Well, I think all the reasons moe gave are reasonable.
You would be terrified how many calls I take that go like this.
Me: Inventory, this is Drachillix.
Unknown Pseudo-customer: I was wondering if you stock this book.
Me: No I am sorry we do not have this book.
UPC: Its printed by company X
Me: Yes it is.
UPC: You are company X?
Me: We share a parent company but we are not one and the same.
UPC: It was written by Boring Author
Me: I am familiar with the title but we do not have it in stock.
UPC: I only want one.
Me: Have you tried your nearest independent bookstore?
UPC: They told me it was out of print.
Me: I can look but I will probably give you the same answer.
UPC: {huff} but it was only printed 23 years ago.
Me: {snort}
UPC: You guys never help me.
Me: I’m sorry you feel that way, would you like to discuss it with my manager.
The best part is, I work for a wholesaler we couldn’t sell it to someone off the street if we wanted to. Apparently
Actually that’s pretty much it. On Fridays and Saturdays we’re open later and the driver stays proportionately later, it’s busier then anyway. So it’s not a matter of him taking off, it’s when the boss tells him to go home.
I don’t think it would’ve gotten to the point of giving further explanation to the customer. She usually doesn’t call that late, either. When I say frequent deliveries, I mean frequent. Working in a liquor store is a great way to get to know your community, lemme tell ya.
look!ninjas, I get similar situations. The best is when they ask “so the price is what it says on the sticker?” One of these days I’m just going to say “Wow you figured out our ruse! Can’t pull one over on you, no sir! It’s free!”
Perfect. That’s as good a reason as any. Scarlett, I think you were reading a lot more into my question than what was really there. I was really only asking why they didn’t have a driver. I used to work in a pizza place and we always had at least one driver, until close. Seemed weird is all.
Sheesh.
Thanks for answering, Sam
Whoops, I mean sara, sorry!
I was also assuming it was a pizza place for some reason, I see now that it’s a liquor store. Even weirder. I’ve never seen a liquor store that delivers! That’s pretty cool, actually.
hey, no worries, lezlers. I thought you might be imagining a pizza joint or other restaurant, while I was thinking of a business (say, office supplies, or, as it turns out, liquor store) that offers local delivery, but only during 9-5 business hours.
Back on topic, I sell my handmade jewelry at summer festivals. I remember one woman who just FELL IN LOVE with my stuff and wanted to know if she could have a discount, because she was going to buy SO MUCH!!! This was my first year selling, so I cautiously told her it would depend.
She bought two items, totaling roughly $15. She did not get a discount. :rolleyes:
Now when people ask me outright, before even attempting to buy anything, I tell them I give a wholesale discount to shops. “Do you have a shop?” “Uh, no . . .” That usually shuts them up. It’s not a rummage sale!! :mad:
On the other hand, I do have a few “secret discounts” that I will give for large purchases of a certain amount, or for staff/performers at the festival. But I don’t mention them until I’m writing up the receipt.
OK, then I misunderstood your post. I think because you said “I’d ask why, as well”, that I assumed you were defending the customer as if to say “That customer did nothing wrong. Heck I woulda done the same thing myself”.
Yeah, I took some liberties. 
I have to agree with the OP in that sometimes some customers ARE jerks. I haven’t worked retail for year (decades actually, except a short lived stint at toys R us one christmas, I left after about 2 weeks, hell on earth I tell ya), but as lilbtagna here describes, stupid customers can ALSO frequently annoy and be a pain in the butt to their fellow customers.
OH, I SO meant to post this in the “other” thread.
Where’s the darn blushing smilie?
slinks off
good thing canvas shoes are silent. 
My employer, herein “Giganticorp”, has given all of its employees a wonderful present. They’ve done the math and decided that they’d like to keep their profitable customers and foist off the unprofitable ones on their competitors.
I am really looking forward to the first time I get one of those calls.
Caller: “Yeah, look, I’ve been with you guys for 5 years, and I want to know what you’re gonna do to keep me as your customer.”
(sound of typing)
Me: “Nothing at all.”
Caller (having decided they didn’t hear that right): “Humongocorp is giving away free (objects). I want a free object. Are you going to give it to me or am I going to go to Humongocorp?”
Me: “I have the number to their sales centre right here, sir, would you like to hold while I transfer you?”
Caller (sensing something’s wrong but just not what it might be): “Okay, we can talk about that later. I read on your website where you’re offering (primo plan designed to lure in new customers). Give me that.”
Me: “I’m sorry, you’re not elligible for that.”
Caller: “What? I’ve been with you for five years! My cousin has (nifty feature). Are you gonna tell me I can’t have (nifty feature) too?”
Me: “Yes sir, that is what I’m going to tell you.”
Caller: “You son of a bitch, that’s it, I’m not putting up with this anymore! I’m going to Humongocorp!”
Me: “I have the number of their sales department right here, would you like to hold while I transfer you?”
That’s gonna be fun.
Tell me you’re joking. Failing that, tell me where to sign up for a company so level-headed. Do I have to sell my soul at a crossroads? Or is this…
The Twilight Zone?
Submitted for your approval…a company that keeps its profitable customers and ignores the unprofitable ones…
See, now, that part actually sucks. Specially if it is a nifty feature like web access by phone or something.
Well, it sucks if there’s no way to get it other than signing up for new service (which you can’t really do if you already have the service). If you can pay for it, then it does make some sense.
