When Customer Service Goes Bad!
I was at our local Sam's Club today and had the worst customer service I have ever experienced. Now I have been a member of Sam's Club for years and am a loyal customer. The greeter knows me when I walk in the door. Well today being Good Friday I expected the store to be busy. Sam's also must have thought that it would be busy to because they moved all their Easter Cakes and flowers to the front of the store.
Well I got what I needed, a chocolate cake, diapers, bananas etc. and proceeded to the check-out. I kid you not there were 5 out of 15 lanes open and the lines had about 10 customers each in them. So I stopped a manager and asked if they were opening any more lines. Answer: Not right now, we don't have anyone here. OK. Now I see 3 managers running around trying to find people to work the registers. So I say in a loud voice, "This is completely unacceptable, why are more lines not open?", of course I was ignored. My question then is why can't a manager work the register? I guess they were too busy delegating.
Wait it gets worse. Sam's Club for some reason instead of opening more check-out lines likes to have people "pre-scan" your cart so that all you have to do is give the cashier a slip of paper when you check-out. Wouldn't it be easier to just have these people working a check-out? Having customers see long lines is poor service. What's worse is that the lady who pre-scanned me had a bad scanner and the order didn't take so I had to check out again!
Yes, it's a full moon. My story gets even worse. One of my purchases was a AT & T Go Phone. I am so careful these days about pricing because it's so easy to get ripped off when an item is not tagged. I picked up a Go Phone that was sitting directly under a sign that said $18.95. OK, the phone is $18.95. WRONG! It rings up as $56.00. At this point I'm just mad. I've got my mom and my toddler with me and my toddler is screaming because it's 100 degrees in there so I say just cancel the order!
Ha! You can't cancel the phone because it's already been activated. So previous rude manager comes over and I tell her that the phone is $18.95. She asks me to prove it. So I leave my poor mother with my crying child so that I can show the manager (her name tag say 18 years of service) where I got the phone. Sure enough there is a big sign next to it that says $18.95. Now this is funny...confused manager then points to the Go Phone literature flyer and says, "That's what's $18.95" HELLO! What the heck is she talking about. I kindly tell her no, that the flyer is not $18.95. Finally she get down on her knees and finds the only other phone on the rack that looks a little different and declares, "This is the $18.95 phone"! Now why didn't I think to get on my knees and find the correct phone?
At this point she hands the phone to the cashier and says this is the right one. I still want to leave but they are really pushing this phone and I am too tired to fight. Besides my other purchases are in limbo because they haven't canceled the $56.00 phone off my order. Apparently you have to activate these phones when you check out. Well no one including the manager can seem to figure out how to deactivate this phone. Finally she just voids the order and that works. After re-entering all my purchases they get to the $18.95 Go Phone and they can't activate it. I keep saying, "No that's OK, I don't want it. Finally I convince her to give up and free me. At this point I'm really mad. She can see that my child is crying and that I want to leave. She does offer a half-hearted, "Sorry this never happened before speech" to which I reply that I hate Sam's Club and never want to return here again. I also state that this is inexcusable. She shrugs and says sorry again.
So I leave without my Go Phone, a big headache, and a crying child. This is what I call really bad customer service. If big corporations are going to expect us to shop at their stores they need to train their employees better. This manager with 18 years of service should have 1) Staffed the store for Good Friday, 2) Known how to activate/deactivate a phone, or been able to call someone who did know and 3) know that the customer is always right. I should have gotten a free bag of candy, a coupon book, a plant...something for my terrible experience. Now I am going to take my business to BJ's even though I have a Sam's Club card until November. What's even sadder is that they don't even care that they lost a customer!
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