Why are people so afraid of Banning Customers from Big Name stores?

[Kusanagi]

Radix malorum est cupiditas.

Rapscallion

Indeed it is.

[Naaman]

Agree with the above sentiments

Head office CS managers have either never been near a real life SC or have been instructed to be the good guy (not picking on the phone operatives there, ours' used to be pretty sweet).

As a mitigating, but overused, circumstance people will think more of a business if a mistake happens but gets rectified quickly and without fuss and in theory tell their friends how good X store is. In reality, unfortunately CS policy makers have never met a SC in their home environment.

On a side note our unofficial policy was once someone was identified as a truly SC we wait until they kicked off, bait them a little then get them thrown out of the store. Getting thrown out of the store by mall security meant a ban from the mall

[BookstoreEscapee]

If they'd just come out and say "yes, you were right, the customer was wrong, but we want his/her money" I wouldn't feel half as bad as when they say "it's customer service"

I had one manager who was really good about this. If he was going to override policy in the interest of customer service, he would always tell the customer that the employee is right and is following policy, and make it clear that as the manager, he had the authority to do them a favor. Other managers who would just cave right away led me to start just doing certain things rather than call them up in the first place. It wasn't worth the aggravation and I never got in trouble for it (though there were things I wouldn't do and I knew where to draw the line and call for help).

[B&NGoddess]

Somewhere on this site there is a story about a group of women who went absolutely apeshit when asked to move their chairs away from an aisle in Barnes and Noble, and had to be hauled away by the police. They complained to the district manager, and he wrote them a sniveling, ass-kissing letter like I described above, apologizing for what happened and welcoming them back with open arms.

ugh. i can attest to this. our DM is notorious for doing shit like that. for instance, a woman started freaking out because her daughter was lost. store called a code adam so every employee that wasn't otherwise engaged was on the lookout for the girl. long story short, girl was found unharmed, but the woman complained that the employees did nothing. it went all the way to the DM, who of course believed her. woman ended up getting a gift card. we've since come to the conclusion that the whole thing was a scam.

god i hate my DM...

[BookstoreEscapee]

Somewhere on this site there is a story about a group of women who went absolutely apeshit when asked to move their chairs away from an aisle in Barnes and Noble, and had to be hauled away by the police. They complained to the district manager, and he wrote them a sniveling, ass-kissing letter like I described above, apologizing for what happened and welcoming them back with open arms.

I believe you're referring to Luna's Anti-Semite story(?) - it's in War Stories
http://www.customerssuck.com/board/showthread.php?t=62 - Crazy...

[ArenaBoy]

They complained to the district manager, and he wrote them a sniveling, ass-kissing letter like I described above, apologizing for what happened and welcoming them back with open arms.

Fortunately, my employer is a private entitiy and I understand spineless, I've seen plenty of it. My usual area always leaves me in charge of one of the entrances. I follow policy and I refuse to bend for anyone, much to the dismay of many customers. I simply pull the policy card if anyone says that god awful phrase of the customer being right.

[AFpheonix]

It seriously is because of corporate disconnect that those of us on the lower levels have to continually deal with asshattery of the grandest scale.
We have one customer that we've banned on the store level NUMEROUS times, because he's a racist bastard and doesn't like being helped by asians and has vocalized that to us. Guess what, half of the pharmacy staff is asian.
Why is he allowed to return? Because he threatened corporate with legal action if we didn't let him fill here. Did they scoff at him and show him the large legal team that I imagine they have, as a national chain would have access to? No, they just told us we had to put up with it.

For awhile there, they removed our ability to put comments on patients' files because of a few stupid people, too. Guess what? we couldn't keep track of the various asshattery of some of our more notorious drug seekers, and who wasn't allowed to fill with us anymore because of faked rx's. Thank god, it affected our abilities to serve in other ways so we got enough customers to complain that they brought it back, although only pharmacists can put notes, not techs.

[Ringtail Z28]

Will the pharmacists add a note that a particular customer is an asshat if the techs ask them to?

[Lace Neil Singer]

At the supermarket, about the only way a customer can be banned for life is if they shoplift, or assault a manager. At the garden centre, same policy tho since the manager was such a doofus, all the staff ended up rooting for the customer in a violence situation. At the country park, we could turf people out of the stables if they were being either cruel to the animals, or being stupid in a dangerous way, like smoking inside the stable. Also, anyone who was abusive or threatening violence would be booted out of the park, no questions asked. Finally, at the pizza place, we only banned people who's behaviour merited an arrest, tho we blacklisted a few people from delivery for various crimes, like abuse down the phone or to delivery drivers and playing jokes.

[greensinestro]

This has always been a good question, and unfortunately, there is no good answer to it. I have dealt with my share of customers who got their way constantly at the loss of a business' revenue, and yet, all was done to retain customers like this. It was all because they were afraid of that "customer" going to a competitor. My take on this was always, "Fine, go to a competitor and let them lose money!"

[K245five]

This reminds me of the Psychoshopper thread I posted in an earlier incarnation of this board. Despite the fact that the store I once worked for was independent, the owner could be really compassionate regarding certain issues. Unfortunately, he piicked the wrong time to be that way regarding this customer.

He felt sorry for Psychoshopper, and continued to let him shop at his store. This is in spite of the fact that he was a rageaholic and had numerous other psychological issues on top of that. This guy had raged numerous times in the store, and scared the heck out of many customers and several co-workers.

The owner felt that he was a paying customer, in addition to feeling sorry for him. Thus, he let him shop there. Even after he started getting worse with his psychological problems and rages.

Then he sold to a corporation in 2000. As echoed previously in this thread, the big shots were too far removed from the front lines to really know or even care. He continued to wreak havoc until he was finally arrested and committed.

This reminds me: I need to repost this story in War Stories soon if possible.

[CrazedClerk]

I see this where I work all the time.

Cell phone accounts with numerous credits and reversed charges and all because the customer repeatedly calls in and manages to wiggle a credit out of us to cover a bill they HAVEN'T PAID!!

Fortunately the supervisors where I'm at are pretty good about standing up to whiner delinquent SCs, but other call centers are obviously not or this wouldn't be happening.

[Jester]

I don't know if Safeway is considered a big name store... but my Safeway won't even ban a known pedophile that shops there (Karl Toft, anyone?) ... meanwhile there is a school behind the Safeway, and families with little children shopping every day. :| So, it must take a lot to get banned at mine.

This may bother some people, and I am sorry, but I have to say it. If said known pedophile is not engaging in any pedophilic activities in or around the store, and is not doing anything such as stealing from the store or assaulting or abusing store employees, the store has no basis to ban said person from their store, simply for past actions. If all they are doing is shopping peacefully and not doing anything, they are well within their rights, even if their prior actions in their life are horrific.

[Broomjockey]

If all they are doing is shopping peacefully and not doing anything, they are well within their rights, even if their prior actions in their life are horrific.

Quite a few pedophiles have conditions attached to their release, the most common of which is not to come within a certain distance of places children congrigate, which a school most definately is. So really, it depends on the conditions of this guy's release as to whether he's okay to be there or not.

Also, I agree, as long as he's not breaking terms of his release, fine, let him shop there.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Three words for you AFPhoenix: Hostile Work Environment. There's no reason why your pharmacists should have to put up with racial slurs directed at them every time that cretin visits.

Which begs the question: If he hates Asians so much and doesn't want them touching his meds, then why does he keep visiting your pharmacy?