Wednesday, August 06, 2008

What do you do when...

...you've had bad customer service?

  • Do you let the person who helped you know that their service wasn't good?
  • Do you let his or her boss/supervisor/manager know? 
  • Do you walk out & decide not to go back? 
  • Do you just roll with the punches and continue to shop there hoping someone else will help you next time?

I ask because I recently had some bad customer service and I'm just not sure if I should speak up and tell the person that I was disappointed, or if I should just decide not to buy from this person again. 

The situation involved purchasing jewelry from a home party.  The sales person put our orders in late and then several items were unavailable.  This was annoying because I bought items to go together and not getting one of the pieces really makes me not want the other items.  Plus because she took so long getting the order in, it's taking weeks for me to get the items instead of just a few days.  Compounding that is the fact that the person who had the party specifically asked the sales person to send the items to her work, not her home, since the party giver knew that she would not be home when UPS came to deliver the jewelry, but would be at work.  Of course the sales person didn't listen and the items arrived at the party giver's home and then went back to the UPS hub because no one was there to sign for the package.

I also felt for the party hostess because she had items she'd ordered at the "hostess price" that were canceled and the sales person never offered to replace them with items from the new catalog or find a way to get the hostess those items.  She also lost out on some free party hosting items because the total for orders decreased because of some items not being available any more.  When the hostess contacted the sales person with questions it would take days for her to get back to the hostess.  Just bad service!

There were other things too, but I wont get into all of them.  But I certainly won't order jewelry from, or host a party for, this sales representative.  Do I tell her why, or just walk away quietly?


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3 comments:

Sea-of-Green said...

Hmmmm ... For me, it always depends on how frequently I'm a patron of the establishment/service/individual. If I'm a regular patron, I'm likely express my concerns (nicely) to the manager or the individual. If I'm NOT a frequent patron, I grin and bear it for the time being (and don't leave a tip, if it's a restaurant or salon), and decide not to go back.

Anonymous said...

I like to contact the store manager or supervisor, because obviously the employee doesn't care about doing a good job. If I get really upset I may contact a manager and never go back....but you gotta be real stubborn if it's somewhere you normally frequent or like to go. I stopped going to certain fast food locations because no matter how many times I complained, they couldn't get the stuff right and just down the road was the same restaurant (I use the term loosely) that always gets it right. Oh well.

Anonymous said...

The worst thing you can do is never give that person another dime ever again.