I don’t know- I don’t think this one holds water at all. All they wanted to do was see some watches. Wouldn’t it have been easy to explain that you would be happy to show them every goddamned watch in the case two at a time (per store policy)? I mean, if you were working the jewelry counter, that WAS your job. Sell jewelry. If the customer wants to see watches all damned day, you show them watches. I don’t see what they did wrong. (Also, if they were older, they probably couldn’t see the watches well at the distance through the glass and wanted a closer look- what’s wrong with that?)
Yes. But their making comments to her manager about Eureka having her period was waaaaay out of line. If they had just complained that she was rude to them and not made any comments about her period, you’d have a point.
So for a summer I worked the registure at a print shop. We had this customer, college-aged, but who clearly rode the short bus to school. And I mean that as a statement of fact, not insult. She was taking classes at the community college, trying to get a degree. Wonderful. Good for her. A degree in graphic design. Fantastic! You go, girl!
Over the course of weeks, she sucked days of time away from our graphic designer. They were taking the same class at the JC. Slow Girl would come in and want some thing she had made printed, but it the file would just be set up all wrong and our printers would have coronaries and spew out nonsense. Our graphic designer would basically have to re-design the whole thing just to get something usable. And while this was going on, Slow Girl would stand, very politely, at the front counter and stare at us. For hours. This happened for a few class assignments including the final.
To be fair, we would get a lot of normal intelligence people who just didn’t know how to design their flyers either. Normally, we fix the minor stuff for a fee or we send the file back and the customer fixes it or gets someone to. But because Slow Girl was slow, no one had the guts to charge her extra to fix her stuff. And we didn’t have time to reteach her. And it’s not like we can suggest she hire someone who actually knows what they are doing, it being a school project and all.
I’ve got no problem with people at different mental levels challenging themselves and striving for the best they can do. But how do you tell someone when it’s clear that they’ve hit the wall? And, should she get this degree by unwittingly climbing onto the back of others, how do you warn her future employers how she’ll basically be useless? I’m annoyed that she imposed herself, but maybe she didn’t realize. I’m annoyed that our graphic designer helped her, but what else could she do? I’m pissed, but I’m at a loss for solutions and worried that anything approaching honesty will sound like bias. Fuckitysuck.
Depending on how it was presented during the sales pitch, yes, frankly, I think that’s reasonable. Companies have very strange pricing plans, and put a lot of crap into them to make it seem like you’re getting a deal, or a sale, or a bargain, without it necessarily being a deal or a sale or a bargain.
I bought ISP service at one point long ago where it was a dollar an hour for access, but if you bought it $20 at a time, then you got twice as much time. It wasn’t a limited time promotion, and it continued until I stopped using that ISP for other reasons. Not too far from the deal described above, really.
But, you’ll notice, I primarily object to Sierra’s apparent insistance that correcting the customer service errors and bald faced lies of the local store was somehow the customer’s responsibility.
If McDonald’s screws up and puts pickles on your burger, do you take it back to the guy at the counter, or do you ship it to the corporate head office? Sounds to me like Sierra’s advice was not only company policy, but common sense as well.
Part of this is the problem! Customers are dismissed as looney and incompetent employees stay on the payroll.
A couple of years ago I bought a car. I walked in with financing from a military credit union. I had pre-approval so it was a matter of filling in the check a couple of days later.
This was not good enough for the finance guy. He wanted to run my credit anyway and told me I couldn’t buy the car otherwise. I agreed after I explained that he didn’t need to run my credit because the CU is financing me.
He came back and said that I didn’t qualify for the best interest rate because my credit score is XXX. No, I have my credit report in my car, my credit score is XXX + 60. Nice try asshole. I told him it didn’t matter because CU is financing me.
He filled out all sorts of paperwork. He told me I had to sign it or I couldn’t take the car home. He needed a Plan B so he could finance the car through their finance company in case my financing falls through. It won’t.
I explained to him that I also need a Plan B. If my financing falls through, I will be returning the vehicle. It was put in writing in the contract.
