Back to back today, I went to two stores and had two really awful customer service experiences, blatantly so, to the point that I’ll be calling the corporate offices of both companies in the morning to file complaints. Because this shit has to stop.
First, I wandered into a Gamestop after taking the family out for frozen yogurt. It’s nice that it’s warm enough to do that again. So we wandered around, the only people in the store, and my daughters wanted a game. We took it up to the front and whoever the idiot was at the register, she rang it up and was going through the drawer to find the game cartridge. The sticker on the box said “$19.99 – Was $29.99”. It rang up at $29.99. I pointed this out, while the cashier had the game sitting right there, in the stupid envelope, on the counter. It was right there. The second I said it was charging me wrong, she swept it back into the drawer and announced she was out of stock on the game.
IT WAS RIGHT THERE!
Next, we drove over to T-Mobile to get a new cell phone for my youngest daughter. There was one that we wanted but it had been out of stock online for weeks so we went to see what they had. They had every single phone that was out of stock online and they said nope, they have nothing every time we looked at one… unless you wanted a top-of-the-line iPhone or Samsung for $1000, then they have lots of those! When it became clear we weren’t going to bite, this idiot at the counter, and he kept trying to do this over and over, we finally found one that my daughter liked and that didn’t cost an arm and a leg and he went in the back and got it. He was carrying it around! I don’t know if this idiot was a trainee or what but he had to keep going over and whispering to some other guy and then, he decided that the phone he had IN HIS HAND wasn’t available, but we could have one that was $500 more. Yeah, fuck you. We were about to walk when he finally offered to order a phone for us. We paid for it and walked out. Last time I’ll ever step foot in that store again.
Look, I get in both cases that they have quotas to hit and they want extra money, but both of them are prime examples of terrible customer service. If your customer wants X, give them X. Try to up-sell, but if the customer says no, accept it. Because all of this is just “I want your money and I don’t give a shit about you.” Except without the customers, you won’t have a fucking job, jackass! If everyone gets sick of you and your crap, and it’s painfully obvious in both cases that these people are just being petty assholes, then your store is going out of business and you’re going to be making no money at all.
I’m somewhat sympathetic to the hard core companies that require a lot of additional sales and frankly, I think that sucks, but I am still the customer and I choose where my money goes. Right now, it’s not going to be to these stores. But my reports are going straight to their corporate offices. I doubt they’ll care either, but now they’ll know that their stores are in trouble and the more people see that this behavior is unacceptable, hopefully, the more they’ll try to change it. Otherwise, I just won’t be spending any more money there, ever.