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Why I should never have come back to customer service (swearing)
<rant>
I've just finished serving for a few happy years in the Army, this was great because the closest thing we had to customers were people we were shooting at. This worked well.
Now I'm back in the real world and having spent less than a month working in a consumer electronics store I need to vent... badly.
The problem is the constant whinging and complaining I hear - and I'm not even on the complaints desk. I get that we sometimes screw up and if we do then fine, we will generally apologise and do our best to put things right but I'm not talking about those (thankfully rather rare) times. I'm talking about the constant stream of terminally dense, entitled pricks who want us to carry the can for... well everything or else just lodge a complaint for the pure hell of it.
Below is a selection of my favorites:
I / my friend / my hamster is an expert in X technology so I know my stuff. When I asked an obscure or pointless technical question the salesman didn't know the answer straight away. ("do you know if the capacitors in this product were made in Korea?" "will the casing surrounding the screen biodegrade within 127 years?" "do you test each batch of memory in extremes of temperature just in case the manufacturers specifications don't apply in the Arctic?") You clearly have no knowledge about your products and just BS your way to a sale.
Yes we're all very impressed that you're an expert and it's great that you've come into our shop to show us just how much more you know than we do by asking bizarre and pointless questions that could probably only be answered by you and the product designers whose blogs you read. Here's the thing, we're sales reps on minimum wage and we sell pretty much everything electronic, I help people choose vaccum cleaners, irons, kettles, computers, cameras, washing machines and TVs. I know enough to be useful to most people in most areas and more clued-up people in one particular area - if I'm out of 'my' department and a customer needs more than general information I can go and get the sales rep who is assigned to that particular department. Even though we specialise, we're still only sales guys. If you want to talk post-doctoral engineering go and hire an engineer, if you want to geek out obsessively about the last tiny detail of your favorite brand of kitchen equipment then join a forum for that purpose.
As soon as I got into your shop I was mobbed by salesmen trying to con me into buying things.
All I ever say to people when they first come in is 'hello'. A distressingly large number of people think this is being 'mobbed'. Sensible people just say hello back, only arseholes or the terminally insecure and paranoid need to make a scene or would feel victimised.
I didn't see any staff in the shop, all the sales guys were just standing around.
Well firstly if you see us standing around we're deffinitely there. Secondly maybe we're just giving you space. Another possibility is that you're one of those people who acted like I broke into your house, beat up your dad and took a shit on the carpet when all I really did was say 'hello' as you walked in. If you're going to act like a wanker to everyone who talks to you then you can't expect us to act as your personal minions and materialise next to you in a puff of smoke as soon as you want help.
I bought this thingy off you last year and it works fine but I just don't wan't it any more. Can I have my money back?
No.
What??? But I only used it three times. It's not fair, whatever happened to 'the customer is always right'? You're a terrible shop and you're going to go out of business really soon because you can't treat customers like this. You have to give me a refund in the first year if I don't want it. I know my rights and THELAW says I need my money back now!
Go away.
I bought a laptop or a tablet and the salesman tried to make me buy antivirus/tech-support/cloudstorage/a bag/screen protectors/accidental damage cover/an extended warranty. Why won't you all just leave me alone?
Let's get one thing straight, nobody likes a hard sell and if I had tried to 'make you buy' anything you would have roundly told me to fuck off. What actually happened was that we had a two minute conversation where I offered you some stuff. I work on the assumption that as an adult you are capable of saying no to things you don't want. I'm not on commission, the reason I offer things to people is because of the large number of whinging idiots we get who didn't put a screen protector on their new tablet and want a new one when it gets scratched, who cracked their screen and want my shop to just buy them a new laptop or who want to stream Taiwanese ladyboy porn from an Estonian server with no virus protection or firewall and then have me fix the consequences during my lunch break. I don't want you back in with a shagged computer complaining that it is all my fault because I didn't tell you that X product would have saved you from whatever calamity you are currently experiencing.
Well my mate Dave says he could fix almost anything that goes wrong with computers, he says they're really easy and all this antiviris and tech-support and maintainence stuff is a rip-off because you can get it all for free if you know how.
