SC's and their idiotic suggestions

[Lone Wolf]

You know how customers are always making suggestions on how your company can improve its service? Once in a blue moon the suggestion might not be a bad idea. Most of the time however, they're just downright unworkable, unreasonable or just plain stupid.

The first one on the list is mine, actually suggested to me on more than one occasion when I worked for a cable company. The rest I've heard from others:

1."You know, you shouldn't cut off service just because we can't pay a bill every now and then. You'll lose a lot of good customers that way." (Uh, no...the good customers are the ones who regularly pay their bills ON TIME)

2. In a bookstore - "You shouldn't be so fussy about people wanting to read magazines before buying them. How do we know we want to buy it if we can't read it first?" (That rule is in place for two reasons; if several people are standing at the magazine stands reading them, it impedes other customers ability to access them - you know, the ones who might be more inclined to actually BUY them. And secondly, if you want to read magazines for free, go to a friggin' library. Reading the magazine and then deciding you don't want to purchase it is like being allowed to eat half a chocolate bar, decide you don't like the taste of it and don't want to buy it)

3. From my ex-roomie, who used to work in an electronics store: "You should make your prices a bit more affordable for people like me who are on welfare." (Seriously, that one is asinine and wrong on so many levels I'm not even going to grace it with a response)

Feel free to add your own.

[Gurndigarn]

4. "You should make your claw machines easier to win." Lady, I don't decide what the payout is supposed to be at. They're winnable. I fill them; I know for sure. If we make them more winnable, we do this little thing called go out of business. I mean, stuffed animal company's cut, partners cut, and hey, I want my pay, too!

[Mordecai]

"You know, you really should lower your ticket prices." You know what? I don't control the prices, otherwise I wouldn't be here dealing with your bullsh*t. And even if I did, f*ck you. Go home and rent a movie, you old cow.

[bainsidhe]

Reading the magazine and then deciding you don't want to purchase it is like being allowed to eat half a chocolate bar, decide you don't like the taste of it and don't want to buy it)

The chocolate bar issue isn't as uncommon as some might think People get to the register and tell me their half-eaten bag of chips was "stale" (why is it usually pototo chips?). Here's the rub. Stale or not, if you haven't paid for it, it's stealing. So we'd refund you for the purchase because of staleness. Sure, I understand, but you're still a jerk for making assumptions and stealing. I have more people complain about staleness before purchasing than after. Nice.

[Eric the Grey]

When I worked for the rent-a-car industry, during the winter months (ski season) we carried inexpensive, locking ski racks that could be put on the cars for the skiers who come to Colorado for vacation, so they can take their own ski's with them.

We were always questioned why we were charging for them, and most people thought we should just give them away with the cars. Well, the idea here IS to make money, not give things away....

Granted, I did a price comparison for them, and for what someone paid to rent them for a week, they could have bought a set themselves...


Eric the Grey

[marasbaras]

5. You should have people on the phone lines ready to take calls for MY time zone.

[TTAZ]

I am not paying for a credit check! My credit is fine, go ahead and run it, if you find something wrong THEN I'll pay for it.

[smileyeagle1021]

some of my favorite stupid suggestions

-you really should run shuttle service to restaurants... you'd be much more competative that way... umm, there is a restaurant in our parking lot, one across the streat, 2 within a block, and 6 more within a 10 minute walk... so not really needed

-if you guys lowered your price you'd have more people staying there... yeah, the people we don't want to stay here...

-you guys should do something about the trains... umm, you know what, I can't hear the trains, so I don't know what your problem is... oh and what do you want us to do, tell UP to move their track, best of luck.

- and my all time favorite from when I worked parking enforcement- you guys shouldn't give out parking tickets, because parking tickets discourage people from parking downtown... umm, yeah that's the idea... we as property owners would like people to not clog up our properties, which is why we charge for our limited space, and the city likes the idea of people taking the train downtown rather than driving.

[MoonChild2007]

That the emergency broadcast system that goes off at night on TV is TOO LOUD
and that it should be lowered.

[MattW]

"You know, you really should lower your ticket prices."

About 9 years ago I had a woman phone up the store asking for the price of a particular type of hardwood external door. Had to go and physically double check the price of the door: "The 'X' door is £xxx, madam" Quick as a shot she replies: "Thats very expensive!"

