Since when is the customer always WRONG?

Customer service sucks in the 21st century, and if you don't take it lying down, the people providing it act like you're a nut. The worst are the utilities. Your call is very important to us.....

Ah, that sort of happened to me when I was in Albuquerque and used Kinko's to check in to a2k once in a while.

I (blush) couldn't figure how to get into Internet Explorer - or some little basic thing like that. No one was in the computer section. I finally waited at the counter a while and someone eventually told me the computers were self serve - essentially, you sit there, you're supposed to know what you're doing. I went back and fooled around a bit and figured out whatever my problem was.

So... it may be company policy that there is no service in that room. Still, there was no sign to tell me that..

Kinkos really does suck donkey dong.

I knew someone who worked there for a very short while, like 1 week.

Apparently they promote idiotcy.

Now, this was a long time ago. He told me during training they tell you all about their "glue" way of work.

This basically means that you do one thing, and you don't do anything else. Like you are glued to your function and the entire corporate structure would disenergrate if you had any initiative.

"OMG, that man just got his tie caught in the industrial size paper shredder"!

"hey there upstart, don't go gettin' any ideas about running over there with some scissors to cut him loose. You just leave that to the paper shredder attendant"

I went in there once to make some, um, what are they called, oh yeah, copies.
I needed about 15 copies of I don't even remember what.

I get in line, finally get to the front, give the guy my paper and stupidly say, "I'd like 15 copies please"

OK - didn't realize I had to make my own. Fine. See all these copiers, they don't take money, so I'm standing there with quarters in my hand.

Get Back in line. Tell them I can't make copies (DUrrrrrr).

Get told I have to have some type of card.

I stupidly asked why they just couldn't make 15 copies for me (see, I didn't know about the glue principle)

Threw a hissy fit, they made 15 copies, but let me know they just couldn't do this for everyone.

I really wish everyone could see me when I have a hissy fit. I am magnificent.

Don't even get me started about trying to buy a cup of coffee once at Starbucks. Left without my coffee because Apparently I didn't know how to order one, and have never been back.

Don't get me started on lousy customer service, Kicky!

Just don't!

so, tell us about it Frank.

The customer is always wrong. Customer service is the art of not letting them know it.

Well, it's a dying art then.

Yes, Frank, tell us a story, would you?

I agree customer service is appalling these days, huge mega stores
are being built and not one shop assistant has any product knowledge what so ever

One of the great declines in customer service is the hardware store. Used to be a couple of old-timers in hardware stores that seemed to know everything. They'd discuss a project with you and it was like a couple of neighbors talking over a fence.

Now you have high-school kids, because they're the only ones willing to work for six dollars an hour and you ask them for a wing nut and they look at you as if you just asked them what is the meaning of the universe.

Yeah, Gus, that's true.

so true gus

(Seriously...where's Joe Nation when we need him?)



This happens because so many people shop at the hardware megastores where the wing nuts cost 5 cents each (and the highschool kids who work there tell you to find 'em yourself) instead of the small, owner-operated hardware stores where you pay an extra penny and get knowledgable help.

This is exactly why so many of the good stores are being forced out of the market.



(There, Joe. I said it for you. Now get your *** back here and do your job.)

That's true. But I have to say, the hardware stores that I've gone to in NYC have had good knowledgable people in them. Of course, there is no Home Depot in Manhattan...yet.

But why? Why has customer service become such ****? Is it because people will accept shoddy service to save a buck? Is it because of our reliance on technology, which has had the effect of making people feel that human contact is unnecessary, which in turn makes customer service seem somewhat unnecessary also? or is it the fact that we have, as a society, decided that accountability is not a priority?

I am big on accountability, and I think our country is going to hell in a handbasket because we have given up on this concept. Hmmmm...

Then again, there's places like Nordstroms.

I can't afford their clothes, but I do go out of my way to buy shoes for work there, and a good handbag.

The reason? Because you do get people there who are happy to go that extra step.

It's such a win/win situation, and so many other business don't realize it.

I'm happy when I leave, and they get a little extra money because they treated me like a person.

Chai Tea-Pleeeeease tell us about Starbucks!!!

That Kinkos guy want a twonk.He obviously wasnt on his own if the manager was there and the manager should always help.

I used to work in a pub, when it got busy the boss dont help out at all, he just satyed with his friends and chatted, he also left customers waiting for a rink because he was the only one that could change the barrel of drink they wanted, he also insisted on jumping the waiting queue to get a drink when I think the boss should wait his turn and let the customers be served first!!

We have ONE hardware store that will actually help if I ask them... or even if I don't ask them... Ace Hardware. Usually the high school kids stand around and talk about the opposite sex until I ask them for a wing nut. Then they actually walk with me and find the wing nut. Not that it's always the Right wing nut, but at least they try.

Do y'all have Ace Hardware stores up north?

We also actually had a good shopping experience at Lowe's, which was quite surprising. I thought it was because the store was new and so were the employees. New employees are almost always more patient than the old timers, in my opinion.

I've had astonishingly bad customer service in some stores, though I can't remember them offhand. Luckily, we have no Kinko's around here!

These days, approaching old-ladyhood, I'll mouth off at bad customer service instantaneously.

Oh, Wal-Mart, that was it. We were about to go through the self-checkout and some female employee snapped at us, and I snapped right back without so much as thinking before I opened my mouth, and she Actually Apologized! It was positively shocking.

Our all-time worst customer service was at a local (and locally owned) restaurant that is now (thank goodness) closed. It was our 2nd wedding anniversary and we foolishly chose this place with no word-of-mouth advice... bad idea!

We got our salads and they had little rusty, melting bits in them. Clearly the lettuce had gone south several days before. I spoke to the waitress (being quite a bit more aggressive than Fuzzband), and, receiving no satisfaction, asked to see the manager. The waitress sort of shook her head in despair and fetched the restaurant owner.

Restaurant owner comes over, examines the lettuce, and says, "It's OK, it comes like that."

I said, "Would you eat that?"

She said, "No, but it won't hurt you none."

I replied with something like, "That's your standard, not whether you food is good or edible, but that it won't actually make you sick?"

She sort of shrugged her shoulders and walked off.

This was, gosh, 6-7 years ago.

Even today the phrase "It won't hurt you none" sort of rings in my head when I get bad service.

I think we have an earlier thread on the hardware store subject, in which I proclaimed undying loyalty to Busybeehardware on Santa Monica Boulevard. For years their cashier couldn't read the charge slips, and people quietly helped him, at least when I was there. It was your typical storefront, x amount of feet wide and much more deep, perhaps fifteen feet high. Since I've now recently had one of those in my purview, let me say 18 feet by 85.

That store had stuff floor to ceiling but you had to speak with someone past the front counter product displays, and they would go find it, whatever it was, and instruct you about it.

I miss them now. We have mostly smart re the products people at our places in my present hometown. Pierson's Hardware is good... their people stay over decades and are quite knowledgeable.

It's ironic, the US has increasingly moved to a "service" oriented economy, and Kinko's is an apt example of this trend, yet it is precisely "service" that has increasingly deteriorated.

Re: Since when is the customer always WRONG?


There is always Staples on E. 86 (between 86&87) St. & Lexington, they are pretty well staffed, and are good printers.