Which type of shop gives the worst customer service?

[stinkwheel]

Lets make it private businesses whose aim is to make money by selling goods or services from a shop.

So no government entities or utility providers.

Until recently I'd have said franchised motorcycle dealers would be near the top of the list.

That was however, until I tried to build a bicycle.

I wanted a wheel built. One shop said they'd call me back with a price. Never heard from them again. Another told me it would be six weeks minimum. One bloke looked at me blankly. Another had staff who were too busy discussing how rad they were to bother serving a square customer.

Another said they had the bits and the wheel would be with me after the weekend. Three weeks later and several phone calls, no wheel.

So six bike shops and I finally had a wheel.

Another bike shop sold me a bottom bracket that didn't fit and a tool kit I couldn't have fitted it with anyway.

An online one took an order for a chainset they didn't have and didn't bother to tell me until I called a week later asking where it was.

The "six weeks" one sold me the wrong size sprocket despite it being written down on a bit of paper and them verbally asking if I was sure that was the size I wanted.

A different one again sold me a wheel with the wrong size rim.

A different one again tried to sell me £50 of tyres that would in no way have fitted on my rims and insisted they would fit even when directly confronted by the fact that the tyre he had in his hand was a full 8mm smaller than the rim I was going to put it on.

In all I have had contact with 11 different bicycle shops, both highstreet and online. Nine of them have either sold/attempted to sell me the wrong parts or messed me about to the point of me giving up on them.

A 12th had an online order from me on Sunday, for which I have not received anything beyond an automated comfirmation of the order. I am not hopefull of getting my tyres before the weekend.
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[Nufkamp]

Some of the worst customer service I've ever had was from SCS, the furniture people. When we needed a new suite we went in to the Colchester branch and were immediately pounced upon by an enthusiastic and heavily pregnant sales person. After much fawning and treating us like royalty, we agreed to purchase almost £2000 of electrically reclining sofas. As soon as we'd signed the paperwork, she was gone, no 'thank you', 'enjoy your purchase', nothing. Didn't even speak to us on the way out. When the suite was delivered, only my daughter was at home to sign for the goods, as soon as i got home i could see there was a problem with the big sofa, it looked lopsided and one end moved backwardswhen sat on. After many increasingly angry phone calls ('well sir, the suite was signed for as ok when delivered') they agreed to send someone out to ivestigate. This muppet turned up, examined the suite and declared it to be ok. At this juncture I pointed out to him that the two ends of the sofa seemed to be completely separate to each other and over time could theoretically migrate to different ends of the lounge. Did he think that this was normal for an inanimate object? On once again laying the sofa on its back it became evident that the two halves of the sofa had not been bolted together by the delivery agents.

Touching once again on Stinkwheel's comment about motorcycle dealers, my Triumph dealer, Ongar Motorcycles at Dunmow, were completey disinterested when I complained that my 6 month old Bonnie America had shaken loose the left hand silencer retaining bolts. Several phone calls promising me a resolution came to nothing. Speaking to the manager on the phone elicited the info that the required bolts did not appear on the parts fiche, only as part of a complete silencer assembly. I suggested to them that they try a little bit harder to obtain these bolts for me, only for the manager to suggest that I could probably get some myself from a hardware store or from work as this would be the quicker solution. One quick blat down the A120 and I went into the workshop to speak directly to the service technicians and explain to them why I didn't think I should have to sort out this type of problem on a 6 month old bike. One was sitting at the computer looking on ebay, and the other was strumming on a guitar. At no point did either of these herberts make eye contact with me, just a vague promise to sort something out which needless to say didn't happen. I've not set foot in the place since and have been using Lings at Ipswich who are polar opposites to the mob down at Dunmow.
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[Major_Grooves]

Rather than being due to types of shops, do you think it could be something to do with the eroding British work ethic?

I was watching Grand Designs the other day where they were building a German Huf House in the UK.