I do my own maintainence too, and yes it's free - the only cost is that I have spent years teaching myself how the technology and software works and I am prepared to spend long evenings swearing at my computer while I slowly diagnose and fix problems. If you can't/don't want to do this then either buy an antivirus, maintainence and tech support package or be prepared to pay a computer tech (either with us or someone else) to fix it when you break it. Failing that take it to your mate Dave and see how good he really is.
Whatever you decide, please don't do this:
You sold me a faulty computer, it's got really slow can you fix it please?
Well if it's really broken due to being defective then yes we will fix it for you, more likely though you've buggered it somehow and you want us to spend several hours removing viruses, uninstalling half of the shit you've put on there and otherwise doing not-very-technical but rather time consuming maintainence things for free. Don't get me wrong I'm happy to help where I can. I can have a quick look for obvious solutions and give you general advice but I guarantee you that when you bought it from us we offered you virus protection, an annual 'tune-up' service and our subscription based tech support service along with assorted other extras (see above). It seems you told us 'no' (either politely or otherwise.) Fair enough, I'd have said 'no' too but I wouldn't turn up six months later demanding freebies having fucked my PC beyond all recognition.
I bought something and it broke, you repaired it promptly but I still hate you.
Err... ok then.
The salesman lied to me and I would never have bought this item if I knew how it worked.
I have a lot of sympathy for everyone who has bought something that didn't meet their expectations. You can't always blame the shop you bought it from though - of course we try and help you but we're not psychic and the crystal ball broke last week (and tech support still haven't fixed it because they're too busy repairing things you broke) - by this I mean that we can't look inside your head, find out what misapprehensions you are labouring under and fix them. The pattern I've seen is that some people browse around, ask to be left alone, fire a few specific questions off then buy the product. The trouble is that they take the answers to their questions and apply them very broadly to whatever the hell they imagine the product to be. Classics include 'will this computer go on the internet?' and 'can I watch 3D programs on this TV?'. In both cases the customer was told 'yes of course'. One week later we had to explain to the first irate individual that the computer would only go only the internet if they accessed an internet connection and to the second specimen that the TV would not magically change their old VHS collection into 3D. Bottom line is if you don't know what the item is, how it works or how to use it should you really be spending hundreds on it after spending two minutes firing random questions at the sales staff?
Here endeth the lesson.
</rant>
I've just finished serving for a few happy years in the Army, this was great because the closest thing we had to customers were people we were shooting at. This worked well.
Now I'm back in the real world and having spent less than a month working in a consumer electronics store I need to vent... badly.
The problem is the constant whinging and complaining I hear - and I'm not even on the complaints desk. I get that we sometimes screw up and if we do then fine, we will generally apologise and do our best to put things right but I'm not talking about those (thankfully rather rare) times. I'm talking about the constant stream of terminally dense, entitled pricks who want us to carry the can for... well everything or else just lodge a complaint for the pure hell of it.
Below is a selection of my favorites:
I / my friend / my hamster is an expert in X technology so I know my stuff. When I asked an obscure or pointless technical question the salesman didn't know the answer straight away. ("do you know if the capacitors in this product were made in Korea?" "will the casing surrounding the screen biodegrade within 127 years?" "do you test each batch of memory in extremes of temperature just in case the manufacturers specifications don't apply in the Arctic?") You clearly have no knowledge about your products and just BS your way to a sale.
Yes we're all very impressed that you're an expert and it's great that you've come into our shop to show us just how much more you know than we do by asking bizarre and pointless questions that could probably only be answered by you and the product designers whose blogs you read. Here's the thing, we're sales reps on minimum wage and we sell pretty much everything electronic, I help people choose vaccum cleaners, irons, kettles, computers, cameras, washing machines and TVs. I know enough to be useful to most people in most areas and more clued-up people in one particular area - if I'm out of 'my' department and a customer needs more than general information I can go and get the sales rep who is assigned to that particular department. Even though we specialise, we're still only sales guys. If you want to talk post-doctoral engineering go and hire an engineer, if you want to geek out obsessively about the last tiny detail of your favorite brand of kitchen equipment then join a forum for that purpose.
As soon as I got into your shop I was mobbed by salesmen trying to con me into buying things.
All I ever say to people when they first come in is 'hello'. A distressingly large number of people think this is being 'mobbed'. Sensible people just say hello back, only arseholes or the terminally insecure and paranoid need to make a scene or would feel victimised.
