Do you accept crap customer service or walk?

Forums › Off topic › Do you accept crap customer service or walk?

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3075 posts

Uber Geek

#1091029 17-Jul-2014 21:09

Usually I'll walk out and mention why to someone on the way out if I can.

I have on one occasion put up with crap because the deal was great and I wanted it anyway (previous post re: Surface Pro @ Harvey Norman). The store manager (!) was super rude, pushing an extended warranty when I told him multiple times I didn't want one and my reasoning. He asked how much I'd pay, I gave a stupid low ball answer, like less than 10% of what he wanted I think. He shot back saying that was ridiculous and I said "well so is the price you wanted". If it were any other day, and any other product, I'd have left straight away and knocked s**t over 'accidentally' on the way out.

One of my close mates said she went to SubWay not so long ago, and when she was going through the order process the guy was yelling over her to someone else sitting down, in another language. He kept messing up her order and what not and she kept having to get him to fix it. She was hungry so still paid but I'd have just walked outa there so fast. Their Facebook page did appreciate the feedback though apparently and the guy no longer works there from what we can tell.

I think the complete opposite of this is also a good thing. Many times if I have a great experience with a CSR or store, I'll gladly return if possible and give my business. Probably the main reason I'll renew my contract this year with Telecom for my mobile. There's been hickups along the last 2 years, but every time they've always fixed it and the very vast majority of times I've contacted them, the staff have been very friendly and glad to help. Same with ASB and Apple to name a few. And if it's a very good experience/ out of the normal good, I'll let their management know somehow.

There seems to be a lot of business who fail to understand that their frontline staff are going to make the biggest impression about their business. Take for example Comcast in the US, all the recent posts on Reddit about their terrible terrible practices, and the rudeness of their staff. Couple that with some minor network issues and the whole country now hates them.

MaxLV

656 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1091116 17-Jul-2014 23:31

LesF: I walked into a Farmers store on the weekend and found the exact model of PVR/Bluray I was looking for.
$700 pricetag, add GST and the odd HDMI cable etc it would have come to over a $800 purchase I guess. Not massive but not peanuts either.

Asked the young salesperson if I could buy one of these, pointing at the unit. He said he would go get a person who could assist me. Guy came back and began serving other customers, fair enough, then another older salesperson came walking along, ignored me and began serving numerous other customers while I stood there watching.

Now I am not an exceptionally impatient person but eventually I wandered off to find somebody else to assist me, asked a salesperson at another counter if he could tell me who the manager was. He pointed to the guy that had supposedly been asked to come and assist me, so I said thank you and walked out the door.

I am beginning to expect poorer customer service in Auckland, it seems to be a steady decline as there are so many customers lining up these days that you apparently don't have to give a damn if they get good service or not, there will always be more coming in the door.

What do you all do if the service is poor, wait around in zombie mode, complain to somebody, or just walk away?

- as a footnote, I walked straight into another nearby retailer and found the same product for $250 less than the Farmers price, so I ended up feeling a lot better at the end of the day :)

Complain, loudly and assertively so other customers can hear what's happening. It's amazing who quickly the customer service improves.

itxtme

2102 posts

Uber Geek

#1091142 18-Jul-2014 06:30

Yep complaining in front of customers normally gets the job done. Has this situation a couple years back with Jetts Gym. Their billing system for some reason couldnt use the same credit card twice on the same day. Both my and my wifes charge came off it on the same day and it would reject using it a second time. The manager thought I would be OK paying the rejection amount - mistaken! The card was empty, and she freely admitted it was their system. It was only when I started talking it throughly loudly in front of her soon to be customers that she backed down..

Kopkiwi

2617 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1091206 18-Jul-2014 10:09

AidanS:
Kopkiwi: Generally saying something as I walk buy a couple of sales people standing around jerking each other off.