It was getting later and later in the day. I should have walked away, but at the time, dealing with the finance guy then and there seemed like the least of all evils. Finally, I was able to drive off the lot with my new car.
Two days later the check from the CU was dropped of at the dealership.
38 days later I received a bill in the mail from the finance company–the dealership’s finance company. I suddenly had 2 mortgages for the same car.
I called the dealership:
Dealership: You signed a contract! $XXX for 60 months!
EW: Ummm…read to me what is written right below that.
Dealership:“Customer has financing through CU, will return car with no further moeny owed if CU financing falls through.”
EW: I have a receipt from you saying I paid with the CU check on April 2.
Dealership: Yes, that is correct.
EW: So you received my check from the CU and submitted the contract anyway?
Dealership: It looks like that was done in error.
EW: Please fix this.
Dealership: You will need to speak with the finance company.
Finance company: You signed a contract! $XXX for 60 months!
EW: Ummm…read to me what is written right below that.
Finance company:“Customer has financing through CU, will return car with no further moeny owed if CU financing falls through.”
EW: Please fix this.
Finance company: As soon as your financing from your CU is received we’ll take care of this.
EW: I have a receipt from the dealership that they received payment on April 2. The dealership verified this information.
Finance company: Financing will go through before they receive payment if it is delayed.
EW: I understand that. But in my case, he was never supposed to give you the contract because if my financing fell through, he was getting the car back.
Finance company: You signed a contract.
EW: Yes. I signed a contract agreeing to return the car if my CU financing fell through. It never fell through. The dealership received payment and submitted the paperwork in error a week AFTER they received payment.
Finance: It will be taken care of. I just need to speak to the dealership directly.
EW: Thank you.
A month later I received another bill. I ran my credit report and sure enough, they were still reporting false information claiming I had 2 car loans for the same car. The most recent update had been just a few days prior to running the report.
It was finally resolved 6 months, 4 credit reports, $11 worth of 5-cent-a-minute phone calls, and 1 lawsuit later. I would not be satisified until the finance guy was fired over it.
He was.
Rotten patient rather than rotten customer, but still…
As chief surgery resident, I rotated onto a surgical service that was caring for a woman with a perirectal abscess that had been surgically drained once, but which required frequent dressing changes and needed additional surgery. She was a holy nightmare to nurses and residents alike, accusing us of lying to her about her condition, repeatedly threatening to sue, striking out, etc. She wasn’t clinically paranoid, but I could come up with a few personality disorder diagnoses that would fit. We saw her twice a day as a team and went over the plans for dressing changes and repeat surgery every time for several days, until the day came for her surgery, when she again started screaming that we had lied to her, we had promised no more surgery, we were going to give her a colostomy against her will, she refused to go to the OR unless her husband could go along to protect her, etc. etc. , all at the top of her lungs. Mind you, there was no medical reason for her to be such a bitch - she wasn’t wacked out on meds or anything.
I was approaching blind rage when I had an epiphany that hit me like a physical shock. It suddenly occurred to me that I was a well-educated professional with an enviable career and that I would be going home to a loving family later that day, and that I had never in my life encountered an insurmountable problem. She, on the other hand, experienced every day as an emotional hell, and I doubted that she had ever been or would ever be truly happy. My anger suddenly turned to profound pity. Ever since that day, when confronted by an abusive asshole, I remind myself of how much better my life is than theirs, and the abuse just sort of rolls off my back.
Wow, sucks to be you, ethanwinfield. But that is a clear case of customer service fucktardary. Both sides of the business could see that a mistake had been made and couldn’t resolve it for months and months.
