First, a disclaimer: I work for Target, not Sears, so things a little different.
Now, a few nitpicks:
Why, oh why, must I get the mother fucking* manager? I’ve worked there 6 years, he’s worked there 6 months. I can manipulate the system far more efficiently and in your favor than he can. Also, if I’m telling you that no one in the store can help you, it’s not that I’m trying to save Target some money. Actually, I’m trying to save you some time. I will always do the most I can for you, but there are rules that can NOT be broken, by anyone.
No, we will not deliver it to you. We have a website that can do that for you, but individual stores cannot. All of our trucks are driven by independent contractors, and only from the Distribution Center to the store and back. No, an employee can nt deliver it to you, due to liability bullshit. Plus, you’ve already bitched about how long it took for you to find someone*, so what makes you think there’s someone just sitting around, available to hand deliver your precious fucking candle?
I’m not gong to call every store in the area for you. Why not? Because I probably don’t have the time to. It’s just me out here, and there are pissloads of people waiting for me to answer their questions, too. I’ll call the nearest store, because they’re on speed dial from my department. No, I will not call Grand Rapids, Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Traverse City, or Minneapolis (yeah, that one threw me, too). The fitting room attendant has a Target phone directory, she’ll give you all the phone numbers you could desire.
*Sorry, this turned into a hijack, and has little to do with the OP and the subsequent posts.
Because the manager (like me in my job) is usually the one who can bend the rules or approve extraordinary measures to satisfy the customer.
As I said, Sears does have an in-store delivery staff, so I’m not really sure why you included this – I would never expect Target to deliver anything to me, but I’m not complaining about Target, am I? As for liability issues, as I said before I work at a grocery store – the same chain but different location from SSttR. We do occasionally deliver. In fact, last week, someone called and complained about the taste of one of our rotisserie chickens. Since we pride ourselves on the quality of our fresh departments, I got in my car and took them a new one. That chicken was only $6.95, but the service I delivered guarantees my store a customer for life.
You see, if you get a manager to help the customer in distress, you can go about helping your other customers and the manager can make the calls around to other Targets. Or you can call someone to help the other customers and you can make the calls yourself. At my store, if we are out of something, we call around. If another store has it, we’ll tell the customer and s/he can go get it or wait for a couple days for us to go and bring it into the store, even if we have to buy it from a competitor. We make this a priority even though I’m certain that our margins are significantly lower than yours. This is why we are the #1 rated supermarket for customer service.
That’s for damned sure. If you want a bitch thread where you vent about reasonable customer requests, go start one. Working where I work has lead me to be very critical of the service delivered in other stores. My expectations for customer service are very high; however, the behavior of the Sears associate above would be unacceptable even if I weren’t used to treating my own customers exceptionally well.
As for my OP, I wrote the letter, with some tweaks – I pointed out that I felt as though I were an imposition on Wally and on Sears, and I asked them if they’d rather I take the $1,000 I’ve spent there in the past two months elsewhere. I dropped it in the mail today, and I will keep y’all updated. It’s possible that Sears can satisfy me yet. In-store, I was civilized and polite, and I even kept on my retail smile when he was talking to me like this, though I was internally absolutely appalled. It’s time for wait and see.
Human nature. Many people desire to get a response from the person highest up in the hierarchy, even if that person couldn’t find his own eyeballs with a map and a hot fork.
When I was a bookkeeper at a small business, I would often go out to the counter to help with a customer complaint. I would introduce myself by saying hi, I’m the bookkeeper, what can I do for you? or some shit like that, and I would fix the problem. Never mind that the counter person was more experienced (in that field of expertise) or that she worked the counter 40/week while I added beans in the back room, forget that she could have handled the problem exactly as I would have and probably more quickly—customers always seemed to respond better when they felt their problem was being handled by someone with a title.
In the end I told the counter person to refer to herself as the “office manager” or something when she handled problems like that, so customers would feel more secure that their problems would be addressed.
OK, I know the whole “get the manager” cry can be annoying, because it’s happened to me time and time again:
ex.
Me[points to sign that says “We do not cash money orders”]: I’m sorry, I can’t cash that.
Customer: Let me talk to your manager.
Manager[points to sign that says “We do not cash money orders”]: I’m sorry, I can’t cash that.
Customer: OK.
But if a customer drives out of his way to make a purchase for nearly $500 of an item that was said to be in stock, waits around to be helped and is not acknowledged, and after all that can’t even get said purchase for another week, I’d say getting management involved is a fair call. As BH explained above, at our respective workplaces it’s not unusual for an employee to deliver a forgotten chicken or sub to a customer’s home as to not inconvenience them. These are 6-7 dollar items, people. There definitely should have been a manager involved in the OP’s case- what are they there for, if not to assist with customer problems?
We no longer shop at Sears either. When we moved across the country, we sold all of our large appliances with the house. We had to buy a washer and dryer when we moved into our apartment, and went to Sears. They delivered them and set them up, and the first time I washed clothes, the laundry room got soaked, because they didn’t connect the water line right.
We went back a couple of months later to buy some exercise equipment. Like your story, it was in stock, until we went to pick it up, and then it was gone. That was irritating, but we thought it was a one time thing.
When I was pregnant, we looked all over town for a place that sold cribs. Everyone was out of stock, all over town and in neighboring towns. We didn’t want anything fancy, but it seemed that the only ones we could find were $300+. We went to Sears one day, and found one for about $200, and even though it wasn’t exactly what we wanted, I was getting anxious about having a bed for the baby, so we bought it. We were thinking about coming back and getting the rest of the set (Dresser, changing table, etc. etc.), but wanted to do one thing at a time. We bought it and the mattress and paid for both, and got the mattress right away, but were sent to the pickup area to get the bed. We waited and waited and waited, along with a growing line of people, and were ignored for at least 20 minutes. I tried to get someone back there, but no one ever came. Finally, someone came out to tell us that they were looking for the crib. They came back and told us they were having trouble finding it, but were still looking. This went on for another 30 minutes or so. They finally came back to us and told us that it was out of stock, but they had another one in stock that we could take home that night. Not only was it not similar in style or color, at all, it was also about $200 more expensive than the original one. I asked if we’d get some kind of discount, and I think we were offered a $25 discount. I told them that we wanted our money back for the mattress and bed and we left. We went to K-mart (of all places.) a few days later and picked up a simple crib and mattress for about $150, and took them both home that night.
Up until then, we would have made any large appliance purchases at Sears, but we don’t even go to the store anymore.