So I flipped out and now feel bad

[TBman]

sort of....

My son bought me a Craftsman 4 drawer rolling tool cabinet for Fathers day. Today I took it out of the box to put the casters on it and planned on getting some liners for the drawers. I started putting the casters on with the supplied bolts and one of the casters didn't have the holes drilled. Yes. These are made from what appeared to be hardened steel.

I contemplated drilling the holes myself but I doubted that my drill bits would survive. I also started wondering why should I have to.

So being in a bit of a bad mood (understatement) I called the customer service and told the young man on the other end what happened. He happily proceeded to tell me that he would give me the number of the vendor who supplied the casters to obtain a replacement.

I went ballistic.

I said, I'm not going down your supply chain to get a part for a product that has your name on it. You do your job, I'm not doing it for you.

Yada yada yada. He repeated himself as if I was deaf and I repeated myself with even more colorful adjectives than what the situation really called for, but I made my point and he agreed, but he said it would have to wait until Monday as the part department is closed and he can't contact them. Fine, I said forget it, I'll take it back and get a full replacement.

So I stuffed the thing back in what remained of the original box with some of the styrofoam packaging and the casters, parts and directions and drove back to Lowes.

Lowes doesn't even blink. They gave us the money back (my son had paid cash) and we just bought a replacement. We brought home the replacement and I put the thing together without a problem.

Sometimes I overreact, but its better for my blood pressure to let it out,

[jklotz]

Well, good news, you have a nice tool chest that works properly now. All's well that ends well?

I can relate though. I'm in a legal battle with my HOA at the moment over things like failed and neglected life/fire safety systems, doors that won't lock so the building is wide open in a high crime neighborhood, etc, etc. They are mostly investor slum lord types that don't even live in the building. Every meeting I say I'm not going to loose my cool, but I always do. I know things would get resolved faster and go smoother if I didn't. I'm trying.

[Shepsdad]

I bought a Poulan chainsaw from Home Depot several years ago. It was an emergency purchase, as my older Ryobi chainsaw had died and I needed a saw right then and there to clear some storm damage. I brought the saw home, used it for less than 10 minutes, and it quit, just completely went dead, nothing I tried would make it even begin to start again. So I threw it back in the box and returned to Home Depot to exchange it, less than an hour after buying it!I didn’t even want a refund, just exchange it for something else that wasn’t complete junk.

First two idiots I spoke to both told me they couldn’t exchange it but could send it to the warranty repair center and have it fixed! Nope, I don’t want this piece of crap, I want to get a better saw that won’t die 10 minutes into the job, just give me store credit and I’ll go get a different saw! Even people in line behind me at the return counter were like “just give the guy a different saw”. The cowardly store manager refused to show his face, and I proceeded to tell the people behind the counter to call the cops, because that’s the only way I’m leaving without a different chainsaw. After a few more minutes, a phone behind the counter rang, and one of the clerks spoke to somebody, I presume the store manager, and after hanging up, came over and said, we’re giving you a full refund! Lol!

I went to the local Stihl dealer and bought a great saw, that has never failed me in years.

I kinda felt bad about getting so irate with the Home Depot drones, but I went into the whole ordeal being completely reasonable, I mean, I NEEDED a saw, and they wanted to get stupid about it.

[stokes1971]

Surprised you got a problem with a return at Home Depot.They take anything back for any reason, no questions asked as long as the upc number is theirs.We even bought a Poulan chainsaw and used it to cut about 30 trees down and cut them up.Decided we should have gotten a Husqvarna.Just cleaned it up a bit and bought it back, no problem.

[ghostnote]

So, bottom line, your irate self-indulgence got you nowhere? You ended up going back to the point-of-sale anyway, and got a satisfactory result? I think I learned something from this post...

[Brucebubs]

I kept getting accounts bills from a waste management company to the local Forrester Dept. but incorrectly addressed with my PO box number.
I returned 2 unopened to the Post Office.
When a 3rd arrived I opened it and rang the number on the letterhead.
I think it was the CEO!
He asked me, "How did you get this number?"
I told him.
Then he started with, "What you need to do is ring ...."
I stopped him there, "I'm not doing anything, I rang you as a courtesy, you fix it. I'm putting this invoice in the bin!"
He started again so I hung up.
He rang me back, "Did you just hang up on me?"
So I hung up again and screwed up the invoice, threw it in the bin (trash).

Must have worked, didn't get another invoice after that.

[TBman]

Originally Posted by ghostnote

So, bottom line, your irate self-indulgence got you nowhere? You ended up going back to the point-of-sale anyway, and got a satisfactory result? I think I learned something from this post...

Exactly,

Do as I do, not as I say

[Riverwolf]

Customer service is going the way of the Dodo bird.

[frankmcr]

Originally Posted by Brucebubs

"Did you just hang up on me?"

Love it. Obviously a cum laude MBA with a specialty in "How to act like a CEO".

[rllink]

Originally Posted by Riverwolf

Customer service is going the way of the Dodo bird.

I don't know, I've been getting pretty good customer service. It really has to do with talking to the right person. Sometimes the person one is talking to on the phone doesn't have the authority to move wind and water. In that case one just has to get past them to the person who is a little higher up on the chain of command. Anyway, in the case of the OP, I might have just taken the offending caster back to Lowes, but it all worked out in the end. I mean, things happen. That's life.

