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Must have been something in the air today, but the wacko's were out in force.
I got paged to the returns counter. Our returns clerk had already told this woman no but she wanted to go higher. She wants to return an ADSL modem that she no longer needs. Date of purchase - 30 June, 2007. WTF? it is the best part of a year old and she wants a refund because she decided she doesn't want it anymore. I quite firmly told her that no I can't return an item of that age. She starts ranting and raving, said she was going to complain to our corporate head office, and they would make me give a refund (and sadly, they probably would). I ended up telling her that IF it was the same as the current model, I would give her a store credit only, for the current retail value (about half what she paid for it). This calmed her down, I checked the current model, showed her that it is different, apologised but there is nothing further I can do. I guess after seeing I was prepared to do something was enough to calm her down so she accepted that.
A little later I was occupied with another customer near the returns desk and overheard the following. Basic story was that he bought a printer in December. It has been working fine with his laptop, but he recently bought a new desktop computer elsewhere, and the printer wouldn't work with it. Therefore he wanted a refund. The returns clerk suggested that it was probably just a setup problem on the new computer, and offered our technicians to help set it up. No the customer just wanted a refund. Returns clerk explained he couldn't give a refund because a) it was 5 months old, b) it was incomplete, c) there was nothing wrong with it. Customer wouldn't accept that and wanted the manager. Because I was occupied the other senior manager responded and went through exactly the same stuff as the Returns desk, reiterated the offer to set it up properly on his computer. The customer said his son had tried setting it up, it didn't work so he still demanded a refund. The SM's response was gold - he asked what his son did, he was an English teacher. The SM then said "Your son was trained as an English teacher, and I'm sure he does it very well. Our technicians are trained as computer technicians, and although they can speak english, they don't pretend to be English teachers". Customer grudgingly decided to bring his computer in so our techs can set it up on it.
No sooner had this finished and another customer walks out and as he does shouts out to me that our sales staff won't sell him what he wants and storms out. I asked the salesman involved what happened. Customer wanted a bundle of a Playstation Portable and a particular game. The game the customer wanted is not in stock and is out of print so we can no longer get it. Salesman explained that to him, and suggested some similar games but customer would have nothing of it, and got cranky that he wouldn't sell him what he wanted and stormed out.
I got paged to the returns counter. Our returns clerk had already told this woman no but she wanted to go higher. She wants to return an ADSL modem that she no longer needs. Date of purchase - 30 June, 2007. WTF? it is the best part of a year old and she wants a refund because she decided she doesn't want it anymore. I quite firmly told her that no I can't return an item of that age. She starts ranting and raving, said she was going to complain to our corporate head office, and they would make me give a refund (and sadly, they probably would). I ended up telling her that IF it was the same as the current model, I would give her a store credit only, for the current retail value (about half what she paid for it). This calmed her down, I checked the current model, showed her that it is different, apologised but there is nothing further I can do. I guess after seeing I was prepared to do something was enough to calm her down so she accepted that.
A little later I was occupied with another customer near the returns desk and overheard the following. Basic story was that he bought a printer in December. It has been working fine with his laptop, but he recently bought a new desktop computer elsewhere, and the printer wouldn't work with it. Therefore he wanted a refund. The returns clerk suggested that it was probably just a setup problem on the new computer, and offered our technicians to help set it up. No the customer just wanted a refund. Returns clerk explained he couldn't give a refund because a) it was 5 months old, b) it was incomplete, c) there was nothing wrong with it. Customer wouldn't accept that and wanted the manager. Because I was occupied the other senior manager responded and went through exactly the same stuff as the Returns desk, reiterated the offer to set it up properly on his computer. The customer said his son had tried setting it up, it didn't work so he still demanded a refund. The SM's response was gold - he asked what his son did, he was an English teacher. The SM then said "Your son was trained as an English teacher, and I'm sure he does it very well. Our technicians are trained as computer technicians, and although they can speak english, they don't pretend to be English teachers". Customer grudgingly decided to bring his computer in so our techs can set it up on it.
No sooner had this finished and another customer walks out and as he does shouts out to me that our sales staff won't sell him what he wants and storms out. I asked the salesman involved what happened. Customer wanted a bundle of a Playstation Portable and a particular game. The game the customer wanted is not in stock and is out of print so we can no longer get it. Salesman explained that to him, and suggested some similar games but customer would have nothing of it, and got cranky that he wouldn't sell him what he wanted and stormed out.
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