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Local cab company hurting our business
First a bit of back story.
I come from a small town, and use the local cab service regularly.
I have known the people who run it for years, as customers in the stores where I worked.
Last year, the couple split up, and the wife now owns the company, and is living with a guy who is really overbearing and obnoxious. He drives a cab for the company.
The ex-husband is now with one of my co-workers, but he still drives for the company.
This woman is very negative about the store. She is a real screw-up, so has not advanced in the ranks much, and is very bitter against management. She doesn't realize that, every time we have to spend 20 minutes fixing a screwup...it costs us in time and resources. She priced for me for a while, and I finally had to ask to have her taken off. She is dyslexic, and that is a rather bad job for someone who reverses digits. I am still fixing her errors a year later...seriously.
Anyway, her negativity about the place rubs off on her partner, the cab driver, and he repeats it to all his passengers about how terrible our store is.
It's a small town, so people believe what they hear.
It's the talk of the area about how bad our store has become. We were a top ranked store in the entire country...twice...and now, rumours of disgruntled employees and unfair managing practices are hurting us.
(Yeah, I have my own issues with management, but they are certainly not as bad as she is making out to her partner.)
Anyway, fast forward to Friday. I called a cab, to go home, and after waiting a while, the ex-husband drove in. I found that odd, as he doesn't usually drive in the evenings.
I had just been talking with one of my co-workers, and she was telling me that the cab company owner had called in about a problem with her freezer, and her new partner had come on the phone and had been verbally abusive with the clerk, and then the manager, so the manager hung up on him.
The freezer is about 5 months old, and has started acting up.
I got in the cab, and as we were heading out the driveway, the driver started badmouthing my store, telling me that his ex-wife had called and asked him to pick me up, because she was just too angry, and was afraid of what she would say to me.
I was really mad.
I started blasting him (in a nice way, of course, because that's my style), and I tried to get it through his head that we stand behind our appliances, but our warranty policy is only as good as the company allows. In this case, our hands are tied. We have to refer the customer to a service tech, and they decide whether to repair or replace.
We cannot go ahead and replace on our own, as we could end up with a dud freezer that the company will not credit to us. We do not sell repaired appliances.
In most cases, if the item can be repaired easily, it's a simple thing. If it turns out to be more extensive, the company is usually very good at offering replacement, but we simply can't bypass the service tech, because that's their policy. NOT OURS!!!
I told him, "Don't you think we would love to be able to just hand our customers a new appliance? Do you think we like having people get angry that they have to call a service tech instead of getting a new one?"
The thing is, we sell a lot of appliances, and we have a very low return rate of defects. Most of the returns I have handled in the past year have been shipping damage discovered when the carton was opened.
There have been maybe 2 freezers and 1 fridge, and the companies allowed replacement on them.
We have several different manufacturers for our appliances, so it's not like they were all from one brand, either.
The cab company owner is now badmouthing our store as well.
She has told all of her clients not to buy appliances from us, as they are nothing but junk.
She bought a washer from us a few years ago and had problems then, and it was the same situation. In that case, the washer was over a year old and it was a minor part that went. It was a simple matter of replacing a part that was normally not warrantied, because of normal wear and tear to the item.
She felt she should have had a new appliance.
So, I am really ticked about this.
I leave a lot of money with that company, and I am pissed that they are damaging the reputation of the place where I earn my money.
There is only one other cab company, but they are not local, their cabs are not as clean and the drivers take forever to get there.
I want to boycott my regular cab company and use the other company, but I don't think I can get the rest of my family on baord, as they like the people who run the company, and their service.
I am certainly very mad that she refused to pick me up because she was mad at my store, when I had nothing to do with it.
I only handle the paperwork.
I plan to talk to the manager about how this company is trashing us.
Maybe, if they belong to the Chamber of Commerce, or any of the local business person's groups, he can ask them to stop damaging his business. I don't know.
To me, they are a business, and by badmouthing us to their clients, that would be like our store refusing to call their company for our customers, and telling our customers not to take their cabs.
The truth is, they just raised their rates a month ago, and their service has started to go downhill.
It only takes less than 10 minutes to go across our town, but there is often a 15-20 minute wait for a cab, after they have told us it will be 5-10 minutes.
I often have to share my cab with another pickup, but then I have to pay full rate.
Sometimes, there will be several stops fpr the other passenger before I get home, and I still pay full rate, but if I take the cab and have to make a quick stop to pick up my daughter, or even go to a bank machine, it costs me an extra $1.00 and a full rate for my daughter as well if she continues on to another stop.
There are a lot of things I could be saying to badmouth them, but I won't.
I am really quite mad about this. I am almost mad enough to call the taxi licensing place and report them for what they are doing to our business.
