Friday, March 23, 2007

Weekend Whining


What's up with customer service these days? Here's a pretty comprehensive list of my customer service peeves including some actual examples from my life or my mom's experience (thanks mom!)




  1. I'm tired of cashiers that don't even crack a smile despite my attempts at friendliness which sometimes includes a compliment on their shirt or jewelry, come on people!

  2. How about those pushy salespeople! Who was the Einstein (pun intended) who thought up the idea of cell phone hawkers in the mall that are one floating duck short of a carnival worker!

  3. I'm annoyed with customer service reps on the phone that talk either too quiet, TOO LOUD, like they have crap in their mouth (sometimes actually chewing) or with a very strong accent that's impossible to understand (nothing against accents, my husband is British). Plus, I had to press about 842 number combinations to get to this point! I normally don't even listen to the prompts and press zero to get past all that jazz!

  4. My mom reminds me of the time when we got a free pizza from a local eatery after we found a leaf and a long peice of string baked into the crust! It always gets me how a place will give you coupons or free meals after a bad experience, you think I want to repeat that experience?

  5. On the good service/bad product end of things, we ended a hot but lovely day at the zoo only to take my daughter out of her stroller and find we now were the proud parents of a smurf! It turned her legs blue, evidently from sweat making the fabric bleed. However, when calling the company they did offer to replace the stroller with another one we could choose of close value from their website.

  6. My mom had a drycleaner ruin a $250 Banana Republic Blazer, which thankfully she at least got on clearance for a fraction of that cost, but none the less...they did not even offer any form of compensation. The woman that was turning over her drycleaning said it wasn't her that checked it in and the woman that had didn't know about drycleaning. Umm, hello? Am I not in a DRYCLEANERS!?!?

  7. I thoroughly enjoyed the first time I was standing up in a wedding and went with the bride to look at dresses only to be told by a local bridal shop that they didn't carry our size and couldn't help us...we never even said what size we wanted or tried anything on!

  8. I totally hate it when cashiers, clerks, whoever they may be call me honey or sweetie, especially if it's some young girl, younger than me, even if an old lady does it I'm not a fan, but something seems so patronizing or rude when it comes from a young girl. I'm not 100% in love with mam or miss either but it's better than honey or sweetie!

  9. Why can't the insurance company and the doctors get on the same page! I swear I am sick of being told something will be covered then getting billed, then making 14 phone calls to clear that up.

  10. On the positive side, which you may have thought did not exist, I've had nothing short of a fabulous experience so far with our local Saturn dealer. We heard good things and were told of the song and dance they do (literally) when you come to pick up your new car and all of this rang true when we purchased our car from them a few weeks ago. From the live internet chat with a rep, emails with the salesman, phone calls, visit to the showroom, finance department right down to the service department who gives us courtesy (FREE) carwashes, we've had such great service and always with a smile!

5 comments:

Jo said...

A new car?? Whoot, that sounds like fun, fun, fun!

Mary said...

Amen! I always say that if your that miserable, get another job. Congrats on the new car!

I remember the one time I went to lane Bryant, and they were snobby and said I was too skinny to shop there. Can you believe that? I was a size 14-16 at the time (I'm bigger now).

So most stores don't have those sizes, and i'm considered too fat, then when i go to a "fat chick" store, I'm too skinny?

Good thing I don't own a gun. ;)

Nick said...

re: #8 - LOL, I've learned over the years to never call anyone sir. I was always raised to respect your elders, but everyone seems to take offense.

itsnotmeitsme said...

I loved my Saturn and miss it dearly - congratulations on a great car company! Did they really dance? That's great - I don't think they did for me but maybe on the East Coast everyone is too cool for that (personally I would have danced with them, so maybe they saw that in me and decided to not go for it).

Also, I hear you (or don't) on the telemarketers leaving really quiet messages, thus forcing you to call back to make sure they weren't actually someone important...

Unknown said...

Ewww! (On #4)...that's awful!

I had quite a different experience with Saturn. I was so excited when I went to look at cars because I was determined to not put any money down and not have a co-signer (which all worked out, luckily!), but it was the actual CAR I had a problem (after problem after problem...) with. I'm happy in my new Honda! :)