Bad Customer Service

Wayne's home now. He got back about 5:30 on Friday afternoon and caught me unawares as I feverishly prepared for his arrival once I got home from work. I'm happy he's back, it's always sort of boring when he's away.

Yesterday he had to go pick up Emily (his Mini) from St Albert so that he had wheels, and when he came back down last night he hauled in his backpack, fried chicken for supper and a parcel that looked suspiciously like it might be for me.

It was.



Remember the parcel that Canada Post lost a month ago?

He had his St. Albert address listed as the return, and so they did.

They listed my address as 'No Such Address' despite the painstakingly perfect lettering on the label, and according to Canada Post's system, it had never even left the processing centre, much less been returned to St. Albert.

Dear Canada Post,

Your Edmonton employees are lazy, illiterate bums that may have had one too many parcels dropped on their fat heads.

Anywho.. dream boy bought me a Canon Powershot SD450 Elph Digicam to replace the one that went bust on me the day we came back from vacation. It's gorgeous and small and well, perfect. Happy Early Birthday to me!

This morning I got up with a craving, not really to eat cookies, but more to get all domestic and just make some, so this afternoon we planned to hit the grocery for chocolate chips and then make a quick detour to Future Shop to pick up a USB drive for him to move stuff from his laptop and my PC to his new MacBook.

We walked into Future Shop, and browsed for a bit when it became apparent not one person in the store was willing to help us find what we needed. The browsing was hard because 3/4 of the things we looked at weren't priced, nor was there anything nearby indicating what the price might be on such things. Since asking anyone was out of the question we just wandered and grabbed a few other things, and the first person that asked us if we needed anything was in the vacuum cleaner section. Next month I need a vacuum, and today we needed a USB drive, but thank you vacuum cleaner guy for giving a shit. I will come back and buy a vacuum from you anytime.

As for the rest of you sad sacks... asking two obviously confused people if they need a hand with anything usually garners a sale. Just freakin' do it.

Mr. Roberts ended up getting kind of upset, and just leaving the merchandise he'd already grabbed with the greeter as we walked out, planning to head over to Best Buy.

Bang, Assholes! That was $100 you lost. Sucks, huh?

We got to Best Buy, found the section we needed right away and proceeded to stand there for 20 minutes as they've now got a new theft deterrent in the form of locked containers containing the merch on the hooks. Can't get it off to pay for it, and are thus forced to stand around waiting for a salesperson to unlock it.

I flagged down 2 people, both who told me they didn't have time or the key to unlock the case.

Best Buy, it's a stupid idea to have your individual merchandise in little plastic locked containers that make it impossible for the consumer to pay for the goddamn things, but even stupider to have inept staff that don't give a shit about helping people that have been waiting for help for 20 minutes.

It makes me realize that as grouchy as I could get sometimes working retail, I was never in that league, and really don't appreciate it as a customer.

And I'm not a passive disgruntled customer. I'm a 'write letters, make calls' disgruntled customer. And so I did. Very diplomatically.

I spoke to managers at both stores, explained the situation and told them how it was not appreciated.

Did I get free stuff?

No, but I also didn't get arrested. My first impulse might have resulted in that.