Daily Remarks

I really hate it when customers call and expect that you know who they are. I would say 9 times out of 10 they call and start talking about their service to the tech on the phone and the tech has no idea who they are or what they are talking about. You have to kindly stop the customer and ask who they are so that you can direct them to the correct technician. Not everyone in the office knows who the customer is or what their specific needs are. I would never assume that the person on the other end of the line knows who I am unless it is my wife or my mother. It isn’t proper phone etiquette to not say who you are. Has this ever happened to you or have you ever done this to the person on the other end of the phone?

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My wife shipped out an item to a customer and sent them an email confirmation that it had shipped. As soon the customer received the email confirmation they ask a question about whether the jewelry item has the date 2010 on it. In my mind it would have been better to ask this question before the item shipped. The charm did have 2010 on it as was indicated on the product page. I believe that you should ask questions about a product before it ships. What do you think?

Update: The customer sends another email and asks if the item is 14k gold. It plainly says that the charm is 14k gold on the site. I still think these questions should be asked before the item ships.

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My wife gets home last night from Las Vegas and she mostly had a good trip except for the car rental. The car worked fine, but it was disgusting inside. Their had a bunch of trash inside the car and someone had obviously spilled some kind of sticky liquid on the center console, probably soda. It would have been nice if they would clean their cars before renting them out to the next person. My wife brought this up to the Budget car rental clerk, but the clerk just said here is your bill an ignored her complaint. I understand that they are busy, but this is poor service. My wife said she was going to call their headquarters and tell them about it. I will keep you posted if anything comes of this. Has this ever happened to you?

Update: My wife put in a complaint on Budget’s Website on 7/13/2010 and we haven’t heard anything yet. I will update if Budget responds.

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A customer comes in today to return a UPS (uninterruptable power supply). She waited until the very last day to return the item which is fine. You could plainly see that the box it came in was destroyed. We charged her the standard restock fee and she was upset because we are doing so. We explain that the box is destroyed and we will have to sell the item as used. She doesn’t understand, but accepts the restock. It’s funny cause her friend is standing right there saying that it is right for us to charge a restock for returned merchandise. The lady turns to her friend and glares at her so the friend becomes silent. It is nice for a change to have someone on our side that understands.  What are your thoughts on the matter? Should there be a restock or not if the packaging is destroyed and the person waits until the very last day to return the item?

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I really hate it when people call me and they are talking to someone else when I answer the phone. I pickup the phone and I hear them talking to whoever about whatever when they should be paying attention to who they called. This is just being discourteous. I basically give it about 2 seconds then I hang up. If they feel it is important to talk to one of us at the store they can call back. How do you handle this?

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A customer came in with a computer that was crushed. The customer fell down with the computer in his hands and he landed on the computer. We just rebuilt the computer 2 weeks before. He requested that we look at it and see what we could do. So we check it in and diagnose the computer. The case is destroyed and the motherboard is damaged. The customer is expecting warranty repair on the system because he told me as much. I told him that we would look at the computer and see what the problems are. He is a very good customer that we have been doing business with for along time. My choices are call him and tell him all of the problems with the pc and make him pay for everything and lose him as a customer or take care of the motherboard under warranty and charge him for the labor and the case and keep him as a customer. I will be going with option 2, but what would you do? Better to break even on it and keep him as a customer than to lose any future business.

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A customer actually came in the store and tried to claim their equipment that they left with us 9 months ago for service. We looked back at the notes and we had called them every month for 3 months straight. They never called us back. We left numerous messages. Our policy which is on the wall and is also on our service tickets states that equipment left with us gets donated or recycled after 30 days. We didn’t discard the equipment until the 4th month just to be sure. The laptop which the customer left was 7 years old and it would have cost more to repair than it was worth. We were very nice about it and told them that the equipment had been discarded according to our policies. The customer then became extremely angry and used a few choice words. We just kept repeating what the policy states and that we tried to contact them. We finally had to ask them to leave because they were becoming verbally abusive. I personally wouldn’t even consider getting my equipment back after that period of time. What do you think?

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Why do people stand by the front doors and move around and make the buzzers go off over and over again? Kind of like hitting the little bell on a counter in other stores. Just had a couple come into the store and they kept milling around in front of the doors. I guess they didn’t put 2 and 2 together. Move and buzzer goes off.

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The city has some strange taxes for businesses. The first tax is the sign tax. They actually charge me a tax for signs on the building that I rent. It is a flat fee plus 12 cents per foot. The fee came to $21.84 which isn’t a lot, but it is still a nickel and dime fee from the city that doesn’t make any sense to me. The second tax is the what I like to call the furniture tax. The tables, chairs, desks in my business are all taxed based upon their value. Now this isn’t the sales tax when I purchase them, but a yearly tax on their value. The city used to tax us on hazardous waste which we don’t have any of, but they taxed all businesses for this. They dropped this tax finally after enough complaints from businesses. The small businesses in this country help to pay most of the taxes and the various governments seem to be coming up with various ways to take the maximum amount of income from us.

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I received my credit card statement today from the bank and I am checking it over and I see a charge for $213.41 from Dell. Now I know I didn’t buy anything from them since last year and I am trying to figure out what this charge is for. So I call the Dell phone number on my credit card statement and I get India techs support. I go through 3 people on the phone and no one can tell me what the charge is for. They keep transferring me hoping that I will get aggravated which I did. I finally hung up and called the credit card company instead. I filed a dispute. I was told it takes 60-90 days to process the request. In the meantime I have to pay the amount on the credit card and wait to be reimbursed or I will get charged interest. Awesome, its like money grows on trees.

Update on this: I received the money back from Dell by disputing the charge. The lady from the bank called the number on my credit card statement and she couldn’t get anywhere with them so she put through the dispute for me.

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