I once had an order from home depot delivered and they dropped an extra pallet of lumber off the truck. It was a big project and I didn't realize until a week or two later. I went back to the store and told them about it and the lady at the service desk accused me of trying to steal it! WTF? I'm telling her that they made a mistake and to come pick it up (instead of selling on CL or some other means of disposal) and she says I was stealing it? Her bad day became HD's problem.

That was 10+ years ago and I have never set foot in that HD since. The Lowe's down the street has gotten $100,000+ of my business since then.

There ya go. Sounds like they are essentially saying "hey, we've a newbie in training here. Be a cool customer and help us out. ...it's only $6."

But, yeah, I would be an irritated customer too. Part of the newbie-training should be 'how to keep transactions moving smoothly.' ... a 2.6% mischarge - meh.

Just talked to the girl's manager. She Refunded the $6 and let me know that the company has been trying to teach accountability to her workers. She also threw in 6 cupcakes for free to smooth it over a bit. I wasn't upset..I was just trying to figure out their rationale here from a business perspective.
The error happened since they are 3 hours ahead of me, the worker called me back, trying to "fix" it before the manager had a chance to talk to me. (her direct manager had already gone home for the day, and I talked to a different manager last night, who didn't know the whole situation.)


Some of you guys asked about the cupcakes. Well....I'm having my annual party in april. This bakery is famous for having REALLY good cupcakes. I'm planning on having lots of flight attendants at the party. ....champagne and cupcakes...flight attendants....you get the picture.

We don't get the picture unless you post 'em ;)

NO CUPCAKES!!!!

Exactly how did we degrade to "freaky dehumanizing sex ?

Same bad service occurred with a couple restaurants.
I imagined going back with a fat stack of twenties, showing the manager, and saying "this is what you lost because of x".

Can I come?

Bingo!

This is what I thought was the case - an employee simply trying to correct her error. The manager was not involved. Again a teaching moment and a positive outcome for all. This is how service issues should be handled. Without flying off the handle. Thanks for the followup Mike - good job by all.

Champagne, cupcakes, and flight attendants........Date, location, and time please:D

Just had an interesting (read frustrating) situation with Barnes and Noble. I was given a nook tablet for christmas a couple years ago that came with BNs two year warrenty. A little before Christmas my tablet was giving me all sorts of problems mostly stemming from not holding a charge. So, I call them to see what could be done. After a short go around and several call backs, I get them to replace the device. I give them my credit card number to hold while they sent my new nook out and I send my defective one back. After seveal weeks of not recieving the new tablet, i call them back. They tell me that my warrenty has now expired and I was out of luck. Now I'm PO'd. I work my way up the ladder anf finally get them to again attempt an exchange. A week later ny new (reman) nook arrives and I send the defective one back. As promised no charges occured on my CC. BUT... a few weeks later, another nook shows up in the mail. This one is their HD model. I called them again and was transfered to so many different people I lost count. Being that they had my credit card from the last two attempts at an exchange, I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to get billed for this POS. They demanded the new one back but made it very difficult.

Customer Service verses Customer Screwus. First one tends to keep my business forever...the latter only gets "one chance" to do that and I will never do business with them again even if it costs me $.

Yeah - I'm not seeing the problem.
Hell, I'll pay the extra $6 for some of that.

Google LL Bean or Stew Leonards if you want to learn about customer service.

Google 'Cup Cake Party'....oh yeah!

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_K977J1-8aE...ke+party+3.jpg