Do you know what, madam? You are absolutely right. In fact I'm so appalled at our high prices that I want to roll over and you can tickle my belly so that I can authorise 50% off straight away [/sarcasm] AND protest outside the store with a placard after my shift.

*taken aback by the plea of poverty/stinginess* "Well...I don't come up with the prices. Thats the price for that size door. We do a 'price promise' where if you find the same door cheaper elsewhere, we will match the price and take another 10% off but that's all we can do" She didn't indicate if she saw the same door is being sold at a rival DIY store so can only take it as a pathetic attempt to barter me down.

Don't know whether she came in to buy the door in the end. I was working just weekends at the time.

[NateTheChops]

- you need to get more cashiers. At midnight when we're closed and the only customers in the store are in line at the moment.

[hotelnpa]

We have cards in the rooms the guests can fill out after they leave. The cards allow guests to evaluate us on service and cleaniness. At the bottom, there are several lines for guests to leave additional comments or suggestions. Some of the comments/suggestions include:

+ Extend the breakfast hours till noon. (Hello! It's lunch time by then! Besides, if we left our breakfast out that long, we wouldn't have enough by the end of the week.)

+ Your location is too hard to find. (Well, I guess the three blue directional signs directing you the the property and big sign in the parking lot are not enough. Then again, driving in the Pittsburgh region can be confusing, so I can kind of understand that. But we are right off the interstate though.)

+ You guys charge too much. (If you want just a room and coffee for breakfast, head down to Motel 6. Also we didn't pull your leg to stay here. If you want cheap, then don't stay here.)

+ The cubes out of the ice machine are too cold. (Don't know how to respond to that.)

There are alot more, but my brain hurts.

[Shards]

ARRRRRGH! Sorry, this really pisses me off, because I'm working on getting accepted into a police academy later in life, so I can work as a cop, so I get a TON of idiots who heard I was going to work for 'the man' and decided they should tell me exactly how the laws should be changed.

There are several things wrong with this, but the biggest one is: I'm a future cop, not a future senator. There are ways for you to get the attention of people who can change the laws, but yelling at someone who's going to be paid to enforce the laws, and has no say in their creation, is not the proper way. Especially when you're breaking two or three right in plain sight in front of me.

[jedimaster91]

Our library system has four branches that teach basic computer classes. One of the branches has a special set of classes for seniors. We also give out evaluation sheets with room for comments and have gotten some real gems.

--From a guy in his 40s or so in the Computers for Seniors classes: The classes are too basic. They should be more challenging. HELLO?! This is a special set of classes for ELDERLY patrons who may have NEVER TOUCHED A COMPUTER EVER! We're talking this is a keyboard and this is a mouse basic here.

--Another CFS patron on what they liked about the class: Watching the Lab Assistant (me) in those tight jeans. WTF? To be fair, I have gained a *few* pounds since I got married and at that time they weren't quite tight enough to spend money we didn't have getting new ones.

--There have also been suggestions to have a more stringent screening process to be sure that people in an Excel class at least know how to use a mouse. While I wholehartedly agree, it's just not feasible. These are free classes that for the most part don't require signing up. You just show up and take the class, so yes, we frequently have patrons who are in over their heads. We do try to warn people that they should have certain skills before they take certain classes, but we here at CS know that they really don't care about our suggestions.

Some general stuff that I've been told/asked by patrons:

--Your printers are too hard to work. Yes, I know that it is a multi-step process and you have to go to a different computer to tell the printer to spit out your papers. However, it keeps your bank information from getting mixed up with the pervs' print-outs of scantily clad females and them stealing all your money. It also prevents 1337 G4m3r over there from printing out a 100-page walkthrough to GTA4 and never picking it up, thereby wasting paper.

--Why doesn't the volume work? It does work. It's finally been capped at a lower volume because we were tired of listening to Crank Dat Soldja Boy all day long.

--Why do I need a password to log in? We were tired of rowdy kids cutting school and sitting on our computers all day. I was also tired of telling people that just walked in the door that they had no more time left on their card because said kids kept typing in random numbers for more Internet time and got theirs. And anyway, you actually get more time with our new system than the old system. Unfortunately, more stuff is automated and controlled by the software, so we can't override as much as we used to.

[cinema guy]

The cubes out of the ice machine are too cold.

I think my brain just crashed. Need scotch to get it restarted.