What makes no sense is when the service provider has done everything they reasonably can and the customer is still dissatisfied, usually because they are unreasonable. Example: I had a job answering emergency phone calls at a hospital. One night a lady calls to cancel her appointment for the following morning. No biggie. I fly through the computer prompts and tell her that it’s all taken care of. She wants me to call the doctor at tell her personally that the appointment is cancelled. It was 9pm. The doctor’s day starts at 7am. Politely as I could, I explained that the doctor was probably sleeping now, but that she would see the cancelled appointment in the morning. The lady screamed at me and demanded to know the name of my manager (somehow, she understood that the manager wouldn’t be there that late at night). I politely gave her my manager’s name and her office phone number. The lady swore I would rue the day blah blah. I hope she broke her hip falling over her ego later when my manager blew her off.
In fairness, it is probably difficult to put into writing at this date why this couple was objectionable. Selling jewelry was not as much my job as you would like to think it was. Had I spent all day at the counter with this couple, I would probably have gotten grumped at for failing to keep things zoned(neat), failing to put up returns and various other tasks. It is (or at least was) a pain in the neck to open up the jewelry cases. This means that I preferred to open as few as possible. But yes, in theory, I should have opened every case, taken out every watch, and spent all day at the counter, if needed to assist the guests.
In practice, this couple and I got off on the wrong foot. Some guests are just trouble- and I think this couple fell into that category.
I think they put me on the defensive to start with by being irked that there was no one at the jewelry counter. This is one of those things which is not really unreasonable of them, but sort of is. Target does not staff its stores such that there will always be someone waiting at the jewelry counter to assist people. The smart guests pick up the phone on the counter or find a Target employee to ask for assistance (and that person contacts the person with the jewelry keys–who may be far away and helping someone else.) The exasperating guests stand at the counter and get mad before looking for someone to help them. It is harder to be patient when the guests have alread expressed their impatience with Target’s system. [This does not justify short-temperedness, but does help explain it.]
The other thing, though, was the way that the couple answered my questions. You are correct, I should have patiently shown watches two at a time. But, it is nice to have feedback as to what is good or bad. Most guests when asked “Do you prefer gold or silver?” pick one. This couple said “We don’t know, we’d have to see the watch”. Perhaps I should have tried harder to give the impression that I was willing to take out all the watches and just wanted someplace to start. Who knows?
It is entirely possible that they couldn’t see the watches well enough to make a choice looking through the glass (doubtful, but possible). The sense I got from them, though, was more that they hadn’t really tried browsing- and were going to want each watch removed from its stand.
Also, they really wanted a watch just like their friend’s watch. They didn’t know if it was gold or silver, what brand or what style clasp, but a watch like hers.
Could I have done better, been more patient, seemed less like I wanted to get back to my prior task? Almost certainly. Should I have? Probably. Would it have made a difference or would this couple still have left grumpily? Maybe- some people just give off that “never satisfied vibe”. They didn’t give me very much time to take watches out before they decided they didn’t like me.
But what entitled them to be placed in this thread was not their behavior while in the store. It was the letter discussing the likelihood that I had had my period that placed them in the “randomly rotten customer” category.
Because it sometimes works. It happened to me. I was a temp, working telephone customer service for the city water department. A customer once screamed her head off at me for no apparent reason and slammed the phone down before I could get another word in. She called again a minute later and somehow got through to the supervisor. She told my boss, perfectly calmly and politely, that I had been “extremely rude” to her. Next thing I know, I’m out of a job.
Oh God yes- that was off the wall weird. I was just addressing the original complaint from Eureka. The letter business sounds bizzare.
If I bought a burger at McDonalds, I wouldn’t be at home looking at my account balance on the website of the National Headquarters, staring at the customer service phone number for National Headquarters and facing a button that said ‘Click here to contact us’ that lead to the information for National Headquarters when I discovered that my pickle was missing.
First point of contact in the company is the manager for the area that you were dealing with. If a customer calls the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman about the service they were given by one of our call-centre staff, the TIO will refer you back to the manager of the area first. If it was a store, then you go back to the store and speak with the manager there. If you don’t get satisfaction there, then you go to the next step up the chain in the franchise.