From experience I can say that what you're doing here is redundant. You think the employees that gave crap service cares about crap feedback? They'll probably go joke about you in the lunchroom, they'll still get paid their $15/hour. The only real way to get to the floor staff is to go through their superiors which is where speaking to the manager/social media is normally more effective.

Given that a few sales people, especially in electronic shops are paid on commission, it more often than not gets their hands out of their pants.

graemeh

2078 posts

Uber Geek

#1091211 18-Jul-2014 10:21

Demeter: If we were a restaurant, service our own food, with only our own staff to be held accountable for quality of customer service, then I would totally agree. But we are subject to a host of network partners, contractors and all sorts of elements (the weather, for example) that we have no control over. I don't think it is fair that we should be given a 1 star rating for service because we can not provide UFB in Huia yet to take a completely random example. Once Big Pipe gets big, you'll see what I mean.

Good point about the one star rating for not being able to provide UFB in a place nobody can provide UFB.

I don't agree with your other assertions though, companies need to stop blaming subcontractors for problems. The company employs the subcontractor. End of story.

You have a relationship with the subcontractor, the customer doesn't. If something isn't working you need to work with the subcontractor to get it fixed.

In some cases this will be more difficult (like when dealing with a monopoly provider who is useless) but ultimately it is your problem and if you can't sort it then the customer can and should complain and go to another provider.

Demeter

709 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

One NZ

#1091363 18-Jul-2014 12:48

graemeh:
I don't agree with your other assertions though, companies need to stop blaming subcontractors for problems. The company employs the subcontractor. End of story.

Blaming a contractor and simply stating a simple fact about current network status are not the same thing, despite what you believe. If there is an outage because of a fault on the Chorus network, how is Vodafone responsible for this? You're saying it's fair that we should be given a bad service rating for something we don't control and cannot expedite no matter what we do. If we owned the network, we would have responsibility. But we don't.

BigPipeNZ

1170 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

BigPipe

#1091374 18-Jul-2014 13:02

Demeter:
graemeh:
I don't agree with your other assertions though, companies need to stop blaming subcontractors for problems. The company employs the subcontractor. End of story.

Blaming a contractor and simply stating a simple fact about current network status are not the same thing, despite what you believe. If there is an outage because of a fault on the Chorus network, how is Vodafone responsible for this? You're saying it's fair that we should be giving a bad service rating for something we don't control and cannot expedite no matter what we do. If we owned the network, we would have responsibility. But we don't.

I guess that's one reason why I like Facebook reviews.

At least when the review is on your facebook page, you get a notification that a review has been posted, and you can reply to it very quickly with (using your example from before) something like:

"Hi, Thank you for your review, and I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Unfortunately the UFB roll out schedule for your area is determined by Chorus, not Vodafone, and due to the rules in place we are unable to influence the prioritisation of it.
However, since you are after a speedier connection I notice that most of your area is able to get VDSL, and whilst that isn't quite as fast as UFB, it is much faster than ADSL. If you'd like to find out more about that head to [link] to check your address, or your can PM me and I will check it for you. Thanks"

And even if the guy never gets back to you and leaves the review is left as 1 star, anybody coming through reading it later will see it, and understand that it is not a 'genuine' review, and appreciate that you replied and made an attempt to help the customer.

With reviews on other sites that you don't have any control over, you might never see it, or if you do, see it too late to make a difference, or you might have no way to reply or contact the other person.

bigpipe.co.nz
https://www.facebook.com/BigPipeNZ
https://twitter.com/BigPipeNZ

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pctek

807 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#1091464 18-Jul-2014 15:09

In NLs once, buying washer, actually in process, at payment stage.....asked how much discount for cash, the snotty little boy at the counter laughed. Stood there haw haw haw, didn't actually answer the damn question....

Wallked out door, over road into next appliance shop and got a discount for cash.
----------------

Yesterday at dentists.......did mention my phobia.
Anyway after 5 attempts with that revolting needle, heaps of stabbing about at my gums with that pointy pick thing, he then said he couldn't do it. (Removal of broken off infected tooth)
I left, paid nothing. I left rapidly.....