I come from a small town, and use the local cab service regularly.
I have known the people who run it for years, as customers in the stores where I worked.
Last year, the couple split up, and the wife now owns the company, and is living with a guy who is really overbearing and obnoxious. He drives a cab for the company.
The ex-husband is now with one of my co-workers, but he still drives for the company.
This woman is very negative about the store. She is a real screw-up, so has not advanced in the ranks much, and is very bitter against management. She doesn't realize that, every time we have to spend 20 minutes fixing a screwup...it costs us in time and resources. She priced for me for a while, and I finally had to ask to have her taken off. She is dyslexic, and that is a rather bad job for someone who reverses digits. I am still fixing her errors a year later...seriously.
Anyway, her negativity about the place rubs off on her partner, the cab driver, and he repeats it to all his passengers about how terrible our store is.
It's a small town, so people believe what they hear.
It's the talk of the area about how bad our store has become. We were a top ranked store in the entire country...twice...and now, rumours of disgruntled employees and unfair managing practices are hurting us.
(Yeah, I have my own issues with management, but they are certainly not as bad as she is making out to her partner.)
Anyway, fast forward to Friday. I called a cab, to go home, and after waiting a while, the ex-husband drove in. I found that odd, as he doesn't usually drive in the evenings.
I had just been talking with one of my co-workers, and she was telling me that the cab company owner had called in about a problem with her freezer, and her new partner had come on the phone and had been verbally abusive with the clerk, and then the manager, so the manager hung up on him.
The freezer is about 5 months old, and has started acting up.
I got in the cab, and as we were heading out the driveway, the driver started badmouthing my store, telling me that his ex-wife had called and asked him to pick me up, because she was just too angry, and was afraid of what she would say to me.
I was really mad.
I started blasting him (in a nice way, of course, because that's my style), and I tried to get it through his head that we stand behind our appliances, but our warranty policy is only as good as the company allows. In this case, our hands are tied. We have to refer the customer to a service tech, and they decide whether to repair or replace.
We cannot go ahead and replace on our own, as we could end up with a dud freezer that the company will not credit to us. We do not sell repaired appliances.
In most cases, if the item can be repaired easily, it's a simple thing. If it turns out to be more extensive, the company is usually very good at offering replacement, but we simply can't bypass the service tech, because that's their policy. NOT OURS!!!
I told him, "Don't you think we would love to be able to just hand our customers a new appliance? Do you think we like having people get angry that they have to call a service tech instead of getting a new one?"
The thing is, we sell a lot of appliances, and we have a very low return rate of defects. Most of the returns I have handled in the past year have been shipping damage discovered when the carton was opened.
There have been maybe 2 freezers and 1 fridge, and the companies allowed replacement on them.
We have several different manufacturers for our appliances, so it's not like they were all from one brand, either.
The cab company owner is now badmouthing our store as well.
She has told all of her clients not to buy appliances from us, as they are nothing but junk.
She bought a washer from us a few years ago and had problems then, and it was the same situation. In that case, the washer was over a year old and it was a minor part that went. It was a simple matter of replacing a part that was normally not warrantied, because of normal wear and tear to the item.
She felt she should have had a new appliance.
So, I am really ticked about this.
I leave a lot of money with that company, and I am pissed that they are damaging the reputation of the place where I earn my money.
There is only one other cab company, but they are not local, their cabs are not as clean and the drivers take forever to get there.
I want to boycott my regular cab company and use the other company, but I don't think I can get the rest of my family on baord, as they like the people who run the company, and their service.
I am certainly very mad that she refused to pick me up because she was mad at my store, when I had nothing to do with it.
I only handle the paperwork.
I plan to talk to the manager about how this company is trashing us.
Maybe, if they belong to the Chamber of Commerce, or any of the local business person's groups, he can ask them to stop damaging his business. I don't know.
To me, they are a business, and by badmouthing us to their clients, that would be like our store refusing to call their company for our customers, and telling our customers not to take their cabs.
The truth is, they just raised their rates a month ago, and their service has started to go downhill.
It only takes less than 10 minutes to go across our town, but there is often a 15-20 minute wait for a cab, after they have told us it will be 5-10 minutes.
I often have to share my cab with another pickup, but then I have to pay full rate.
Sometimes, there will be several stops fpr the other passenger before I get home, and I still pay full rate, but if I take the cab and have to make a quick stop to pick up my daughter, or even go to a bank machine, it costs me an extra $1.00 and a full rate for my daughter as well if she continues on to another stop.
There are a lot of things I could be saying to badmouth them, but I won't.
I am really quite mad about this. I am almost mad enough to call the taxi licensing place and report them for what they are doing to our business.
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