Unfortunately, our hands are very much tied by the fact that the stores are a franchise, and that the staff there are not actually staff of the company, but staff of the owner of the store. If he’d been given the wrong information by one of my colleagues in the call centre then I’d have recourse to follow it up and get them to fix it for him. But I don’t for the store staff. Hell, I don’t even know where these stores are. So to call accountability to the store staff, the store manager is the one who needs to be approached. And the customer is the best to do it, because then their story isn’t being double-handled between us and the manager, and the manager can make an offer of restitution (refund/extra card etc) directly and know how the customer feels about it. Another reason this sort of issue is referred back to the store via the customer is that any refunds/free cards will then come out of the store’s budget for the month, which then ensures the manager will have to follow it up, to prevent it happening in the future. The sad fact is that we as customer service staff have no clout with the store staff. If they fuck up, and we call them on it, they can just pay lip service and just ignore it in future. If they fuck up, and the customer comes back and demands a refund/free hours etc, then they have to sit up and pay attention.
As someone mentioned earlier, a lot was the tone of the customer. And the fact that he couldn’t keep his story straight. At one point he was only told back in may that he’d get the double hours, but then later in the conversation he was suddenly told that day that he’d get the double hours. Then he wasn’t told he’d get the double hours, just that ‘everything would be okay to topup online’. He admitted there was no documentation showing that the promotion was still on, unlike when he went in the first time and there were signs everywhere. He also admitted he ‘expected’ the double hours, rather than checking with the staff to see if the promo was still available when there were no signs and no other information saying the hours would be given to him. At one point he also named a male salesman as telling him about the bonus hours when he purchased the card, but then said that a female sales clerk was the one who sold him the card that day.
Yes, customers have rights. But then the company is not expected to babysit the customer either. All of the promo material mentioned that the bonus was for a limited time. When the customer went back, the promo material was gone. The more consistent thread of his story was that he ‘expected’ he’d get the hours, and didn’t actually ask the store staff. Sometimes the customer has to take the onus, and actually follow up the issue properly rather than just expecting everything will be done their way.
huh…I worked for ASRC too. LONG long time ago though, early 90s and not for Natchiq proper, but for VRCA and APC.
(is that enough acronyms? :D)
And I think RVs are cool, I don’t know which one you work fork but I’m always going by those places drooling over them, that’s the ONLY way I’ll camp. For now I rent, but someday…
end hijack
I managed a pet store for several years and let me tell you… I love animal people, but they’re nuts. Ever seen “Best in Show”? We served those people on a daily basis.
This story isn’t about whacky dog show people, though. Or about the lady who came in wearing spandex bike shorts and proceeded to reach into the feeder rat tanks and shove a rat down her shorts, then walk around the store, put the rat back, and walk out.
Or the guy who came into the store and proceeded to follow me around, twelve inches behind me, for several minutes until I could get out the back door and call the owner.
Or the two college student roommate girls who came in to buy a lovebird, went through the forty five minute consultation with our avian specialist we required before anyone’s allowed to walk out the door with a parrot, wherein she mentions several times the sorts of airborn toxins that are leathal to birds, teflon in particular, not to mention the stack of fact sheets about teflon (they made a really big deal over teflon and the birds because it’s something that most people have in their home and need to be very careful to either replace all their pans or keep the bird in an area where there’s no chance of the fumes reaching them), then go home and make pancakes on a teflon pan with their new lovebird on their shoulder and kill it. Then come back, mystefied, as to why their bird died, neglect to mention the cooking and teflon, and go home with another bird, kill it the same way three days later, come back for another bird. Our avian specialist went to their house to see if there was something wrong in the environment–cage in front of an AC, air freshener, something, didn’t find anything, necropsied both birds, couldn’t find anything, waited for the path reports to come back, we ended up destroying (euthanizing half the aviary and farming the rest out to a rescue type group that housed terminally ill or mental parrots that didn’t make good pets) that entire aviary of beautiful handfed birds due to suspicion of Psittacine Beak and Feather infection or something else that I can’t recall.
