We were relating to a friend a few episodes we’d experienced – then he told us what happened Sat morning.
Being an avid renovater our friend “Ian” likes to shop locally. So Friday he went to his local outlet for hardisheets, met new owners, and ordered half a dozen sheets, the chap said, “Fine, pick them up at 11am tomorrow and please bring cash as we don’t have eftpos yet.”
Sat morning Ian rolls up at 11am, wallet full of cash and the place is closed up, so he knocks on the office door and a lady answers.
” Sorry we are closed as we have bookwork to do” he is told. He explains the situation and says who he spoke to and that he has the cash. “Well that chap is here, but we have bookwork to do” she says.
So Ian says, “Well I guess I’ll have to go down the road and buy it then will I?.” “Yes” she says. “yeah and I’ll be buying the next 30 sheets there too” he says, “Seeya”
Anyone else got some good customer (lack of) service stories??Cheers, Diane
How about someone has a good customer service story?
I recieved today $600 from my broker who is refunding me some fees the building society was supposed to refund. Since they refuse to on some cok and bull story, he said: never mind, I’ll pay.Now that is good customer service !
May God prosper you always.[biggrin]
MarcI am currently confused about customer service.
If it is too good, customers try to take advantage of you.
If it is poor, customers don’t come back.
If it is in between, it is just average service.
I was talking to a guy who sells alcohol in a liqour shop over the weekend, and he has to deal with a lot of drunks trying to weasle cheap drinks. Over the years he says the best attitude is that they have what the customer wants, and if they want it, they have to pay full price, full stop. which isn’t really customer oriented.but appears realistic.
I have personally been extra nice to tenants to the point of paying for hotel rooms to bridge a few days until houses became available, hoping to generate some good word of mouth for the business, only to find that then they were asking for “20 bucks for food for the kid, mate? or could you give us a lift into town, mate?” and finding they just become indignant at that point, and you lose the effect of EXTRA CUSTOMER SERVICE.
I don’t get it. What is better for business a hard line or a caring touch?
[saywhat]lifexperience
I guess we were a little peaved anyway. We had made arrangements to view a property, several days in advance – the house was empty. Spoke to the agent on the morning, all was ok, drove 2 hours – no agent in sight, no phone call, contacted the office (another half hour away) and explained. After several phone calls she said she didn’t know where the keys were and the agent was in a meeting! I felt sorry for the lady “in the middle”, but lost confidence in the agent.
Seeing as we were in town anyway, we wandered over and looked in another agents window, picked a couple of interesting properties & went inside to enquire. He popped us in his car and took us straight around.
We didn’t end up buying a property there, but we do know who we will go back to for service.
Time is precious to everyone these days and a courtesy call from the first agent would have gone a long way.On a brighter note we got a free valuation on our 2 IP’s as a bank valuation went horribly wrong and placed us in a possibly difficult financial circumstance. Our banker apologised and they offered to do the free valuations, which was much appreciated. We had built a good working relationship with them and they were keen to do the right thing by us which was much appreciated.
Yes…. you can ask “Which bank??”……[smiling]I was fixing up one of my vending machines yesterday, and a young girl and her grandma approached me to ask if I fixed the machines.
I thought ‘isn’t that obvious’, but said yes. They then proceeded to tell me that the bubblegum machine had ripped them off. I said that I only fixed the machines that I was at – the others weren’t mine. I suggested that they talk to the customer service desk of the shops – they didn’t look thrilled. In the end I offered to give them the 50c from my machine, and they were quite happy with that…
Cheers
MelAnother story I can relate from my wife.
She went out for breakfast on the weekend with her friends at a place on the beach advertising breakfast for $17.50 ON THE WEEKEND as a special.
They have brekky and proceed to pay the $17.50 only to be told there is a 10% surcharge on the weekend and the cost is $19.25, what?! No amount of trying to argue would get the point across about having it advertised at $17.50. She also had a discount voucher but “apparrently” you could not use it for brekky (this was not mentioned on the voucher).
She proceeds to make a scene (she is good at that and a bit Jim Carreyish at times) and proceeds to clean out the complementry mint jar as she leaves to the complaints of the manager. She argued there was nothing there to say how many she could take and stormed out!
Needless to say she won’t be going back there again.
Oh she did pay before leaving.
Later………..
Sounds to me like a quick email to the state based Dept of Fair Trading would be useful.
That is woeful.
I probably would have been even more angry!
“Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a handsome and well preserved body, but better to skid in sideways, thoroughly used, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming . …… Hell, what a trip !!”
Oh geez… Cremin and I have a doozy of a story… Well actually I have a couple…
The first one was when we were living in London a couple of years ago.
We were in the vacinity of the Victorian tube station when we felt the urge to go and have some dinner. It was after 6pm you see. So off we toddled to an indian joint after looking at the prices and working out exasctly what we could order as we onlyhad so much money, we ordered it. Now maybe our mistake was the assumption that rice came with the meal.. but the bloke asked us if we wanted rice and naan bread with our curry.
Because of our assumption, we just said yes and looked at each other in a strange way. Well, we had dinner (which was absolutely delicious!) and got the bill as we were meant to be somewhere…. and we were horrified to see that it was going to cost us £28!!! We only had 15 quid on us and we asked tos ee what the break down was. £9 was for the rice and naan bread!!! We were horrified and angry.