Never again.

graemeh

2078 posts

Uber Geek

#1091504 18-Jul-2014 15:53

Demeter:
graemeh:
I don't agree with your other assertions though, companies need to stop blaming subcontractors for problems. The company employs the subcontractor. End of story.

Blaming a contractor and simply stating a simple fact about current network status are not the same thing, despite what you believe. If there is an outage because of a fault on the Chorus network, how is Vodafone responsible for this? You're saying it's fair that we should be given a bad service rating for something we don't control and cannot expedite no matter what we do. If we owned the network, we would have responsibility. But we don't.

If you look at this from a customer perspective I have bought a service from Vodafone (or Telecom or Snap or whoever).

Vodafone chose to use Chorus (or Enable or whoever) as a part of delivering the service. That is your choice. You could have chosen to build your own network but you didn't.

You chose to build a service or product using components that you have acquired from other suppliers. You still have responsibility for the components from the other suppliers even though you don't have the same degree of control you might have with an in-house solution.

If Vodafone and all their competitors are all using Chorus and Chorus has an outage then the difference between how customers view Vodafone will be determined primarily by how Vodafone handle the fallout from the outage. If you do a good job of it then you will get better reviews than your competitors.

In the instance of a fault on the Chorus network Vodafone is still responsible to the customer. It is up to Vodafone to ensure that any agreement they make with a customer is compatible with the agreements they have with vendors or subcontractors. An example of this might be that for a business customer Vodafone should not agree to a 4 hour response to investigate a fault when their agreement with Chorus specifies a slower response.

This sort of detail is not really that relevant to "consumer" contracts though.

The type of examples I'm thinking of is where a subcontractor or vendor repeatedly fails to deliver. One example might be an appointment is made for a site visit between 8am and 12 noon for a site visit and the subcontractor either doesn't turn up or turns up outside the agreed window.

In this instance Vodafone have made a commitment to the customer based on their subcontractor meeting a commitment they have made to Vodafone. Yes, the subcontractor has let Vodafone down but Vodafone need to take ownership of the situation, explain to the customer what has happened and actively manage the relationship with the subcontractor to ensure that it doesn't happen again. It is not sufficient to save "we have been let down by a subcontractor".

The fact that you don't own the network is irrelevant, you contract with Chorus (or Enable or whoever) for access to the network and for services related to that access. Your contract will include provisions for dealing with problems.

If you are having problems with your network provider then you need to manage the customer fallout. This is often as simple as good communications with the customers to keep them updated about problems.

Where the problem has had a major impact on a customer or group of customers you have tools such as free calling, free data or refunds that can be applied as needed. If it is just a few customers then you could consider providing an alternative product until the product they have bought is working properly (e.g. provide 3G data to them until their fixed line broadband can be provisioned).

Ultimately all most customers want is to know that you are actively working to resolve the problem, keeping the customer up to date with progress and if the problem continues for too long you provide some compensation, which need not be money.

graemeh

2078 posts

Uber Geek

#1091511 18-Jul-2014 16:00

Sorry about my last post folks, I've put paragraphs into it but for some reason they all vanish when I post the message. When I edit the message the paragraphs appear and then they vanish.

Perhaps one of the moderators can help?

nickrout

219 posts

Master Geek

#1091748 18-Jul-2014 20:46

Express displeasure [1] then walk.

[1] I could have said yell then walk, but that would just be admitting to stooping to their level.

nickrout

219 posts

Master Geek

#1091753 18-Jul-2014 20:52

Demeter:
graemeh:
I don't agree with your other assertions though, companies need to stop blaming subcontractors for problems. The company employs the subcontractor. End of story.

Blaming a contractor and simply stating a simple fact about current network status are not the same thing, despite what you believe. If there is an outage because of a fault on the Chorus network, how is Vodafone responsible for this? You're saying it's fair that we should be given a bad service rating for something we don't control and cannot expedite no matter what we do. If we owned the network, we would have responsibility. But we don't.

