Businesses need to do everything in their power to weather this downturn. It should be a great time for customers to get great deals because of this: they need to keep the cash flowing in. Customers should expect deals, and they should be treated with respect, because customers can go to a competitor.
Some businesses just don't get it, though. It's as if they are in the business of chasing their customers away. I fully support their right to do so, but I also fully expect to be able to exercise my rights not to be a patron. Here are six things I've experienced that make me wonder about people's business acumen:
- Don't honor your coupons. Or change the rules when it suits you. One Sunday we were going to have lunch at Sunset Thai. We had an Attractions Book and Sunset Thai had a coupon available that had no restrictions for Sunday. When we got there, there was a sign on the front door saying that they weren't accepting coupons today. Bad move. Fortunately Camille's Sidewalk Café did accept our coupon, and not only that, printed out another one good on our next visit later in the month. One guess which one did a better job of keeping us around.
- Don't honor advance purchases made when the store was under previous management. Taking over a business means taking over the entire business, including the customers. We had some tickets from a while back for Fun-Land, and I had intended to use them for miniature golf with my daughter and a friend, and thought that I could, because I was told they didn't expire. Well, those tickets were no longer any good. Apparently, coupons that never expire actually can expire if management deems it convenient. The guy at the ticket counter just shrugged his shoulders. Well, I paid for the new tickets because I had promised my daughter, but I probably won't be back there again. Fun-Land blew it. Had they let me change in my tickets, I would have told other people that they honored the old tickets. But they didn't. Their loss.
- Actively show disinterest in what your customers are saying. A while back I went to Advance Auto Parts to get oil filters for one of our cars. I had just found out that you have to check to see that the rubber gasket didn't stick to the car when you removed the old oil filter. When I went to buy the new filter I started chatting to the guy at check-out about it as he rang it up. No one was behind me in line. He made it really clear to me that he didn't care, and cut me off mid-sentence. Regardless of whether my story was interesting or not (I at least thought it might be helpful to someone), it's a really bad idea to essentially tell a customer to shut up when there's no one else in line. Sorry for wasting your valuable time, buddy! I'll just crawl back into my hole now.
- Make it a chore for people to spend money. I used to be a big arcade fiend. One time when I was home visiting my parents, I went to the mall and had about 30 minutes or so before I met up with my family to go back to their house. The arcade was still up and running, so I went in to play a game or maybe two. I didn't have any change, and the guy changing out the tokens wouldn't just give me two tokens and two quarters back for my dollar. (This was after he tried to kick me out because he thought I was still in high school, and it was during school hours.) So, I bought a soda (to get some quarters) and then the guy chased me out because I had a soda. I was the only customer in the place at that time. How hard did he really want me to work to spend money there?
- Charge them whatever the heck you want, and don't fix the error when they point it out. One time, before Borders Books and Music outsourced its food and drink services, the cashier rang up a drink with the wrong price. I pointed out the error. The cashier just looked at me, and continued to hold her hand out to take my credit card. Since there were people behind me, and the price difference was insignificant, I paid her price for it. I overheard the cashier say that she charged different prices for the drinks all the time. I later told the manager about it, and she ended up giving me the drink for free, but I still shake my head at what that cashier did.
- Slam the door on them. Literally. I was about to enter a Ritz Camera, near closing time, just to check a price on something. As I approached the door, I saw one of the employees pick up her pace to lock the door before I opened it! And she looked me in the eye as she did it! Oh well. Apparently I'm not the only one who chose other places over Ritz Camera, as they're now bankrupt. That location and another one in our area are gone.
It might be easy to say that this is the employees' doing and not the owners' doing. Not true. Business owners are responsible, and accountable, for how their employees treat customers. Owners should not keep employees that pull these maneuvers. With unemployment pushing 10% now, they shouldn't have to.
It also might be easy to say that I'm just asking too much and that I'm not worth keeping around anyway. In better times, maybe. There are certainly bigger spenders than myself. But people on average have less disposable income available than they did a few years ago. Things are tighter. There will be more people with my kind of spending levels than with higher spending levels.
Any other ways that a store has slammed the door on you?
You must not have experienced one of my personal favorites – sales and stock. Several stores I frequent (specialty ones, unfortunately) have a habit of not stocking the shelves again until after a weekend sale. So even though item X is 50% off through Sunday there’s none on the shelves. Actually all the shelves are looking pretty thin by Sunday.
