Customer Tries to Inflict Guilt Trip

At 9:30AM the phone rang at work.  This is nothing unusual in itself, but the subject of the conversation was different.

Seems that the customer had been in the store on Sunday asking about having a refrigerator delivered to her house that day.  Well, for starters, we are basically only open on Sunday for video rentals.  We used to be closed, but we had several requests from customers that we be open on Sunday.  We tried it for a little while and it paid for itself, allowing us to provide more hours to our part-time employees.  When the employee working told her that we don’t do deliveries on Sunday, she tried to play a trump card.  She told him that the former owner, from 7 years ago, had told her to have the employee call the owners at home.  Now I don’t know what she thinks “former” means, but to me it means “they no longer have any thing to do with the operations of the store”.  Needless to say, she did not have a refrigerator delivered to her home immediately on Sunday.

When she calls at 9:30, she tells me that she had tried to call the store early in the morning, but no one answered the phone.  I asked her what time she tried to call.  She called at 6:00AM and 7:00AM.  Well the store opens at 9:00AM (she knew this), so why the hell did she think that someone would be here at those times.  Now, we do have people here at 8:00AM to open the store.  Had she been patient and called a little later, someone would have been there to take her call.

Now, for the reason why she was calling now.  She wanted to let me know that because she had been in yesterday, she had not gotten a call back Sunday night and she was unable to reach us at 6:00AM, she had called another store, in another town and purchased another refrigerator.  WTF?  Ok, am I supposed to be upset?  By this time I am realizing that this lady is a nut.  She called attempting to make someone feel guilty about her not purchasing an appliance from a “local” business.  Out of all the people involved with this cluster, I think that she is the only one feeling any guilt.  I am certainly not.

Actually, the woman did manage to accomplish one thing in all this.  She managed to waste about 3 minutes of my time!

Customers Shopping at an Appliance Store

Just a quick observation.  Why do perfectly normal people turn in to complete assholes when they are shopping for an appliance.  They will walk into the store with the most adversarial mindset possible.  Remember that we are people too.  I personally want you to be satisfied with your purchase and I am not going to sell you something that you don’t want.  Even though my living is made from selling appliances to people, I don’t care if you walk out of my store without buying anything.  In fact, if your nasty about everything, I would prefer that you do leave without buying.  It saves many headaches for everyone.

Maybe this attitude comes from other shopping experiences, but maybe you should access the environment of the location you are shopping before getting an attitude.  If you don’t like the way they are selling, leave.  Go somewhere else.  Not every store believes in the “high pressure” sell.