I didn't see any staff in the shop, all the sales guys were just standing around.
Well firstly if you see us standing around we're deffinitely there. Secondly maybe we're just giving you space. Another possibility is that you're one of those people who acted like I broke into your house, beat up your dad and took a shit on the carpet when all I really did was say 'hello' as you walked in. If you're going to act like a wanker to everyone who talks to you then you can't expect us to act as your personal minions and materialise next to you in a puff of smoke as soon as you want help.
I bought this thingy off you last year and it works fine but I just don't wan't it any more. Can I have my money back?
No.
What??? But I only used it three times. It's not fair, whatever happened to 'the customer is always right'? You're a terrible shop and you're going to go out of business really soon because you can't treat customers like this. You have to give me a refund in the first year if I don't want it. I know my rights and THELAW says I need my money back now!
Go away.
I bought a laptop or a tablet and the salesman tried to make me buy antivirus/tech-support/cloudstorage/a bag/screen protectors/accidental damage cover/an extended warranty. Why won't you all just leave me alone?
Let's get one thing straight, nobody likes a hard sell and if I had tried to 'make you buy' anything you would have roundly told me to fuck off. What actually happened was that we had a two minute conversation where I offered you some stuff. I work on the assumption that as an adult you are capable of saying no to things you don't want. I'm not on commission, the reason I offer things to people is because of the large number of whinging idiots we get who didn't put a screen protector on their new tablet and want a new one when it gets scratched, who cracked their screen and want my shop to just buy them a new laptop or who want to stream Taiwanese ladyboy porn from an Estonian server with no virus protection or firewall and then have me fix the consequences during my lunch break. I don't want you back in with a shagged computer complaining that it is all my fault because I didn't tell you that X product would have saved you from whatever calamity you are currently experiencing.
Well my mate Dave says he could fix almost anything that goes wrong with computers, he says they're really easy and all this antiviris and tech-support and maintainence stuff is a rip-off because you can get it all for free if you know how.
I do my own maintainence too, and yes it's free - the only cost is that I have spent years teaching myself how the technology and software works and I am prepared to spend long evenings swearing at my computer while I slowly diagnose and fix problems. If you can't/don't want to do this then either buy an antivirus, maintainence and tech support package or be prepared to pay a computer tech (either with us or someone else) to fix it when you break it. Failing that take it to your mate Dave and see how good he really is.
Whatever you decide, please don't do this:
You sold me a faulty computer, it's got really slow can you fix it please?
Well if it's really broken due to being defective then yes we will fix it for you, more likely though you've buggered it somehow and you want us to spend several hours removing viruses, uninstalling half of the shit you've put on there and otherwise doing not-very-technical but rather time consuming maintainence things for free. Don't get me wrong I'm happy to help where I can. I can have a quick look for obvious solutions and give you general advice but I guarantee you that when you bought it from us we offered you virus protection, an annual 'tune-up' service and our subscription based tech support service along with assorted other extras (see above). It seems you told us 'no' (either politely or otherwise.) Fair enough, I'd have said 'no' too but I wouldn't turn up six months later demanding freebies having fucked my PC beyond all recognition.
I bought something and it broke, you repaired it promptly but I still hate you.
Err... ok then.
The salesman lied to me and I would never have bought this item if I knew how it worked.
I have a lot of sympathy for everyone who has bought something that didn't meet their expectations. You can't always blame the shop you bought it from though - of course we try and help you but we're not psychic and the crystal ball broke last week (and tech support still haven't fixed it because they're too busy repairing things you broke) - by this I mean that we can't look inside your head, find out what misapprehensions you are labouring under and fix them. The pattern I've seen is that some people browse around, ask to be left alone, fire a few specific questions off then buy the product. The trouble is that they take the answers to their questions and apply them very broadly to whatever the hell they imagine the product to be. Classics include 'will this computer go on the internet?' and 'can I watch 3D programs on this TV?'. In both cases the customer was told 'yes of course'. One week later we had to explain to the first irate individual that the computer would only go only the internet if they accessed an internet connection and to the second specimen that the TV would not magically change their old VHS collection into 3D. Bottom line is if you don't know what the item is, how it works or how to use it should you really be spending hundreds on it after spending two minutes firing random questions at the sales staff?
Here endeth the lesson.
</rant>
This made me giggle.
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