Think about it: the company is including an extra feature free for new customers in order to lure them to their company instead of their competitor. The company is still making a profit due to the new customers, which will outweigh any loss from giving away the feature free. Wouldn’t it defeat the point of trying to increase profit via new customers if they were then forced to give that feature away free to all existing customers?
I was just queuing in the Post Office, a nasty long queue of about 20 minutes. Someone seemed to be refinancing the Bolivian national debt in fivers drawn from multitudinous pockets about her person, another man appeared to be trying to do the Nigerian banking scam on the cashier. But the main weirdness was the guy in front of me. He got to the kiosk, and the following conversation ensued:
Guy: How would I go about sending this parcel by DHL?
Cashier: I think you’d have to see DHL about that sir. We are the Post Office.
Guy: Ah.
Cashier: We do have our own courier service. We are the Post Office, after all.
Guy: Oh, no - I sent a parcel using the Post Office once before, and it was lost you see. Never again! It’s DHL all the way for me. (waves precious packet)
PO man: …
(exit Guy)
So that was weird.
I’ve seen that too! Someone was trying to send a package FedEx via the post office.
Yeah, FedEx has a drop box at the post office but they’re two seperate entities…
I wonder if that same person would try to send a UPS package via the FedEx dropbox…
Would be nice if they were to give some way for existing customers to get said feature for a fee, wouldn’t it? I was actually forced to cancel a cell phone and get a new number… on the same phone… for web service.
Going waaaaay back to this point (made by QUASI): My mom has acted as the general contractor on the last four homes she and my father had built. (Their home in AZ, their lake home, and their last two “hometown” homes.) She buys the lot, she gets the plans, she hires the subs, from the framers to the carpet layers. She’s not a professional general contractor, but she is the GC on that one project during construction. And she’s basically a little old lady. (Well, middle-aged.) So sometimes you can’t tell.
My customer experiences were (like so many others’) with older people. I worked in a motel, and jeez, the old folks wanted everything! Can we get the senior citizen discount? Yes. 10%. That’s not enough; we want a bigger discount. (Don’t we all?) We don’t like this room; it’s too cold. No, we don’t want to turn the heat up, we want a different room. Can Fluffina our vicious ankle-biting dog stay in our room with us? (Yes, if you take a “pets okay” room.) But we don’t want a pet room; they smell funny/have dog hair in them/aren’t as nice/whatever. We want to keep Fluffina in a non-pet room, although she is, clearly, a pet. This room has a light that shines in the window. This room is too close to the stairs. This room is not close enough to the stairs. I swear, for some of them querolousness is a hobby.
The worst, though, were the old folks from Canada:
“How much is the room?”
“$59.00 a night.”
“But that’s almost $100 Canadian!”
“Is it?”
“I can’t believe you would rent out your motel rooms for $100 Canadian – that’s ridiculous!”
“We don’t rent our rooms for $100 Canadian; we rent them for $59.00 American. Because that’s what rooms cost down here.”
“We’re not staying here! We’re going somewhere else!”
“I’m sorry to hear that; have a nice night.”
And, of course, 9 times out of 10 they’d be back, because that really is what hotel rooms cost and other places will charge the same if not more.
Yes, the current lop-sided rate of exchange means that Canadian money buys you less in America. If you want to avoid that sad fact, travel in Canada. But please don’t act as if your waitress or hotel clerk sets the exchange rate, because he or she doesn’t.
Well, now, that’s just stupid.
Well, I’ll admit, I am exaggerating my annoyance a little. It’s more one of those situations where I’d like to sit the customer down and explain to them that I’m not really a super-expert who’s devoted my life to understanding all 20 000 products stocked in this giant department store, but am actually just a regular guy who likes to listen to a bit of music, go out on the town and watch a bit of TV every so often. I do not really have much of an interest in the product they’re after and hence probably know even less than they do on the subject.
It doesn’t make me want to murder the shopper in question though, as I wish to do to certain other customers. So don’t feel too badly about doing it - it only comes under “minor annoyance”.
Actually, me and my fellow employees have generally developed a short list of stores we’ll recommend for anything, on the vague chance that they may have it. “Poodle Nintendo? You know, you might get that at Cat World. Sure, it says cat, but I know they have some dog stuff. That could include Poodles…”
If only 10% of these customers buy anything from the stores we recommend, these shops should be doing great business. We’re like a free advertising service for our competitors.
A friend of mine works for a company that ‘fired’ 2/3 of their customers. Seems they did some analysis and found out 95% of their profit came from 33% of their customers. The problem was that the project managers dealing with customers treated all customers as equal and tried to please them all (which is a good thing). However, the company decided that they wanted the project managers to concentrate on the profitable ones. Since it is unrealistic (and undesirable) to ask people to give shoddy service or for a company to give deliberately bad service, they fired em!
Unfortunately, the company I work for is a competitor. This means we received many contacts from these ‘fired’ customers. Even worse, the owners were all ecstatic at the ‘stupid’ move the aforementioned company. We received many clients from this. All very whiney, demanding, extremely cost-sensitive clients.
5 years later, we don’t have a single one of these customers. They all left looking for cheaper service. I am certain we lost 1 profitable original client and probably another because of our project managers dealing with the new clients.
The effect being that it hurt us.
So, 2true, your company may be very smart as well as doing you a favor.