The customer is not always right

The BBQ Pit
81

No, I didn’t say that. I’m saying, if you’re going to drive that long away, and when you get there, and there happens to be a change in schedule, don’t start screaming at me. If it’s THAT big of a deal, I said, if you’re really FAR AWAY, then, maybe it’s better if you call and say, “Hey, we’re coming in, we just want to make sure, blah blah blah.”

I never said that everyone should call ahead. Just that if you have a long distance to travel, and it’s that much of an inconvenience. The website is NOT unreliable-but schedules DO change from time to time. (Also, btw, 50% of the time, people are looking at the schedule for the following day.)

82

Or perhaps, just* perhap*s, the website should be right and if it is not- your company should take responsibilty and maybe comp them some tickets and snacks.

83

No offense, but they did the 21st century equivalent of “calling ahead”. They looked online to see the show times. You say 50% of people look at the wrong day, but it doesn’t sound like this woman did. The fault is 100% with your museum in this case and I would’ve gotten a manager to comp her snacks or free tickets or something.

84

Back when I was…oh, 20 or so, I was working as a cashier at BJ’s Wholesale Club. It was a truly desperate time in my life, I was literally working hand to mouth, and it wasn’t a great job - BJ’s fires you if you are off by so much as a penny on your cash register three times, so, while I never got fired, it was tense and more than once I saw a crying girl escorted off the premises.

The way they did things back then was, only people who brought a cart up to the register could take one. I think you might have had to put a quarter in to get them, I forget. Anyway, this dude comes up, and puts all of his stuff - maybe half a dozen things - on the belt, I ring it up, and he starts to put it in the cart.

I honestly don’t remember at this point if he had a cart or not, but my memory is clearly of not seeing a cart, so I said, “I’m sorry sir, those carts are only for people who have brought in carts.”

The man BLOWS UP. “What the hell do you mean, saying that? Do you think I carried all of this stuff through the store? What is wrong with you? Are you stupid?”

I apologized, profusely, and told him to take the cart. He would not quit. “What do you think I am, some kind of SUPER HERO? I carry all this shit through the aisles myself? You stupid girl!”

Not possessing the self-confidence I do now back then, I was nearly in tears by the time he yelled at me to get my manager.

My manager comes over, and totally caves in to the customer - just gives him the cart, and apologizes, over and over. Awful - no thought of telling him he can’t abuse the employees like that.

Customers can suck. I saw more weirdos in my time at BJ’s than anywhere else…just downright rude, obnoxious people who think they can treat you like shit. And I am suspicious of people who don’t realize those kinds of customers are out there constantly - it makes me think they are one of these kinds of customers. It shows that I still remember that story, a dozen years later, and can even still remember the sting.

That story had a happy ending, though. Two or three people after that was the owner of a nearby flooring wholesaler. He gave me his card, and told me he was very pleased by how well I had handled that customer and also continued to do my job, and could I come in for an interview? I did, and landed the job.
As for the website thing, Guin - yeah, I’d be pissed if the website didn’t work. The less I have to use the phone, the better.

85

I’m surprised no one has yet posted the obligatory vinegar boy saga link for customer abuse threads.

I’ve posted most of my customer service stories in other threads so I won’t repeat them here.

86

Even though this thread is wondering a bit,
If someone is complaining about the bread
I would ask them to try the Cake instead.

87

Dammit now I have to clean Diet Peach Snapple off my LCD screen.

88

Wait, so you’re saying that Microsoft = Google??? I knew it!!

89

Actually, it originally stems from efforts to identify organizations while officially leaving them anonymous. Organizations such as the APA have privacy and publication guidelines that require researchers to avoid presenting sensitive information about research subjects, but sometimes the organization is actually an interesting datapoint. So if you were doing, I dunno, an I/O psych study that involved people from Boeing as one of your groups, you’d state that they were “employees of a large aircraft company based in the Pacific Northwest.”

90

The only thing that confuses me about the hotel story is this: why would you live in a hotel for 24 years?

Valete,
Vox Imperatoris

91

It wasn’t so much that they were right-it was their attitude-they were rather nasty. I understand they were upset-but that’s no reason to start bitching at us, and get snotty because there was an error. Being polite goes a long way.

Besides, I believe we DID offer something-they declined. Again, it wasn’t so much why they were pissed-it was they way they acted.

92

In college I learned a system of classifying stocks (in the stock market). Imagine a square subdivided into four smaller squares. In the upper left quadrant are the stars- the stocks providing spectacular, stellar returns. In the upper right quadrant are the cash cows- not stellar, but dependable strong performers. In the lower left section we have the potential stars and cash cows, and the lower right contains the dogs, which are undesireable.

Customers can be similarly classified. That was my idea, originally. I saw the same concept set forth in the Wall Street Journal several years after I came up with it.

93

Basically, what I mean is, even if you DO have a legit complaint, at least be polite about it-don’t act like an ass. The old flies, honey and vinegar saying.

