Customer Service

[Mach33 818]

*Sigh* Sorry, but this has been on my mind...What is the best (or worst) experience that you've had with customer service?

Like, maybe someone at customer service went out of their way to help you, or maybe they didn't do anything at all to help you.

 

[cuteycindyhoney 13,307]

 

This is a true story. A few years ago around Christmas time, I had these plastic electric candles to put in the window. I needed some new bulbs for them. I went to K-Mart to buy them. They had Sylvania light bulbs with the proper base. I went to buy two twin packs of yellow ones. I liked them better than the red. Keep in mind that they were identical, except for color. They rang up at the wrong price. I went back and found out that the red ones had a price sticker, marked a dollar cheaper. I brought them to customer service. The woman behind the counter insisted that the red ones were indeed cheaper then the yellow. I said "You're kidding!" I showed her that the UPC code was identical, except one ended in R, and the other ended in Y, for the colors. She still said red was cheaper. I talked until I was blue in the face, but could not convince her that they should be the same price. I even used the argument that if I was buying a blouse, it wouldn't cost more just because it was in a different color.

Note proud of this, but I took all three packages and threw them against the wall in back of her before leaving the store. I never went back, and now it no longer exists.

HA!  

Edited July 2, 2017 by cuteycindyhoney

[Snow 7,047]

A tale from the other side~

So here I was inspecting newly arriving cars for damage in the (really small and packed) underground car park of the dealership I use to work at, and some dude who was in a bit of a hurry swings in and parks right on the joined corners of 4 spots, are you kidding mate? He took up 4 of the lest 5 spaces, Yea you have somewhere to be but that isn't much of an excuse to have no respect for anyone else, not cool man, not cool.

For those of you who have had bad customer service experiences, I encourage you to try a service position for a few weeks, after dealing with unhappy customers for a bit you will know how hard such a job can be and instead of giving an employee a hard time the next time your service is lacking in any way, maybe you will have a bit more patience with them because you actually know what it is like for them, I was never one to make a scene but my past experiences have been eye opening and now I make sure to go easy on the poor buggers behind the desk.

[RavenholmZombie 1,330]

Back in 2014 or so, I purchased an HP laptop for school since I was getting ready to head off to college and needed a portable PC.

Anyways, for the first semester or so, it ran fine with no issues whatsoever. It booted quickly and had excellent response times. Then, come right in the middle of my mid-term exams during second semester and BOOM! The hard drive literally dies in a puff of smoke. Knowing that my laptop was still under warranty, I called up HP's technical support line.

I got terrible customer support from a guy who could barely speak English and knew nothing about fixing the particular problem I was having with my PC. I wasted literally two hours with this guy while he stumbled around trying to help me fix this problem. Not to mention that he was rude, he hung up on my twice.

In the end, I just said "screw this" and replaced the dead hard drive with a cheap 240 GB solid-state drive I got from Newegg.

Needless to say, I will never buy another HP product ever again, not just because the quality sucks, but also because the customer support sucks.

[Compeador 101]

I deed have a very funny (stupid) story... I was playing a mobile game and I spent $9.99 on IAP, but I only receive the "gems", did not get any extra stuff it showed, so I emailed their customer service; but I didn't get any reply after 3 days(work day). After that, I ask Google Play for the refund and they give back my money, but soon the customer service sent me a email said I have applied the refund so the gems I received via the purchase will be confiscated; however, I have spent some so they ask me to purchase the IAP again to give them back the gems or my account will be banned...I don't fucking care so I just let them go 

Edited July 27, 2017 by Compeador

[CypherHoof 26,483]

43 minutes ago, Compeador said:

After that, I ask Google Play for the refund and they give back my money,

I do like google play - with their Opinion app, you can get free credit for answering dumb questions

[TBD 17,254]

Basically if they don't answer any my question and regrading my needs.  Or just being lazy about doing their job when its just one job. On the other hand,  with experiences of providing customers service i work at the deli and some customers is just a freakin douche for not able to wait for two mins for their sandwich to be made.

