on customer service, serial returning, intimidation, magic words, and whose money is it anyway?

The Mentor overheard me lamenting about a dinner with friends that had been - not spoiled, exactly, but  evilly influenced by a supercilious waiter. "Never be intimidated by anyone you tip," he growled.

The Mentor gave me good advice, and I have expanded it to include all those whose compensation depends in some part on me, sales staff, people paid by my taxes, hotel staff... I'm not rude, in fact if anything I tend to get overly cheerful, but I won't grovel to someone who spends a third of his day folding t-shirts. And I feel so sorry for anyone who has to work in our appalling state capital that over time I have learned to make them almost forgive me for not having to.

On the other hand, there are people who strike me as willfully unhelpful when their job is to help. I show no mercy to the lazy and obstructive. If I really want help/answer/merchandise, it's possible that I may disconnect and call again, hoping to get a different "representative," perhaps one of those who has been "helping other customers" and therefore might consider helping me. But if the person I'm speaking to is truly deranged, like the Verizon FIOS person who claimed his name was Clive - Clive? who thinks this stuff up? Mrs Bumble? - well, then, I admit, I indulge myself. If you can tell me that I can delete my email accounts and all the saved (till now) messages will go away but then come "running back" into the inbox when I reinstall the accounts -- oh, Clive, lad, you're fair game. Clive refused to transfer me to a supervisor, he claimed they "work independently." I blew the whistle that only dogs can hear into the phone and disconnected.

I've been following the Customer Service controversy over at Roxy's Uberblog, effortlessanthropologie.com . I'm sad to report that Anthropologie, that playground of the wistful and whimsical, that Magic Kingdom of the dazed shopper, seems to have slipped from the carved and embellished pedestal upon which I'd mentally placed it. I'd noticed a falling-off in the quality of a lot of their merchandise, but the staff at the Anthro's that shelter me on rainy days is generally sweet and willing. And, as I keep saying about J.Crew, one is not required to buy this stuff just because they are selling it. They're a store, not the Quartermaster. So the real live staff at Anthro -- generally kind. Not everyone has developed good feelings about their telephone staff, however, and some of the stories people have shared with Roxy are beyond appalling, they are downright scary. The comrades at Anthro know who you are, and don't hesitate to let you know it.

Recently I've received:
the test tube vase, nice but fragile
this is what the stuffing looked like
from Anthropologie - a huge box, 4 x 4 x 4,  containing a lot of smelly brown rope and some broken glass. The ropey stuff turned out to be an obviously ineffective safety packing for my Test Tube Vase. CS told me to throw out the broken glass and send the remains of the vase back. There being no remains, issue was joined. Anthro has since issued a credit, and we have the functional equivalent of a confidentiality agreement as to the  whys and wherefores. I will say, however, that I believe the unemployed son of one of my neighbors has been smoking the packing material.

from J.Crew - many things have come and gone. Fortunately I am able to make in-store returns. I've stopped discussing quality and construction issues except when glaringly obvious. I've noticed that when I say something like "The threads in the side seams are unravelling," it gets recorded as "just didn't like." So now I report everything as a size issue. I thought once I was out of high school I wouldn't have to worry about my Permanent Record. Apparently it's still around, it's just been trans-shipped.

the comfortable pants I didn't receive
from Macy's - size 10 pants, the very top of my size range, which I ordered because I'll be wearing them on a long flight which will cause me to blow up like a dirigible. Actually, not size 10. There arrived a teensy pair: the sewn-in tags inside read 00, the hanging paper tag read 6. Macy's ships from its stores, wouldn't you think that someone would have looked at the merch? I've decided to send the pants back without discussion, but I will include a copy of the shipping confirmation with the size that I ordered creatively highlighted in pink.

And the Golden Globule for Creatively Awful Customer Service goes to:




Sears. Yes, Sears. I bought a Sears dishwasher because it holds a lot of dishes, has the cycles I prefer to use, and its parts, should I need them, don't have to come by slow boat from a factory in Dortmund (decent football team, lousy shippers, or so I'm told). And by and large, the machine itself is fine. But the service? We were given a delivery date, told to expect a call the night before. The person who called was astounded that the deliver/install address was in Manhattan, the "ticket" had been sent to a facility in Western Pennsylvania from whence, and I quote, oh, truly I quote, "we are not required to go to New York." It took weeks to straighten this out, because they then recorded our "ticket" as complete, meaning they reported to Sears that the machine had in fact been delivered and installed. Himself wanted to call Amex and let them deal with cancelling the order. I told him he could, but first he had to find another dishwasher that would fit our space but have an extra-large tub and folding racks, and get it installed. He demurred.

