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!

Antenna Adapters

When dealing with antenna adapters, only one thing is guaranteed, the person(s) that you are assisting will have absolutely no idea what they need.

Today we had a gentleman come into the store with a transceiver and an antenna.  Of course, the connections on the transceiver and the antenna were not compatible and an adapter of some type would be needed.  Since I was busy at the time with another customer, the boss helped this man look for the adapter.  My first hint that there was trouble came when I realized that they were standing in the adapter section for an extended amount of time.  The boss then interrupted me to ask what kind of ends were on the transceiver and antenna.  Second sign of a problem, the boss nor the person seeking adapters knew what ends they needed.  The boss leaves and returns with an adapter that to an F connector, not the mini-UHF the person had.  Epic fail, considering that he owns an electronics store.

After much ado, the pair finally decide that the adapter in question was not present.  It appeared that they had been purchased earlier in the week.  Since this adapter is rarely sold, we only keep 2 in stock.  A plan is hatched to cut the mini-UHF end off and replace it with the correct end.  This brought up a new set of problems.  The end that needed to be put on the cable was for RG-8, a rather thick cable.  The antenna cable was RG-58, rather thin.  There was a long period of pondering with no clear solution.  I casually walked over and read the back of the package.  The directions stated that there were adapter for using this end with RG-58.  Problem solved!  Or is it.  This guy can’t figure out how this is going to work.

After a 15 minute processing period, the guy finally decides that this is going to work for him.  I actually got a little frustrated and opened all the packages and basically put the whole thing together for him.  He just needed to solder the thing at this point.  I was very excited to see this guy leave.

P.S.  Does anyone know where I could send the boss to learn about the products in the electronics section on the store?

Finance Charges

Every month we have to go through this ridiculous dance with several of our customers that charge things in our store.  They come in and charge some items, we send a bill at the end of the month, they fail to pay the bill on time and a finance charge is applied.  You know what is coming next, because you are smart and can see it.  The person calls and wonders how in the world they could have received a finance charge.  Really, our stupid computer screwed up and charged you a finance charge just for the hell of it.  The boss is a bit of a pushover and usually removes the finance charges.  I guess it has to be done or people will get pissed, tell others that you are assholes and not shop at the store.  The sad part is that they will do this only due to the fact that they can’t admit that they were wrong.  Nice!