Extinct: Customer Service- rant

[DonTadow]

Stores do tend to have a lot of "appearance discrimination". Most store employees seem to be trained to make a snap judgement of every customer by their appearance, and treat them accordingly. This definitely affects the kind of help you get when you ask for help. Sometimes their "rules" get a little cryptic.

It's kinda sad that you sometimes have to put on an act to get good customer service, and I definitely haven't mastered it yet. But sometimes that's what you gotta do.

I must say, in NWN 2 that whole "foster child" thing at the beginning looks pretty strange when this elf seems to adopted a dwarf or half-orc...

Yeah, its ashamed i had to really put on a show for some decent help. I'm so hard on customer service because i use to manage a call center at a newspaper, and one of the things i used to stress like crazy was how important customer service is, especially with a dying product like newspapers. I wonder if the ratio of good customer service vs. bad customer service is related to the success of a product or company.

I finally got into the game today, andit is wierd that my big half-orc is the only foster child to this little elf. Seriously, what is going on there. What makes an elf adopt a half-orc.

 

[trancejeremy]

I should have gotten a DS, Id be playing it right now.

If it makes you feel any better, you probably couldn't have found a DS Lite- there was something of a shortage over the holidays (which is still ongoing.) Scalpers are wanting $200 for them on Amazon.com and elsewhere...

 

[Vigilance]

If it makes you feel any better, you probably couldn't have found a DS Lite- there was something of a shortage over the holidays (which is still ongoing.) Scalpers are wanting $200 for them on Amazon.com and elsewhere...

Yeah I saw that when I was nosing around. But when I looked beyond Amazon people seemed to have them... Best Buy for example listed them as in stock (though there's always the chance that was BS).

But mostly I was surfing this comics site that had a great inventory of stuff I wanted... so it was an impulse thing.

And this was Dec 23rd, so I was prepared to wait... but I naively assumed that since my order was pulled and paid for, it would ship on Dec 2nd, a business day and 10 days after my order.

Now that it's more than two weeks... I'm officially ticked.

Edit: Actually what really got me ticked was when their Mail Order rep emailed me Friday to say "it's shipping today" and it didn't.

That's the moment I got annoyed.

 

[Banshee16]

Being polite doesn't work. Being right doesn't work. This is why I am a firm believer in the need nowadays for everyone to do a "Falling Down" episode and just be allowed to kill as many morons as possible in as short a period of time as possible. Kind of like those radio station giveaways where they swirl thousands of dollars in a booth and you have a minute to grab as much money as possible.

I can't say that the service I've received lately has been *that* bad. Your analogy *is* funny however, because you sound just like a buddy of mine....though instead of customer service, he was talking regarding stupid people

Banshee

 

[Banshee16]

Stores do tend to have a lot of "appearance discrimination". Most store employees seem to be trained to make a snap judgement of every customer by their appearance, and treat them accordingly. This definitely affects the kind of help you get when you ask for help. Sometimes their "rules" get a little cryptic.

This happens in sales too...though every so often, the sales agent gets burned. I've heard tales of car salesguys who ignored a customer who walked into the dealership in muddy boots and jeans, thinking they had no money, only to watch the guy drop $40,000 cash on a new truck, and it turned out the whole time, the guy was a farmer, looking to replace a vehicle for his business.

Banshee

 

[Vocenoctum]

Don't forget, it was a Best Buy where a man was arrested for trying to pay with $2 bills...
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43685

When using the turnpike, we'd get the dollar coins to pay the exact change lane, so it was easier (toss one coin instead of 4). When we were coming back once, we went into a grocery store to buy some soda, and my relative paid with a couple of the gold coins. The guy stared at them like they were Canadian Pesos or something. Seeing his brain going into lock-up mode, my relative said "those are dollars", to which he said "oh, okay" and gave us change.

As we're leaving, all I could think was that we could have been handing him arcade tokens and he'd not know the difference.

We also had Taco Bell give us trouble when the "new" twenty dollar bills came out years ago. They didn't want to accept it.

 

[Squire James]

I can't say that the service I've received lately has been *that* bad. Your analogy *is* funny however, because you sound just like a buddy of mine....though instead of customer service, he was talking regarding stupid people

Banshee

I can't help but to think the customer service and stupid people are connected somehow!

 

[Banshee16]

When using the turnpike, we'd get the dollar coins to pay the exact change lane, so it was easier (toss one coin instead of 4). When we were coming back once, we went into a grocery store to buy some soda, and my relative paid with a couple of the gold coins. The guy stared at them like they were Canadian Pesos or something. Seeing his brain going into lock-up mode, my relative said "those are dollars", to which he said "oh, okay" and gave us change.

As we're leaving, all I could think was that we could have been handing him arcade tokens and he'd not know the difference.

We also had Taco Bell give us trouble when the "new" twenty dollar bills came out years ago. They didn't want to accept it.

Think it would work to try Canadian Tire money?

Banshee

 

[3catcircus]

I can't help but to think the customer service and stupid people are connected somehow!

No argument there...

I'm a firm believer in the idea that people have been getting dumber and dumber even as the amount of information necessary to learn gets larger and larger - so much for natural selection.

As an extreme example - there is a (and I don't know if it is a hoax or not) webpage showing a "Kansas 8th grade final exam" from 1895 - there is no way that an average "A" student from the current generation would pass the test. Unfortunately, too many kids have not been faced with failure, expect everything to be given to them without any effort, and are truculently assertive of their "rights." Of course, it doesn't help that too many teachers don't know the subject matter that they are teaching since Education is usually (not always) a major for people who couldn't cut it in engineering, math, liberal arts, or even business and who aren't football players with a half-assed "Recreation" degree.

 

[ssampier]

... Canadian Pesos...

That phrase just makes me smile.