Ultimately, Sears located our dishwasher, "trans-shipped" it to a different warehouse, and got it here. It was in fact the one I had ordered, but the little plastic clip that holds up the row of tines for normal use and lets the row lie down when you need more space for large objects -- missing. I called the Sears 800 number and spoke to someone who clearly wanted me to go away. She told me that Sears had stopped selling Kenmore (their house brand!), that there was no such part, that there was no such model... I was afraid my machine would be out of warranty while she droned on. Hung up, the next rep knew exactly what I was talking about, and I got my clips. Note the plural there, I didn't want to have to go through this again. Ever. So - fail on delivery, fail on service. But I will say my dishes and pots are very clean. Fair is fair.

Oh, yeah, a few days ago, I jumped on the Brooks Brothers sale and ordered three polo shirts for Himself. To his delight, they arrived promptly. One fit fine, a second - same shirt, different color- had obviously been mis-sized, and the third was not a polo shirt and not his size. No problem doing an in-store return, but after what I've been reading over at Roxy's, I wonder if BB is going to hold a grudge. I figure I'm safe from Sears, given what they've demonstrated about the quality of their geography and record-keeping. Otherwise I would worry that they know where I live.

35 comments:

  1. Someone from Sears said they stopped selling Kenmore? That tops every other ridiculous customer service story I've ever heard.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sadly there was no way to reach a person at Sears in any kind of position of responsibility to discuss this. It could have been a fun discussion had I been in that kind of mood.

      Delete
  2. Hello:
    Sorry to say this, but you really have no idea about poor customer service.....truly, absolutely no idea......since it is quite obvious from all of this that you have never been to Hungary. This is the land where customer service is not translatable into Hungarian because there is absolutely no need whatsoever to do this. The customer [if one exists at all is never right and to be ignored at all costs. Service, except in a restaurant where it is generally good, is, one must remember in no way at all connected with the person offering the service or their job. However, we love this land as we are never to be seen in the shops!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Actually I have been in Hungary, and my few carefully worked-on phrases got me smiles, help, and - everything but dessert. On the other hand, when I was there it wasn't possible to buy a dishwasher even had I needed one and known the word. The lady who taught me my phrases enabled me to identify the shops by the peculiar groups of letters on the windows - furrier, gloves, jewelry, pearls, mode, hairdresser, cosmetics. Her teaching fell short only once: I had to enter a shop to discover that it was a bookstore.

      Delete
    2. I'm afraid I must second Jane and Lance - and it's not so much the people as the laws too. We once bought a calculator for one of our sons for school. However, it turned out to be the wrong one - when we took it back the following weekend, we were told that the customer only has 3 days to return goods! Luckily, we had not opened the packaging and the person I was talking to (in German) relented and took it back. Living there was a great experience, but we often felt we had entered the Twilight Zone!! :0)

      Delete
    3. hi, Patricia, there are great Customer Aggression stories on www.davidlieberman.com. David is an American expat living in Paris, where rudeness to customers is a sophisticated and well-developed art form, and he recounts these stories, piteously and hysterically, on his site. Since he's an author as well as a pastry chef, his adventures are well worth reading.

      I totally agree with your subtext, that the sullen and unfriendly Magyar is a threat to western civilization as we know it. Worse when underfed.

      Delete
    4. I noticed the lack of customer service when I lived in Chile. Not that people weren't nice, but the storekeeper's attitude was that he controlled scarce resources and I better be nice to him or I wouldn't get any pencils. I had a few times where I had to return defective product and the clerk was so baffled at the idea of a return that she had to involve the manager. Who also had no idea what to do. Nobody returned bad stuff!

      Delete
    5. WFF, do you mean David Lebovitz?

      http://www.davidlebovitz.com/

      Delete
    6. yes, of course, I shouldn't be allowed near a keyboard at certain times of day...

      Delete
  3. I think I am the serial returner when it comes to certain stores. My gosh - now I got to hie me over Effortless Anthropogie to read all the saga! I laughed at Jane and Lance's comment - while i have never been to Hungary, I am aware of certain european (and certain maritime canadian businesses) traditions! I have taken to just saying sizing, too, since I am pretty sure they don't care! when I worked in retail, 30+ years ago, I always prided myself on helping people. I am contemplating opening a store that is simply called "Welcome/Bienvenue" and then actually mean it!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Worst in-person service ever: Beijing. Sales help really annoyed that people were entering the store and looking at the merch. This was supposed to be a store that had been set up to show off local products in the hope of developing markets. I might have thought there was some sabotage going on there but the staff didn't seem to have the initiative.