After their third lovebird died, not to mention untold thousands of dollars and birds’ lives later, hours spent with us, and so on, they told the bird girl about the pancake incident and dots were connected.
But, that’s not even the story I wanted to tell.
The story I wanted to tell is about the nutcase who came in to buy a couple cans of cat food. She was standing in line with a neck brace on and complaining loudly to anyone within earshot about how much ner neck hurt and how disabled she was [note, I am extremely sensitive to the needs of the disabled, but honestly, who goes around saying --exact quote–“I am so disabled”?] People behind her look midly annoyed but nod and murmur appropriate expressions of sympathy. Someone, making conversation, asks her how she hurt her neck, and she shrieks at the top of her lungs that it’s none of his business.
I am helping people as fast as I can, but I’ve only been there for two weeks; I’m there by myself and am still learning about the products and all that. She gets to the front and hands me her cans of cat food and a coupon for two free cans, I ring them in and subtract the coupon value leaving her with a total of seven cents–sales tax on a dollar’s worth of product, which I was legally obligated to collect as we were in California.
I explain this, and she starts hollering about how they’re free. Yes, says I, but I can’t do anything about the tax. She shrieks at me to get the manager, I say I’ll certainly call. Customers behind her start to shuffle and look irritated. I offer to pay the seven cents out of my pocket or out of the penny cup at the counter. She screams about how she’s going to miss her disability bus. I offer to just give her the cans, forget the tax, she screams how she doesn’t want them anyway, picks them up and chucks them at my head. I duck and she storms out. People are gaping after her with their mouths open. I’m trying not to cry, start ringing up the next customer, and crazy catfood lady stomps back in and says “I forgot my cat food, could you hand them to me? They must have fallen off the counter”. No kidding.
I finish helping the rest of the customers, call the owner, and give him a rundown of what happened. The next day, she comes in, and starts screaming at him that he ought to fire me because I made her miss her disability bus and how I threatened her. He points to the security camera aimed right at the front counter and says “See that camera? That camera recorded the entire incident, I saw what happened and so did our bookkeeper who was watching the monitor at the time. I absolutely refuse to let you treat one of my employees that way. Get out of my store and don’t come back.”
I had only been there for two weeks at the time. He was a dick in other ways, but he really stood up for his employees. I worked my ass off for him for four years and ended up managing the store.
Oh my lord, what utterly oblivious morons! :eek: :mad: :mad: :mad:
Holy crap! You’re lucky you weren’t seriously injured in that incident. I’d have filed assault charges against her, she meant serious harm throwing that at your head, and I’d bet the charges would have stuck too. :eek: :eek: :eek: :mad:
One of my own on a similar “stupid humans with pets” note. While getting our cat her rabies shot a couple of weeks ago, I encountered one of the most stupid oblivious women I’ve ever had the misfortune to share breathing space with. This clinic has a BIG, affable tomcat, who’ll usually let you pet him, and will try to comfort the other cats that are brought in. (I believe he’s there in case of emergency transfusions if I’m not mistaken.) This couple came in to pick up their golden lab, who’d apparently had some kind of surgery. The cat seemed grumpy and standoffish, and didn’t greet me that day. I chalked it up to all the yammering dogs in the back and left him be.
This woman came up to the counter where the cat was sitting, and GRABBED HIS HEAD and roughed him up, “play wrestling” with him rasing his front end well up off the counter and pushing him up and back. He pulled back, and hunched down, which she ignored as she persisted. He put a paw on her wrist, pushing her hand back with his ears beginning to cock back and a “leave me alone” expression in his eyes. Her husband said “You’re going to get bit”, but she completely ignored him. By this time his tail was lashing. She did it again, giggling and having a grand time “playing” with the cat. I could NOT believe it.
