
