It was a bit embarrassing to watch. They had a uber-efficient team come over from Germany to build the house in a week. Any time a British contractor got involved the whole process ground to a halt!
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[Mr Hammers]

[Flip]

[Hetzer]

The words "workforce", "tax-raped" and "demoralised" spring to mind.
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"There's the horizon! Ride hard, ride fast and cut down all who stand in your way!"

[yen_powell]

I've found that any small car spares shop usually has the rudest and most arrogant staff. I spose it comes from dealing all day with similar customers to the one I heard a few years back,

Hello, I need a bulb.

What sort?

It's for a car.

Right, which car bulb do you need?

It's a Ford.

Yes but which light doesn't work any more?

It's a Fiesta..

and so on



Of course he was in front of me when I was in a hurry.
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[Flip]

[Mr Hammers]

[wizzzard]

I'd say any of the large multiple chain stores struggle to meet what I would expect customer service wise from a shop. I manage a shop that sells bed's and bedroom furniture and we hear the stories of how people have been treated at the big multiples all the time.

From being accosted the minute you walk and pumped full of useless drivel to having the item delivered and it not fitting so the delivery drivers just leave it in the garden. It's no small wonder that as more of them are going bust we as a small firm are opening more shops.

We have always believed that if someone has the decency to buy from us then they should get nothing less than a 100% service. Just as an example there are numerous occasions where an article of furniture wouldn't go up the stairs for love nor money so out come the ladders and we deliver it through the bedroom window. Health and safety would have a ball with us but the end result is that we have satisfied customers.

I've always found the small business's to be the more helpful ones whatever I'm buying and even if they are a couple of quid more expensive I'll pay it for the peace of mind I get from being treated properly.
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[Flip]

[LordShaftesbu...]

Interesting the OP had such trouble with bicycle shops ... they always seem to be pretty shoddy looking places when I look in the window. Is it cos it's crusty eco-friendlies that usually run them and they usually have a problem with "serving" i.e. being servants of our outmoded and exploitative capitalist system?

Just because you walk in wanting to spend money doesn't make you better than them, you fascist!!

[JAMSXR]

I think it is usually just down to the sales person you are lucky/unlucky enough to get...

Having worked in sales for the last 3 years I will usually always bend over backwards to make sure my customers are happy with the level of service they are getting, even if it means going against company policy. But this is not the case for everyone....
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[Robby]

Homebase/B&Q/Any large DIY store.

There's quite a lot to DIY in general, lots of different skills and tools and things to know. This is why I'm unimpressed when shop staff don't know where they keep screws, or tiles, etc. The prices take the piss too.

Having struggled with this for weeks, I needed a non standard lock for my bathroom door. The big stores don't stock it, so I pop into my local hardware stoor.

"Yes Sir, we don't have it in stock, so pop back in half an hour."
Lo and behold, half an hour later they have the lock and it's half the price of the cheap homebase generic one.


I also bought a kitchen off B&Q. That was a painful experience.
Being clever, I reserved everything online. Website tells me everything is in stock, so I go to pick it up. Half the stuff has been picked, the rest is either missing or damaged. I stroll up to the kitchen bit to ask the loyal staff why they have none of the stock, so they tell me that the website isn't any good, and I should have called. Useful to know when I'm there already. Of course, they do have all of the stock on the shelves, the pickers are just muppets. 3 short hours of running around later, I have my kitchen.

There was one good bit, though. The muppet on the till forgot to scan about £100 worth of stuff, which was a worthwhile discount.

[map]

[Kickstart]

Hi

A lot comes down to the individuals that you are dealing with. I have had good and helpful service in PC World when trying to get a wired switch unit years ago (including not trying to get me to spend more than necessary). I have had helpful service in other large chain stores (including technically useless but friendly and trying to be helpful from a specialist at a large DIY chain), but again it seems to come down to the individual.

Large organisations want things to be in catagories that are easily accounted for and that includes the staff. Sales are easy to measure and categorise staff for. How helpful and friendly a member of staff is cannot easily be measured easily so is ignored. Down side is that a fair number of people who are sales driven do so at the detriment of whether they are helpful and friendly. Long term the chain suffers.