[Glennwillow]

I agree with RL just above. I don't think customer service has gotten worse in current times. People in the organization who are powerless are afraid to act. As RL notes, you have to get to the right person.

I also understand the frustration of getting something new only to find out that it's got problems and now you are trapped. They have your money and you have flawed merchandise that has to be repaired or returned or whatever. Now you have more work to do.

I think, in general, that standards for quality control have improved in the world and so we are very fortunate that most of the time things work right out of the box.

Even though I was the Chief Engineer for the medium-sized manufacturing company I worked for for over four decades, for quite a few years I handled all the warranty problems on our equipment. I wanted to know what the problems were first hand, and I didn't want my people dealing with the negatives of angry customers. I had the advantage of knowing that the president of the company wanted happy customers and wanted us to fix our problems so I knew he would back me on my decisions. I think our company was very good at resolving problems even though the percentage of problems was extremely low compared to our output. (Otherwise, I couldn't have handled all the warranty problems by myself.)

In the course of that work I often dealt with angry people, frustrated by the problems. They almost always calmed down when they realized I was working to make things right for them. Many of those customers became some of our most loyal fans once they learned how we would stand behind our product. Still, a lot of those interchanges were difficult and stressful.

Life can be challenging...

- Glenn

[buddyhu]

Originally Posted by rllink

I don't know, I've been getting pretty good customer service. It really has to do with talking to the right person. Sometimes the person one is talking to on the phone doesn't have the authority to move wind and water. In that case one just has to get past them to the person who is a little higher up on the chain of command. Anyway, in the case of the OP, I might have just taken the offending caster back to Lowes, but it all worked out in the end. I mean, things happen. That's life.

I also believe that customer is just as good as it has ever been… but sometimes, you just have a bad experience. Bad experiences are sometimes imbedded in the culture of the company, sometimes you catch a good person on a bad day, sometimes you get someone who is not happy who can’t even treat themselves well, let alone serve someone else.

That being said, it is not uncommon for people to lose it when they feel overloaded with difficulties or frustrations….and God knows that the past year has brought more frustration to many of us. A frustrating experience and/or an unresponsive person can elicit the discharge of back logged frustrations. Of course, I am only talking theoretically here…it is something I have NEVER done.

[Bob Womack]

My wife used to be a customer service manager for a large department store chain. They actually had a school where they taught customer service and she traveled to study there. At that school she learned an interesting statistic (this was pre-Internet): if a person has a good customer service transaction, chances are that they will spread the word to one person. If a person has a bad customer service transaction, chances are they will spread the word to TEN other people. My wife took her company's average sale amount amount, multiplied that by the number of bad transactions they had per day, week, month, etc., and then multiply that by ten to demonstrate the sales loss to be expected from bad customer service. Her job was to train and manage the sales force to create as many positive transactions as possible and cause as few negative transactions as possible. She was DARNED good at it. You can bet that the negative figure has expanded geometrically in the Internet age.

After working in that field, my wife moved into the "major league" of customer service: She is now a Certified Pharmacy Technician for a large retail pharmacy company. Why the major league? She works every day serving patients, most of whom are sick. People who are sick, and even caretakers for those who are sick, are quite often extremely short on patience, quite often at the snapping point, and obstreperous. Her job is to fill the patient's prescriptions and move their billing through insurance. There are unique challenges. The patient's cost for medicines filled through insurance can't be ascertained until the prescription is filled and an attempt is made to handle the billing through the insurance. If the doctor doesn't do his work, it becomes her job to inform the patient. If the insurance company won't cover the medicine, it is her job to inform the patient. If the patient or doctor doesn't do his due diligence on a refill as far as timing is concerned and the prescription won't go through, it is her job to inform the patient... The already uncomfortable, unhappy patient.

The upshot is that most people blame all prescription problems on the pharmacy, pharmacy chain, or pharmacy employee, when the truth is that they are simply the tiny, finely chiseled tip of a huge spear that is leveled at the patient. My wife's job is to handle all difficulties and serve and inform the patient in such a way as to not inflame the patient. If the patient becomes unreasonably inflamed anyway, my wife must find a way to mollify the patient. That is quite a chore. Unfortunately, pharmacy companies and schools aren't teaching the skills she possesses. They create wonderful pharmacy technicians but not customer service specialists. My wife originally wanted to be a nurse, but now works in pharmacy. I tell my wife that she was designed and built for this job. She is fantastic at it. Wherever she is assigned the customer service scores go up drastically.

Bob

[Slothead56]

Many, if not most, national retailers have agreements with their Suppliers to take back anything deemed defective, regardless of the issue, destroy it and bill back the Supplier for the cost of the goods. It’s a model that effectively saves time and money for all parties and, ultimately, drives up the cost of goods to the end user.

That’s why I often find returns to almost any place are not contested and smooth as silk.

[Tahitijack]

My wife is the master of returning goods. She has probably returned over two trillion dollars worth of products. If it isn't right, back it goes. She always carefully opens packaging so it all goes back the way its shipped. No wasted time on the customer service phones.