I appreciate what you are saying, but Vodafone contract Chorus to provide a service level. If Vodafone don't contract with Chorus for an acceptable service level, or don't insist on Chorus keeping up decent standards, then yeah I blame Vodafone who I have the contract with.

It is never acceptable for someone I contract with to subcontract to someone else and thereby think they can simply divorce themselves from responsibility because of their subcontracting decisions.

Demeter

709 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

One NZ

#1091964 19-Jul-2014 12:37

nickrout:
Demeter:
graemeh:
I don't agree with your other assertions though, companies need to stop blaming subcontractors for problems. The company employs the subcontractor. End of story.

Blaming a contractor and simply stating a simple fact about current network status are not the same thing, despite what you believe. If there is an outage because of a fault on the Chorus network, how is Vodafone responsible for this? You're saying it's fair that we should be given a bad service rating for something we don't control and cannot expedite no matter what we do. If we owned the network, we would have responsibility. But we don't.

I appreciate what you are saying, but Vodafone contract Chorus to provide a service level. If Vodafone don't contract with Chorus for an acceptable service level, or don't insist on Chorus keeping up decent standards, then yeah I blame Vodafone who I have the contract with.

It is never acceptable for someone I contract with to subcontract to someone else and thereby think they can simply divorce themselves from responsibility because of their subcontracting decisions.

Between you and greameh, you've misinterpreted the point of the discussion, which is about allowing Facebook ratings and how valid they are. You have in the process just reiterated why I think they're silly.

DarthKermit

5346 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#1091971 19-Jul-2014 13:02

graemeh: Sorry about my last post folks, I've put paragraphs into it but for some reason they all vanish when I post the message. When I edit the message the paragraphs appear and then they vanish. Perhaps one of the moderators can help?

I had the same issue. Please refer to this thread:
https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumId=4&topicId=148626

Whatifthespacekeyhadneverbeeninvented?

NonprayingMantis

6434 posts

Uber Geek

#1091996 19-Jul-2014 13:33

Demeter:
nickrout:
Demeter:
graemeh:
I don't agree with your other assertions though, companies need to stop blaming subcontractors for problems. The company employs the subcontractor. End of story.

Blaming a contractor and simply stating a simple fact about current network status are not the same thing, despite what you believe. If there is an outage because of a fault on the Chorus network, how is Vodafone responsible for this? You're saying it's fair that we should be given a bad service rating for something we don't control and cannot expedite no matter what we do. If we owned the network, we would have responsibility. But we don't.

I appreciate what you are saying, but Vodafone contract Chorus to provide a service level. If Vodafone don't contract with Chorus for an acceptable service level, or don't insist on Chorus keeping up decent standards, then yeah I blame Vodafone who I have the contract with.

It is never acceptable for someone I contract with to subcontract to someone else and thereby think they can simply divorce themselves from responsibility because of their subcontracting decisions.

Between you and greameh, you've misinterpreted the point of the discussion, which is about allowing Facebook ratings and how valid they are. You have in the process just reiterated why I think they're silly.

not really.

Have a look at the last 10 posts on VF wall that might be construed as 'feedback' rather than product enquiries (as at time of posting)

1)
"I am sure the battery on my mobile will die by the time someone picks up the phone at Vodafone New Zealand 50 minutes so far and counting. Main reason why I hate calling this place. I need to report my phone line is not working"

2)
"How about you allow sky to return to dealing with sky accounts. Waiting on hold for over an hour simply to book a box office movie really is not acceptable. In the end I gave up. Not a good look Vodafone. Especially when sky is so efficient, and usually deal with matters within minutes of calling. Step your game up."

