This evening was a banner evening for horrible customer service.
Last weekend my father-in-law and I installed a new ceiling fan in a bedroom. We ran into a few issues but nothing major until we went to screw in the lightbulbs. One of the sockets was broken so we were unable to screw in the lightbulb. I read through the warranty document and it said that the manufacture would send out replacement parts at no cost if there was something wrong. I called the 800 number and explained my situation to the woman on the other end of the phone. Her response was "We don't send out new sockets or electrical parts. Go back to Menard's and exchange it." I asked her why her about the part of the warranty that said they would send out new parts. "We do that if it's not an electric part. If it's any wiring you have to take it back." I was skeptical that Menard's would be able to help. When we arrived at Menard's, I thought my customer service luck turned around. I walked up to the service desk and the woman told me to go over to the fans and the salesman would be able to help me. Once we located the fan model we had at home, he opened up the box and dug out the light fixture. While he was digging through the box, he apologized for the trouble we had. Once we got all the pieces he apologized again and told us to have a good night. I was amazed by how easy this was. Unfortunately the night of custmer service was downhill from there.
Our next stop was at the new Target store in Maple Grove. We went there just to check out the new store. It had just opened on Tuesday so it was amazing to see how neat and uncluttered the store seemed. We did end up getting a sweater for Mr. A and some other random items. We only has a couple items so we hit up the express lane. The cashier looked at me and said, "I can't help you." I gave her a quizzical and she just repeated "I can't help you." It wasn't like she was uncapable, she was in the middle of finishing up a transaction. I said "Okay?" and headed further down the row of lanes to find someone who was able to help.
The next stop was Gamestop. I wanted to take advantage of a deal they were running for trading in games for Guitar Hero III. This should have been a 5 minute deal, but took around 30 minutes for clerk to finish the transaction. She asked me my phone number no less than 4 times during the ordeal. Finally she asked me to write down my number so I wouldn't have to ask me every time she needed it. During the first 10 minutes, she was entering my info in their new computer system. She and another worker spent a good portion of that 10 minutes discussing the horrible new system and how much they hate it. The last 20 minutes was the clerk trying to figure out why some bonus credit wasn't being allowed. She kept repeating that if she can't get it to work that she would have to do it manually. In the end, she called another store and found out that she couldn't use all of the bonus credits in one transaction. She was apologetic, but still frustrating that it took that long for a 5 minute transaction. Hopefully I'll be able to get in and out when I pick it up.
Since we had done a bunch of running, it was getting late and we still needed dinner. BW's carry-out was what we decided on. I called them up and tried to place a simple order of 8 boneless wings and their dynamic trio. The 8 boneless wings was not an issue, but the trio was hard. When I ordered the trio I heard dead silence. She placed me on hold for a minute. When she got back on the line her response was "All we can find is the Naked Tender so do you want that?" I had given up at that point and just ordered the tenders with one sauce.
So that was my evening of bad service. After the first two stops I was annoyed with the lack of service, but by the time I had finished with BW's it was just comical.
