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Project Insomnia

Project Insomnia is many things, but in this context it is simply a "braindump" of whatever I happen to be thinking/reading/watching/doing at the moment. Parental guidance suggested.

Saturday, July 12, 2003

Poor customer service example of the day.

We have a bunch of pictures that need to be put in frames, so we went to a couple of thrift stores and bought old frames and restored them. Most of the frames didn't come with glass, so we went to Cheap Pete's Frame Factory Outlet on July 3rd to buy some glass. Now Cheap Pete's gives you the glass packed between two sheets of thick cardboard, to protect it, and the corners and edges of the cardboard are taped to keep the glass from sliding out. Jen didn't see the glass before it was packaged.
So she got it home and opened the packing material, and one of the glass sheets was broken in several places. She didn't have things sitting on the glass in her car on the way home or anything, so there was no reason for it to be broken when she opened it, but there it was.
Okay, we figured we'd just take it back to Cheap Pete's and get it exchanged for a non-broken piece. Here's where the poor customer service example of the day comes in. The Cheap Pete's store manager refused to exchange the glass! She insisted the glass was whole when it left the store and Jen must have broken it putting it into her car. She said that they "always check to make sure the glass is unbroken" when they pack it up.
I told her that's as may be, this time the glass was broken when we opened it and so we would like a new one. Again, she refused, and then offered us half-price on a replacement. I tried again to explain that we'd already paid full price for the piece and would just like one that is in one piece, but she basically accused me of lying to her and brought out the old "if I give you a replacement, then I'll have to give everyone with broken glass a replacement...". Hmm, if it happens that often, maybe you need to pack it better?
I told her it didn't sound like very good policy to insist on having us pay twice for the same thing and told her she was about to lose a customer.
She shrugged and walked away.
Epilog: We went down the street to FastFrame and bought a new piece of glass. The glass was wrapped in heavy paper so it was obvious that it was unbroken. Miraculously, the glass was still unbroken when we got it home.
Congratulations, Lola of Cheap Pete's San Mateo, you have lost a repeat customer.
|| Andrew, 6:25 PM || ||

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