      Delete
  4. I hate returning things so much that I've decided I'm not going to buy them in the first place. I stopped doing in-storebuys IF there was chance I would return last year, and now the madness has stopped online. So relieved. If I'm not going to definitely keep it I'm not ordering it.
    As for receiving the wrong item? That only happened to me once and it was an additional item tucked in the bottom of a J Crew box: a men's blue and white seersucker blazer embroidered with little blue whales, size small. I gave it to me friend John who plays sax in a band and told him to wear it to summer concerts. I'll have to ask him if he ever did.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi, Dani, yes, there have been times when I've actually dreaded opening a package, because between the time I placed the order and the arrival, I've read posts and comments which basically tell me I've made a dopey mistake.

      I love summer band concerts, is there a band shell in your town?

      Delete
  5. Perhaps the first Sears rep was smoking packing material with your neighbor? Good Grief! How excitng your dishwasher is, in fact, a phantom.

    JC once sent with my order a Thomas Mason white tux xhirt, in my size. I called to offer to return it , on their dime, but the rep said "Keep it"! Which I happily did.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. hi, Lane, yes, and there was me thinking I was being so smart by using Sears instead of getting some fancy European model...

      and now I want a report on how the TM shirt held up, they look so fragile in the store.

      Delete
  6. Service issues are big here too. And, in the stores, the staff often have very, very little idea about their product and will look at you as if you are armed with barbed wire and hot rocks intent on torturing them. And I won't even begin on the difficulties of ringing someone like a telephone company and expecting anything like service. The thing they deliver does begin with s, but is a much shorter word than service.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. hi, Elephant's Child, I once bought 4 mugs in a TJMaxx, my sister liked them and I stopped in the next day to look for a couple more. I was told "Oh, I remember those, they were sooo cute, but some damn customer bought them!"

      Delete
  7. I'm now dangerously overheated. You've resurrected memories of my visit to Abercrombie & Fitch last month. To describe their staff as lazy,vacuous morons is barely scratching the surface. I need to lie down now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Actually, Sulky, that's what they hire for - a certain look and a thousand-yard stare. Actually selling stuff is beyond the job description of the floor staff.

      Delete
  8. Oh, Sears. I once bought a washing machine from them that broke 3X in the first month I had it, they could not even schedule an appointment to service it within 2 weeks of each request for repair... their service people don't talk to their delivery or sales people... The repairman they sent said he had never worked on the Kenmore model we bought from them and suggested that the machine would "get better" if I left it unplugged overnight and tried again in the morning. Never again. Generally service is bad all over, but that was a new low.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wow, that's a new low. I just totalled up, I've bought 3 appliances from Sears, 2 installations were nightmares. With each appliance, some part or accessory or other was missing, and I had to track it down and then fight not to pay exhorbitant shipping charges because after all the part was supposed to have come with the purchase, not catch up with it months later. Another Sears adventure: Himself says "the only thing wrong with that cabinet is the door, I'm calling the Sears service to have the door replaced." Good luck with that, think I. Sure enough, we had an entire new kitchen installed (NOT by Sears), and about 18 months later I got a call from the Sears service to schedule someone to come look at the door.

      Delete
    2. Jill, the delivery guy who brought our washer and dryer did not work for Sears. They are independent contractors. So I can see why nobody talks to each other.

      As far as a miracle healing - I do have to tell you that my mp3 player went from flashing the blue lights of death to working again after a day in the purse my sister and husband bid against each other for on eBay years ago. I have decided that immersion in the Purse of Gentle Healing is the key for certain things. If only a washing machine would fit.

      Delete
  9. Online shopping has evolved. Besides knowing who we are, they know that we shop regularly so the service is deteriorating to meet the lowest common denominator and nothing more. What do they care? They know we will be back, our permanent record says so!

    I've never had a Brooks Brothers fulfillment issue but I'm sure that day is coming. I wouldn't worry about the returns though, I've bought and returned lots over the years, some things even after an extended period and they have never given me an ounce of flak.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi, xoxo! I do think lowest common denominator is the standard in so many things, not just service. I don't know why I continue to be so optimistic.

      Delete
  10. A few years ago, J Crew sent me a lovely cashmere cardigan when I had ordered a pair of $6.99 socks. Cardigan was my size and I was sorely tempted to keep it. After going two rounds with surly customer service reps as to how to return the cardigan in exchange for the socks, I gave up. Funny thing is it hasn't pilled. Free and pill-free. That's a win-win.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And there is the story of my Hunter boots, each a different size, neither of them my size. Fortunately I got a phone rep who had a sense of humor, and agreed with me that the wisest course was to return them in store rather than risk confusing the warehouse people even more. She said she'd put a note on my account, because the boots were final sale. I think she did, too, because I didn't have a problem bringing them back.

      I've never lucked into any kind of gratuitous "gift from the shipping elves," though. I barely get catalogs.