Here’s a good one-keep in mind, the person this woman had an issue with was NOT there at the time. They had already left, and the girl she was yelling at had no idea what was going on, and obviously, she hadn’t anything to do with what had happened:

I was at the doctor’s office last week, and this woman came in, and asked for Dr. P. Well, the doctor she asked for was not in on that day-they share the office, and it was Dr. L’s practice there on that particular day.

Apparently, Dr. P’s staff had neglected to leave her scrips for her. So this woman went balistic at the poor receptionist, flipping out, and just reading her the riot act, because she had no idea what had happened, and when the girl tried, very politely, but firmly to explain so, the woman said, “You need to be less rude!” I couldn’t help it, I muttered under MY breath, “Look who’s talking.” She spun around to look at me, and I covered it up with a coughing fit.

Finally, she accepted the fact that it was HER OWN DOCTOR, NOT Dr. L’s practice that had erred, and she needed to call Dr. P, NOT bitch out Dr. L’s staff, and stormed out, again, yelling, “And YOU need to learn to not be so rude!” As soon as she was out the door, everyone in the room-the receptionist, me, and the other two waiting in the room started giggling.

THEN there was the time I asked a woman to throw her gum away before she entered the SportsWorks area, and she called me a psycho bitch. She DEMANDED to see a manager-screw that. I went and got a security guard. The way she was acting, I seriously thought she was going to take a swing at me. I’m not kidding-a few customers nearby came up to me afterwards and said she seemed nuts.

94

This is so true. I posted here a while ago about an incident we had at work. A customer telephoned regarding a printer that our competitor had on sale for $50 cheaper than us, and asked if we could do it for the same price. She said we could match the price… but she didn’t check to see if we had any in stock and as it happened, we were sold out. So the customers arrived in the store 5 minutes later to get their printer and I had to tell them that we had none. I fully understood why they were angry that they weren’t told this on the phone and I completely agreed that my co-worker had screwed up by not checking the stock when she had them on the phone, but the level of rage they unleashed on us was completely out of proportion. They accused us of hiding the stock to avoid giving them the discount, of lying and conspiring against them, they threatened to get the department of consumer affairs in to investigate us, to go to the media and expose us. They insisted that they asked on the phone if we had the printer in stock but every time I tried to say that she simply didn’t check the inventory they would flip out and say that I was accusing them of lying. They were so angry and so unreasonable that it was impossible to say anything that would calm them or fix the situation.

Had they turned the outrage down a little and actually let us speak, we were trying to tell them that we could still do the discounted price for them and that we could have a printer in within two days** (it was after 5pm so we couldn’t promise to have it in by the following day because despatch was closed for the day) and perhaps we could have even gone a little further and let them have the display model*, but when people are screaming at you and accusing you of attempting to defraud them of a $50 discount and threatening to expose you on national tv, won’t let you speak, won’t listen when you try to offer a solution to the problem and won’t accept anything less than a brand new printer, in a box, right this second for the discounted price… well, it’s hard to deal with, and it’s even harder to find the motivation to go to extraordinary lengths to help them out.

  • We’re required by law to have a display model if it’s advertised in our catalogue so this isn’t something we’d typically do but in a case where the customer is disadvantaged because a staff member screwed up we might consider letting them have the display if that’s acceptable to them and sending someone in their own vehicle to the next nearest store - 77 miles away - to pick up a replacement display.

** It would take two days to come the “official” way, via courier. If we sent someone to pick it up in their own car, they wouldn’t be paid to do it, it would be entirely because they volunteered. The company doesn’t have a procedure to send individual staff members transporting goods from store to store, it’s something that we’ve occasionally done off our own backs in exceptional circumstances.

95

I try to be nice, but when that’s not working I lay it out politely. I had a book I wanted to return, having received another copy as a gift. The manager insisted on a receipt. Note that there was a huge stack of this book selling like hotcakes. So, when she went back to “it’s policy”, I told her: “I am not the guy you want to mess with one stuff like this. On the one hand, I am a good customer, I buy a lot here, etc. On the other hand, when I feel I have not been treated fairly, I write actual letters to the CEO, dispute the charges on my credit card, and take my business eslewhere. I know you can make this work, I am only asking for an exchange. So, do you want to deal with Mr Good Customer or “the other guy”?”

She exchanged the book.

96

I hated dealing with people that had your attitude. Expecting people to go against written policy just because you are ‘a good customer’ is bullshit.

97

That’s also not being a “good customer”, or “polite”. That’s being the kind of customer that we only accomodate to get rid of. In fact, that’s the kind of customer that COSTS businesses money.

Besides which, how would they know he had bought the book from there?

98

My point exactly.

99

Why would you expect me to keep a copy of every reciept for every purchase just in case? I did have evidence I had made a CC purchase at her store for the right amount on the day I claimed. And the “rewards” website for my account also showed that purchase of that amount on that day.

100

How does an exchange cost a business money?