Problem is that being a pushy b*****d will likely get you the sale in the short term, making you look good on the measures the chain bothers to keep. The down side is that the customer is unlikely to come back again (long term losing loads of sales), so the chain loses out. The pushy salesman doesn't care as it isn't likely they would deal with the same customer in the future, so their future sales bonus isn't affected.

All the best

Keith
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Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[JAMSXR]

The problem is that stores like Currys, PC World, Homebase, B&Q, Halfords etc.. would have to pay allot more to train or hire someone with a decent amount of knowledge and doing so would not increase the sales enough to justify it.

This is getting a bit mixed though because there is a clear difference between customer service and the knowledge of the salesman.
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Honda SFX50 > Aprilia SR125 > Aprilia RS125 > Honda RFV400 > K4 GSXR600 > KTM Duke > C1H 636 > K3 GSXR1000 > Aprilia RSV-R > Triumph Street Triple R > Ducati 899 Panigale > Aprilia Tuono 1100 > Triumph Daytona 675R > KTM SuperDuke 1290 2.0

[map]

[Kris]

This thread cracks me up seeing as a 'yoof' I worked in a local Homebase on tills then at the end on the Special Order desk dealing with customer orders. I've seen both sides of the mega-chain retail coin, as a customer now and what I saw back then.

As a young shopworker the corporate asmosphere and pages of induction folders are mindnumbingly dull. I was on a 10hr week p/t at £2.60 an hour. I couldn't give a flying fuck about Spend&Save cards or which way we had to stack the tins of paint. I also knew the social scene between the younger workers was far and away the most important part of the job to us young'uns. We were far too busy chatting up the attractive workers to worry about whether your wallpaper order was in on time. And I was one of the harder working yoofs.

Unfortunately, that's the reality of hiring gaggles of low-paid young workers to man the pumps during the rush-periods. In quiet times only the dullest, incompetant older workers filled the uniforms, along with the slimy sub-human vermin-turds that made up the management. Everything was about short-term profit. Customer service was management refusing to talk to a customer, instead making lackies like us fob the customer off with empty promises that they'd be called 'later' by a manager.

In those soulless, corporate bullshit conditions the thinking human mind reverts back to survival mode in an attempt to remain sane. In the end we resorted to games of football in the delivery yard and perfecting the art of work-dodging to avoid customer contact.

As an infrequent visitor of DIY stores I know exactly what the workers will do when they say "I'll just look out the back for you" so I don't bother. I do however know how to spot hung-over till worker who won't scan my floor tiles correctly saving me £100. Big orders or valuable items - no way.

So recently when we bought an expensive bed we decided to use a smaller family run business and pay a little more. We got 100% satisfaction with no problems. Dreams et al can fuck off.
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[Kickstart]

[JAMSXR]

[Kickstart]

[JAMSXR]

When I worked for a large corporation the help desk system worked really well. As soon as I had a problem I would send a brief email to the IT department and usually within an hour depending on urgency it would be solved. We found that if the only way you could contact the technicians was through email they would waste less time being called upon by people to help fix problems on their way to fix other problems, it also meant if the same problem were to keep arising that you can take a look at the previous notes and come up with a quick fix, this is particularly useful for larger organizations with multiple sites and 1000s of staff.

I think allot of the smaller privet companies have got it right, employing more knowledgeable people on an OK wage with a good commission scheme.
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Honda SFX50 > Aprilia SR125 > Aprilia RS125 > Honda RFV400 > K4 GSXR600 > KTM Duke > C1H 636 > K3 GSXR1000 > Aprilia RSV-R > Triumph Street Triple R > Ducati 899 Panigale > Aprilia Tuono 1100 > Triumph Daytona 675R > KTM SuperDuke 1290 2.0

[Kickstart]

[Dom_]

I'd say tattoo parlors gave the worst customer service.