We spoke to the waiter who told us it was on the menu (It was miniscule writing) but I refuersd to pay any more than we had planned. He started yelling and I yelled back that they were theiving bastards. In the meanwhile, cremin looked in his wallet and saw that he had £20 he didn’t know he had. So he whispered in my ear we had enough money but I was so riled up I slammed the £18 we had planned our meal to cost and we strode out the door.
THe waiter came running after us yelling indian obscenities and we bolted with tears of laughter running down our cheeks….. Sigh..[blink]
[evil4]The next was me being the one to give the customer service. Now, I used to work for the very big telco selling mobile phones and occassionally a couple came back for legitimate repairs. One day, I was serving and a lady came up to me with her phone in a plastic bag and she asked about getting it fixed under warranty.
I opened the bag and nearly vomited. She had been on the toot to do a number two when her phone slipped out of her pocket and into the offending material. She had pulled it out of the loo and brought it in the be fixed…. ahem… ahem… “Unfortunately, your phone won’t be fixed under warranty.”
“Why not? It wasn’t my fault it fell in.”
“Maybe not, but there is not clear manufacturer defect for it to be fixed under warranty.”
“Well, the defect was it doesn’t stay in people’s pockets!”
“Um… No. We aren’t taking that in for repair. If you please remove it from our counter….”
The lady left the shop very angry and I promptly got out hte disinfectent and wiped down the counter…. Geez, the gall of some people! And that’s only a little hint of what I used to put up with….
[eh]
Steph.Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
Oh here is nasty customer service… I HAVE TO ADD THIS ONE!!!
Same shop and job and I had a really annoying customer who wanted all the accessories free blah blah blah… We didn’t giive the accessories free but for him my boss made an exception.
All he wanted really was the PHF for his new mobile. I excused myself as it was in the stock out the black and went and bitched to one of the othe sales rep while I got it. Just before I went back out on the floor, he said..
“steph, I’ll show you a trick that gets revenge and gives them what they want…”“umm.. ok”.
He grabbed the phf, put the little fuzzy bit on it and shoved it down the back of his pants. He farted on it and um… I leave the rest for your imagination…. Actually, I have just realised that this is seriously demented….. ANyway…
He placed it back in the packaging and off I went to sell the phone. Well, I nearly got the customer out of the store when just as it was going through the till, he opened the package and felt the spongy bit.“Awww, nice and squishy….”
I nearly wet myself trying not ot laugh. A soon as he left the store I went out the back and we all killed ourselves with laughter.It was a seriously gross thing to do and we never did it again, but take it as a warning to not sh*t off a good sales rep or they will somehow Sh*t on you….
When I was last in India I stayed at a pub in New Delhi (if you could call it a pub!). They had a discount whereby if you ordered 2 bottles of Tiger beer you got a 3rd one for free. I finished the first bottle and then asked for another. When I finished the 2nd bottle I asked the waiter for my ‘free’ 3rd bottle. He told me that you had to order ‘3 bottles’ at the same time to avoid paying for the 3rd! So next time I went there I ordered 3 bottles together and only had to pay for 2 bottles. After I got through the 1st bottle the SAME waiter came up to me and said he would put one in the fridge to keep it cool??? Go figure? Only in India man!!!
Regards,
Gatsby!Hello everyone. This is my first post. My brother in law ordered a new holden utility about three months ago from a Brisbane dealer. He got sick of broken promises when it would be available and started visiting the dealer regularly and asking if his car was ready. Last friday when he called in he was told his car was there but it hadn’t been registered yet. When asked why it hadn’t been registered yet he was told it had to be cleaned. On monday someone rang, stated that his car was ready to be picked up and hung up without saying anything else. When he went to pick up the car he found it had been registereed for over a week and that there was 120km on the odometer. Despite having ordered and paid for a torneau cover that would fit around the roll bar it had a regular torneau cover that didn’t fit. The dealer flatly refused to change it telling him to cut it so it would fit.
consumer affairs…..
Cheers
Melwow good post!
Where do i start?
One of my many jobs is working at the local supermarket nights. We are told every night “DO NOT SERVE ANY CUSTOMERS” as we are ‘fillers’ and its another persons job…
Bull__it to that… i serve as best i can, well above the call of duty, as each case is different. but……
Anyone who has ever worked at a supermarket, or any shop with a high flow of regular customers knows the ppl to avoid, the ppl who say please and the people who ask and dont “demand” to know where something is.
customer: “eggs” meaning where are the egg please
me: “excuse me?” meaning i know where they are but aint telling till u ask like a human should
customer: “the egs”
me: “im new try the service desk”lol….
Ayway…. I booked my car to get serviced at 8am, new car, minor service, no worries. i told the guy that i needed the car asap, so to call me wen the service is almost over to have no time wasted…
stoopid me just thought the person i spoke to was understanding of my requests, so i left it to him to call, by 1 pm i called, supprise supprise, the girl sed the car was “just finished”
when i got there, a young service chap handed me the keys, so i asked how long the car was sitting there for…
“mate the car was done by 9:45!!!!!
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRr
So many to stories…. not enough time.
Also, as land lords (and ladys), our customers are our renters, they buy a service off us, so always treat your customers with the upmost of respect. a business with no customers doesnt last long
my 2.2 cents worth
Jason
Cheers.
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