No, it is not because they sell overprice coffee (which they do). The whole WTC Water Debacle turned my stomach and I tell everyone I know about it.
I can understand an employee not having the gumption to be charitable with their employer’s merchandise, but the way the company handled this situation is nothing short of incalculably stupid. What an opportunity for excellent consumer relations. How 'bout - “We’re going to supply the Fire Department with water for the length of this crisis and donate x to x fund(s)” Nah! Here’s your money back (after the press hounded us about it).
I tell everyone I know about this and I’ve resolved never to buy from them again. I used to go there every weekend and get a coffee for my wife and me, now we have a French Press and I make my own.
Also, the entire chain of Andy’s Cheesesteaks and Cheeseburgers (more specifically, the store located in a small town near the Wayne County/Duplin County border in North Carolina). Horrible food poisoning. They had an inspection a few days after I got sick, and wound up with a very low B rating. The inspector cited numerous cross contamination risks, and none of the meat was being stored at the correct temperature.
Another Circuit City one. I went in there once as a teen with my mother. Wandering around while she looked at stereos, I see that she’s getting frustrated so I go to help her out. The stereo keeps turning itself off for no reason. I look around to see two young male employees with the remote laughing at her.
I have never been in there again, and I never will. Its been 10 years. I won’t even let my electronics-happy husband buy things there. No one messes with my mom.
Nike, Disney and Gap, because of their appalling record of outsourcing the manufacture of their goods to companies that vastly underpay workers and provide dreadful working conditions in Indonesia and other third world countries. (For more details you can read No Logo by Naomi Klein.) I know a great many other companies do this and I try to check as much as I can, but these are three companies are the three that I can consciously say will not benefit from my custom.
Oh, I agree it’s a really stupid law. But there are a LOT of stupid ass liquor laws out there.
And if it is just store policy, then it’s doubly so. But yeah, I agree.
The way it was explained, is someone’s girlfriend came in after the guy-and she was CLEARLY no older than 16. She reminded him she wanted a bottle of something-let’s say rum. The clerk asked for her ID, she didn’t have it, and the bf said he was paying anyways. The clerk said he couldn’t do it, the customers got piss, and said clerk refused the entire sale. So, I don’t know. It MAY be a stupid policy, or law-but don’t take it out on the employee, if they’re at the very least polite about it. Talk to the manager. We’ve had a LOT of dumbass policies at KrapMart and I have zero sympathy for people who get pissed at clerks for STORE policies-clerks have NO CONTROL OVER IT!!!
Thanks, Cnote. I mean, as much as I agree with the customers, when it comes to things like that, very few understand it’s a question of keeping my job.
Pep Boys–after swearing off the place years ago, I called them the other week. Whereas the phone at other parts stores rings at the parts counter where the counterperson either helps you or puts you on hold and helps you next, the phone at Pep Boys rings at the checkout lines and they put you on hold until the parts ripen on the vine or something like that. I never did talk to a parts person there and I never will again.
This is not a sentence that I ever thought I would hear. Courteous help at Service Merchandise… inconceivable!
The one company I will refuse to patronize is the NY Times. I was never a big reader of their paper, but did check out their website quite often. Until, that is, they decided to run a poorly researched piece on my company, suggesting accounting fraud. They were trying, I’m sure, to get a scoop on the next Enron. I did not appreciate the large drop in stock price the story precipitated.
What’s funny is that the Pep Boys in question is just down the road from a couple of cheapie parts stores and about a mile from the best “real” part store/machine shop in the area. I guess they really don’t want the business.
I used to feel that way when I called places and they put me on hold. However, it bugs me more when I get off my couch to go around and search for what I need and have to wait on someone who didn’t want to get off their couch to get a price check on 6 different brands of… well anything. Personally, I think places should always have at least 2 other people working that are not working cash registers. That way there is at least one to answer the phone and one to help people out so they don’t have to stand in line to find out where a part is only to get in line again. Auto parts stores tend to be the worse at this though. In short, I think the person standing in line with a part and money in their hands should take priority over the person who may or may not show up at the store.
Brandsmart When I was 17, I purchased a cordless phone and was suckered into buying the extended warranty. Within one week I determined that the phone was defective. I returned the phone and picked up another identical phone.
I got the second phone home, kept it for a few days and we were experiencing the same problem. It would sort of half ring and when I would pick it up, I could hear my neighbor having a conversation, sometimes he could hear me say “hello” sometimes he couldn’t hear me at all.