3)
"Just read the notes for the T-box update happening on Monday, WOW what a big dump on your customers heads your taking with it. Your going to improve 3 small things that hardly anyone cares about instead of fixing how SLOW the t-box response time is or a fix for not having to reset your t-box every 5 mins (exaggerated, but it damn well feels like it). Instead we're getting a tv remote battery level notification, a couple of new icons for recording conflicts and a padding buffer that has a minimum of 5 mins now, seriously?!!?!?! Your technical team needs their heads read if they are not paying attention to the THOUSANDS of customers who complain about the slow response time on the t-box."

4)
"aaarggghh i just spent an agonising 15 min on the phone to someone who could not tell me straight what was gong on with my bill all i want is a total of the amount what happened to the automated teller you could call instead of this hoopla"

5)
"Hi Vodafone,
Still haven't had a decent period without internet outages. Ridiculous that a small company like Snap beats you hands down at your own game.
Wish I had never switched–it has been a big disappointment! Will be ringing on Monday to close my account with Vodafone."

6)
"Well after over 6 hours on hold in the past Vodafone NZ hasn't done what they were supposed to do so back on the phone. Spent 45 minutes on hold then the guy that answered said he wasn't familiar with Fixed Line and Broadband and he would pass me on to a colleague back on hold and a further half an hour on hold so far. Think they might run out of NZ songs soon!"

7)
"I have posted twice in the past two weeks and I am fed up with the negativity directed to Voda. I lost my landline for 13 days post the lightning strike in Pukekohe and yes I was hugely frustrated but I cannot fault the service I received from Voda. I did take it higher up the ladder and it resulted in my ability to discuss this with more senior staff, the frustration from front line only having access to a "report" provided by CHORUS as to what was happening. Twice they said the cable fault was repaired but Voda was able to say - not for our client! They obviously checked my line. What we need to do as ISP customers of any ISP provider is demand to know why it is CHORUS that are not getting to our faults. They have the contract to carry out the repairs, connections etc. While they are concentrating on Fibre roll out (with a 5% ) uptake, know that they are intending to phase out copper wiring. Thank you dickhead National Government! Where does that leave those of us that have no intention of taking it up? Incidentally, I find people on this site calling the technicians "monkeys" beyond offensive. My Chorus guy who I have known for about 3 years (and grinned from ear to ear when HE turned up at 5.15pm, not someone else from Chorus) is from Zimbabwe and he is technically brilliant. I had a burnt out relay switch! The question is - who is at fault here? Your ISP is dependant on Chorus getting to your property and they can't control that. I do agree with the delayed call time (frustrating) but if you call through 777 it is not costing you so put your phone on speakerphone and get on with your life - seriously. If you are not being heard, Google Vodafone and look up the CEO and send him an email (he won't thank me for that) but seriously if you don't abuse front line, you are courteous and pleasant in your email about the frustration you are experiencing - then you will be heard. Just don't abuse the system because you have been without phone or internet for 24 hours. In that case get a life and remind yourself that you are not the only person in the world having problems. Huge thank you to those within Voda who sorted this for me. Cheers"

8)
"Your customer service astounds me. I am trying to upgrade my broadband package and so far I've been on hold for 47min!!!!"

9)
"42 minutes and counting on hold...Tiki Taane playing for 3rd time i think............anyone there??"

10)
"Can someone from Vodafone PLEASE contact me regarding our phone and internet. We havent had either in over a week and Im sick of using our credit to ring from our mobiles to find out what the hell is going on. NOT GOOD considering after 7 years you finally locked us into a 12 month contract. Seriously regretting that now!!!!!!!!!"

of those ten, all but 1 are negative, and almost every single negative one refers to call waiting times, nothing to do with Chorus
The only positive one was actually about Chorus (number 7)

so really, if you had facebook reviews enabled then based on that you would have probably 1 x gpod review and 9 x bad reviews, and of the bad reviews maybe 1 or 2 would actually be about Chorus issues rather than poor service, but the other 7-8 would be directly about VF

So yes, I totally understand why you don't want facebook reviews enabled

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