Internally restraining myself from slapping her silly, I took a deep breath and went into action. I stepped in and said something like “Lady, stop. You don’t want to get bit, see my hand here? That’s a cat bite wound.”***** She asked if the vet’s cat had done it, I said emphatically “No” and pointed at my cat, explaining that she hated baths.****** After a bit of hesitation and a leaning towards the cat again, (which I countered by leaning into the space between her and the cat) she left off. I hope she figured out that if a cat more than half as small as the vet’s cat could leave a wound like that, that maybe she shoudln’t provoke such a big fellow. I told the vet about it, explaining that I intervened and stopped her from roughing the cat up because “I didn’t want the cat to be made a criminal for a human’s stupidity.” The vet’s face darkened, and he asked who’d done such a thing. I told him the people who owned the yellow lab, and his jaw set. I don’t think they have a vet anymore.
*****[SUB]Yeah, I realized afterwards that maybe I shouldn’t have showed her my bite wound, cause she struck me as just that dumb, that she wouldn’t remember long enough that the vet’s cat didn’t bite anyone.[/SUB]
******[SUB]About a month before this, she’d gotten me with one fang, right at the very base of my left thumb where it joins the hand. It got VERY infected and required an aggressive course of anti-biotics. The doctor said “I’m afraid it’s going to develop into a bone infection.” when discussing the treatment of it with me. If the cat needs a bath from now on, both of us do so. Last bath was uneventful.[/SUB]
OK, OK, Catfood Lady was evil, and the police should have been called when she returned to the store to arrest her for assault and battery.
But this, this borders on psychopathic.
I didn’t know about the Teflon thing until after I brought Shamus home. Many of the older bird books don’t mention it- apparently it wasn’t until relatively recently that it was discovered why so many people’s pet birds were dropping dead while the owners were cooking dinner. The lady I got Shamus from also sold me Mattie Sue Atwood’s * Guide to a Well Behaved Parrot*, and thus I learned about the Teflon thing, refused to cook on it, went into shrieking rages at my mother if she couldn’t be troubled to get the cast-iron or stainless steel skillet and cooked on the Teflon because it was easier, eventually got my way and we threw out the Teflon cookware and replaced all of it with stainless steel.
Anyone who would bring home a pet bird, cook on Teflon with the bird on their shoulder knowing full well that Teflon kills birds, return the dead bird, then kill two more birds the same way…
I don’t know. I think that the store should have
#1- Sued the bitches for the store’s losses for having to destroy the entire aviary
#2- Called the ASPCA and reported their asses.
I hope these two don’t go on to reproduce. If they would knowingly subject an animal to toxic fumes, resulting in the animal’s death, then go on to do it two more times, I fear for any children they might become responsible for.
My point exactly. I’m glad you came around on the issue.
You seem to be implying that your point and my point are somehow the same. Possibly for humour value or simple rhetorical licence.
They’re not, so please don’t.
Feel free to skip reading this as it only gives a bit more detail to my previous post.
The guy wasn’t a “close talker” until he became belligerent over my lack of politeness or whateverthefuck he was thinking. See, he’d started off at a reasonable distance. To give you a visual… there are two sets of automatic swinging doors, one set for entering and one for exiting. The doors are set in a way so the entry/exit ways kind of resemble _/|_ with the top being where the doors are and the bottom being next to the parking lot. The wind was blowing eastward (from right to left of the, uh, picture). I was huddled between the building wall ( \ ) and the exit doors ( ` #s 3 & 4). Man comes strolling from the parking lot from the northeast direction (bottom left). The pot is at the bottom of the straight line ( | ), about eight feet away from me, to give you a bit more perspective. Anywho, man walks, I say hello when he is still to the left of the pot. “Merry Christmas” from him when he’s at the pot. Sickly smile, hoping he will veer left and go inside. Nope. Man comes closer, closer, in my face, literally two inches from my nose, “MERRY CHRISTMAS!” Yeah, fuck you too, asshole.
Uh, that’s to say, I was upset because he wasn’t sticking to the rules of staying polite when confronting a total stranger… because I really wasn’t being impolite towards him; he got the same treatment as everyone else, and absolutely nobody else had a problem with my attitude.
What Max said.