I took it back to Brandsmart and following is why I HATE THEM: According to the assistant manager counter person, because I had already returned the phone once, I was now using my extended warranty and as such, they could not give me my money back or exchange it for any other kind of phone. I had to get the exact same brand, model, etc. I tried explaining that I had already done that once and for some reason that particular brand of phone was picking up my neighbors calls. I spoke to two different counter people both claiming to be service managers and actually waited another 45 minutes for the “real” manager to come talk to me.
He was talking as he walked up to the counter and his exact words were " Darlin’, I’ve already heard about your problem from my assistant manager and sugar all I can say is he’s right, you’re wrong and there’s nothing we can do for you. Now is there anything else because I’m really quite busy".
I was floored. I couldn’t believe that he not only called me darlin and sugar, but that he dismissed me like a piece of crap right off the bat. He didn’t have the courtesy to talk to me, find out what my side of the story was or even address me by name. I just took my phone, walked out of the store and haven’t been back since.
I wrote off The Good Guys! (an electronics chain) when I spent an entire day driving back-and-forth between my home and their store. All I wanted was a cassette-to-cassette recorder that would allow me to adjust the volume while I did the copying.
Every salesman I asked told me every unit they had supported the feature.
Every salesman was lying.
For being such bald-faced incompetents who caused me to lose an entire day because I believed them, I refuse to give them any more of my business.
Dilbert, anyone who can’t be bothered to get off their couch to bid on my business is not bothered with my business twice. If I need parts I do not need to practice my driving skills by hitting every store in town to see who has the part I need. The reason I called Pep Boys that last time was because it was Sunday, I needed spark plug wire ends and boots and no other store that was open had them. After being on hold for five minutes, I gave up and got them on Monday.
This is, however, irrelevant to my beef with Pep Boys. While other parts stores will put you in line with a counter person when you call up, Pep Boys puts you on hold for an indeterminate amount of time before the counter picks up and puts you in line. I don’t mind waiting if they’re busy, but I do mind waiting to wait if they are busy.
At about age 12, I bought a calculator off of an ‘as is - no returns’ table at a Radio Shack once. Broken, of course - my mother advised me that if I had trouble returning it, to just inform them that, being that I was a minor and thus cannot be held to contracts, I would be sending my mother to get the money back.
You shold’ve brought along my mother
I never had to resort to this tactic, didn’t have trouble getting my money back. I stopped shopping at Radio Shack anymore for a different reason - because my wife used to work there and I saw too much
MCI, the phone company. They illegally changed my parents’ phone plan to a more expensive one without notifying them. (This is known as “cramming.”) Then, they made my parents go through a bunch of shit to undo it. If this had happened to me, and it was a regular store, I would have called the police. But alas, companies like MCI are above the law.
The Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren and their ilk, I just hate the image it would send. Also, many, if not all of these companies abuse their workers.
Here’s a bit of trivia: Did you know that the US government helped overthrow a Guatamalan reformist government in the 50s to protect the interests of the United Fruit Company? I’m not sure if they’re still in business (I can’t find their website on google,) but if they are, I’ll certainly never buy any of their products, should I have the opportunity.
Any place that allows their employees to smoke around the customers. To me, it’s unbelievably disrespectful to the customers. Convenience stores are the worst offenders. I go in to pay for my gas, I come out smelling like a chimney.
The one mobile home supply store in Springfield, IL allows their employees to smoke on the job, and every last one of them does, all the time. I did a small remodeling job earlier this spring, and I had to go in maybe five times. There was a thick haze obscuring the merchandise, and my clothes stank after each visit. Ridiculous.
hyvee, an employee ownd grocery chain would not sell me coleslaw. at the deli, i asked for three pounds each of coleslaw and potato salad. the deli man told me that there was a sale on packaged salads, and sent me to the refrigerated case. sure enough, there was potato salad, but no coleslaw. i returned to the deli, and told him i still needed the coleslaw. he tried to send me back to the packaged section. i told hime there was no coleslaw there. he argued that there had to be. i pushed my cart full of groceries (a couple hundred dollars worth) behind the deli counter and told the guy that albertson’s would be happy to sell me coleslaw, along with all of my other groceries, and left the store, never to return.
al;so, the mens clothing section at dillards is not interested in selling a suit to a man with a pony tail. i am sure of it, because i was unable to attract the attention of a salesman.
Wal-Mart. I don’t think anyone has mentioned it yet, but I really dislike everything about the place. Their employees are underpaid and generally overworked. Their clothes are of dubious origin and poor quality. They refuse to let their pharmacies sell Preven, the morning-after pill. When Wal-Mart is the only pharmacy in town, this is really a big deal. There are other problems, too, but these are the biggies for me.
Sears. I am completely convinced that the salesmen in the hardware department are trained to ignore female customers. (Hey, Lowes has a better selection anyway.)