      Delete
  11. Hi Fred-From previous experiences, Sears has earned a place on my banned-from-buying list. No kidding about the young folks and their oblique ideas of customer service. During my Christmas shopping, I actually heard a young male, heavily armed with a cloak of nuclear cologne, tell the poor old lady in front of me that if she wanted to return something she needed to find another place to shop(it wasn't quite worded so politely.) This was at our local Macy's, which must be THE smallest holey rowboat of the Macy's fleet. After the aged one blanched and let forth an audible gasp, it crossed my mind that I might have to summon the powers of the CPR gods, but she managed to totter away on her own steam. I tried to make amends for her by addressing the noxious one as "Dreamboat" throughout our brief transaction. I guess I am lucky he did not sic mall security on me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. hi, David, nuclear cologne, luvvit! sadly there's a lot of that wafting around.

      and Dreamboat is terrific. Back in the day, when an obnoxious male would insist on calling me "Dear," I would call him "Sweetie." And if someone other than an actor called me "Darling," the response would be "Um, don't mean to hurt your feelings, but did we ever -- because I don't remember you.."

      Delete
  12. That reminds me to use "supercilious" this very day - what a fabulous word. And what an incredibly weird thing for a waiter to say. The tipping in the US has gotten crazy - and because I'm always so terrified of it, I end up over-tipping. A couple of times now our dance instructor has told us things in his day (car broken into etc.) and asked for tips. The dog groomer asks for tips BEFORE I have seen the dog (who was really eratically (sp?) clipped).

    ReplyDelete
  13. what I cannot get used to is tip jars everywhere .so obnoxious. When Himself was hospitalized this summer, I expected to see one on the nurse's desk in the ICU unit.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oooh, that reminds me of the crabby eyebrow technician at, of all places, Nordstrom. My favorite eyebrow tech had left so I hesitantly scheduled with someone else. My thought was they were all trained by Anastasia so how bad could it be? Oh, the manners (or lack thereof) on this one. After berating me for requesting tweeze only no wax, she proceeded to complain through my entire 15 minute appointment. When presenting me with the bill, she pointed out the line for "tip" and told me I could put it on my Nordstrom card or tip her in cash. My newly groomed eyebrows shot up at the presumption I was leaving this miserable crank a tip. Oy vey, I never went back.

      Delete
  14. How awful! Anastasia herself is no pussycat. I won a session with her, and she'd been getting a lot of publicity about how her work on brows changed women's lives. Well, I was ready for that! She was running an hour and a half late,and all she did was mark one brow with a thick black pencil. "You should try for a line like dis," she said. "OK, next!" Even for free, I thought that was pretty awful so I said I was going out to dinner and couldn't go with one heavy black brow and one thin light brown brow. She grudgingly drew another black brow on me, and literally pushed me away. In the cab, I took out a mirror and gasped. The two brows were radically different from one another.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Sears is THE WORST! They were hours late delivering our washer and dryer and their call center was no help at all. Although a few hours later is better than two weeks late.

    I tried to find out where the call center was after the customer service rep told me that my appliances were "being in Milwaukee City." I suspected not the US. I finally got to a supervisor, who told me that he couldn't tell me because of "security reasons."

    I understand that - I'm sure there are many frustrated Sears customers who would be happy to blow the place up.

    http://bestofcf.blogspot.com/2010/09/why-sears-is-going-down.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. oh I, cf, you reminded me of the time the PTB changed the sign on a certain exit on the Long Island Expressway: it went from IRS Center to Government Buildings.

      and then there was the time I told a rep from Dell Computers that my doorman would sign for a package. He got very upset at the thought of a package being left with some fellow who stands by a door.

      Delete
    2. Somehow, I ended up with a duplicate order on something. I called the company to ask them to terminate one of the orders. They couldn't - said just to ship the duplicate back, which I did not want to do because that would involve a trip to the PO, which is always a hassle for me.

      The CSR said, "Can't you just call the P.O. and ask them not to deliver one of the packages?"

      After I stopped laughing, I asked, "You're not in the United States, are you?"

      Delete

As Alice Roosevelt Longworth said, if you've got anything bad to say, sit next to me! No, really, please remember to be kind, and don't say anything fred's mother would not approve of (Diner's mom didn't approve of anything. Including fred.)
Wellfedfred and the Whining Diner reserve the right to edit or delete any comments submitted to this blog without notice if we find:
1. Comments deemed to be spam or questionable spam
2. Comments including profanity or objectionable language
3. Comments containing concepts that could be deemed offensive
4. Comments that attack a person individually
and since there's been a flood of spam lately, we're trying the Robot thing to see if we can block some spam...