[PlzDelete 2,456]

This is a true story from 2 years ago~

I was at a grocery store (I think a Safeway) somewhere in Seattle I haven't been before. My mom, little sister and I where all shopping in different areas of the store to make things go faster. When we all met up at the register, my mom had a sad look on her face. Concerned, I asked what was wrong. My mom then said "The asian lady at the Starbucks counter wouldn't serve me coffee because I'm white".  I was ANGRY. I have experienced racism before and when it comes to my mom, I try to protect her from that. I stormed up to the store manager and ranted to him about what happened. We all walked back to the Starbucks and saw her serving OTHER ASIAN PEOPLE WITH NO PROBLEM. She was fired right in front of us.  

[Kyoshi Frost Wolf 41,558]

You know, with all of the nightmarish tales of customer service that I have heard, it is weird that my experiences have mostly been positive. For example, I have had to contact Microsoft on different occasions over the years, whether it be for a general question or a time I needed to refund a digital purchase. They have always made it incredibly quick and simple to get exactly what I needed. This is usually through text chat support as well, which is far easier for me to handle.

I do remember contacting Microsoft after my Xbox 360 got the Red Ring of Death for the first time, so early on that it was before it became a plague on the system. They straight up told me to give them $150 to 'fix' their $400 system. Needless to say I hung up on them. Then the RROD became rampant just a few months later and they started offering the free repairs with the warranty to go with it. I called back and brought up how they were going to charge me that much to do some fix, that was satisfying to put in their face.

[DubWolf 17,264]

Were you the person who sat on pee :c ?

The way I see it, the customer paid/is paying for a service, so they need to be pleased with that or their product, and anything that may not satisfy their needs must be addressed.

That doesn't always happen though...

[Once In A Blue Moon 895]

I enjoyed working in a small charity bookshop, and although I didn't have too many bad experiences (well, one kind of nasty one but that was it) there was one incident best described as 'interesting.'

As we could never compete with larger chain (or Amazon), the focus was always on providing customer service - very few people came to our shop with a specific book in mind (that's what Amazon is for, after all), what they came for was to browse and get ideas. As such, part of the job was to help them find something interesting, or otherwise improve their experience, and a number of older people came in just for a chat every so often. 

On the day in question, a lady came in asking about books on a particular topic. I showed her what we had, and as she was looking through them she talked. It started on the books, which weren't really of interest to me but I listened politely, but then she went off on tangent after tangent after tangent - and had a rapid descent into tin foil hat territory. She talked about governments using chem-trails to sterilise the population, how Prince had publicly spoken out about it and that's why he was dead, how she only uses filtered water so as to keep the chemicals out of her system... it was quite something. 20 minutes of 'quite something', in fact, as though the stranger parts of the internet had coalesced into the customer in the shop in front of me. To my credit, I kept my skepticism mild and restrained.

[Jedishy 3,548]

I can speak from both ends of the spectrum here. 

 

The worst customer service experience I've ever gotten as a customer was at a restaurant in down town San Diego. Our food took forever due to the waiter forgetting to turn it in. We got two wrong meals out of 6. All of our drinks had free refills except for one of our guys and the waiter did not inform him. The waiter was told that we wanted to split at the start. He forgot this and then got an attitude and took 30 minutes to get back to us with our bills. In short just slow service where we would see him chatting with other staff rather then doing what he said he would be right back with. 

On the other side, I used to work as a part time manager for an office supply store and I was head of the tech section. I had a lady come in on my first day as a manager screaming two inches from my face because I would not take two empty ink cartridges back with no receipt and no boxes that she claimed she paid cash for. She came in mad and yelling about how they ran out too fast to start with. Then would not let me explain anything. Thankfully she just got so mad she left. Turned out she came back the next week to say she was sorry as those were the old cartridges and she had never put in the new ones... Lucky for me Bootcamp got me used to yelling so her tantrum was nothing that bugged me. 

 

I'll cap this off with the fact that a bad day or personal issues are never a reason for poor customer service. You are paid to do a job and do it in a professional manner there is no excuse for losing your cool or being rude. Check your emotions and issues at the door or call out.