And then magically the delivery fairy shows up Sunday night and the shelves are full on Monday morning. The day when prices go back up.
I’m not shy about asking a clerk to go in back and look for something I want or getting a rain check at the sale price if it’s really a good deal and something I need. But they can’t honestly expect us to believe that the delivery truck showed up at 5:00am on Monday morning after the sale.
I work at a retail clothing store and lots of people complain to us about doing this but it just doesn’t happen (at least not where I work). We receive shipments of new products and stock replenishments twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays around 10AM. We always try to sell every thing at every chance we get.
Preach on brother!
Just yesterday I went to Daylight Donuts since we had some kids over to spend the night with my kids and donuts are always popular. At 6:30 AM on a Saturday morning I’m not to “with it” and I walked in to order 2 dozen. Mind you, this is a chain with several hundred locations … and they don’t take debit cards. Blows my mind.
My way to slam the door on your customer? Make paying for your product or service a pain in the neck.
I won’t go back to a particular Potbelly’s after an employee there repeatedly grilled me on why I didn’t want my sandwich heated. (Two reasons – I don’t like warm sandwiches very much, and secondarily I was going back to the office and throwing it in the fridge for a couple of hours before I ate, so the point was moot anyway.) At the point at which she asked if I’d ever eaten at Potbelly’s before, I told her that if she asked me to justify my sandwich choices one more time, I was walking out the door. She finally shut up and finished making the sandwich, and I’ve never been back.
Yep–one (and only one) time at a NYPD Pizza, the manager/cashier guy kept jabbing his index finger in the air at the digital total on the cash register. This was his way of letting us know what we owed. And he did this twice, until we caught on to his special language.
“Any other ways that a store has slammed the door on you?”
After using Norton AntiVirus for a couple of years, I upgraded my software using a rebate coupon they offered. It was a lengthy process to follow in order to get the rebate (i.e. jump thru hoops) and I followed it precisely. Having unfortunately learned the hard way over the years, I also photocopied everything “just in case”.
Well, “just in case” happened. They declined my rebate and stated that I had to reapply again, even after I already sent them the original copies. I kind of wondered if this was happening with others and was going to complain to the Arizona Attorney General since I had photocopies of everything. But, I didn’t think it was worth the time and effort, so they got away with it.
However, I’ll never have a good thing to say about Symantec and will never buy another one of their products. In the long-run, they lost out by not keeping me as a customer.
Sometimes, it’s just too hard to be someone’s customer!
I opened a bank account and deposited $300, the minimum. A month later, I walk into the bank with a cashiers check for over $16,000 to add to the account, and the teller says they’re going to put a 10 day hold on the money. I tell her it’s unacceptable.
The supervisor comes over and explains that it’s their policy. I explain that it’s as good as cash, and I’ll allow one business day to verify it’s real, and that’s all. I also explain that I have already written several small checks on that amount, and I have contractors doing work for me the next week and they’re going to be paid out of that money.
The supervisor goes to the Vice President and comes back saying that they’re going to hold it for 5 days. I say no, and tell them to call the issuing bank to verify the check.
The supervisor asks if the check represents me closing an account with the other bank. I tell her, no, I have several current accounts with the bank, this is just one account that I closed. She says she’ll have to talk to the President. I tell her to get the President out here right now to talk to me.
She comes back with the 5 day hold thing again. I hand her my checkbook, from the bank that issued the cashiers check. I point to the 800 number on the check that she can call, and I tell her to talk with Shelly, the person who issued me the check.
She says she’s going to talk with the President again. Before she leaves, I tell her: “This is how it’s going to be. You’re either going to add that amount to my account now, so I can write checks on that, or I’m taking it somewhere else to open an account where I can write checks on it. That’s how it’s going to be.”
While she is with the President, I figure out how much money I have to put in the account in cash to cover the checks I’ve already written. I get the cash ready to put in the account so when I get more grief, I can make a final deposit in cash and then close the account and take my cashiers check elsewhere.
She comes back and simply says: “Mr. Schwan, we’re all set.” I confirm that he statement means that the bank has accepted the check on the spot, and then I tell them that they have retained me as a customer.
It didn’t take me until I got back out to my car to realize that it was just too hard trying to be their customer, and the 10 days of using my money without paying any interest is simply a scam. The next business day I took some of my cash and opened another account at another bank and will be closing the troubling account after I’m certain all the checks have cleared.
We shouldn’t have to work so hard to be someone’s customer, and we need to be better at exercising our own policies, just like a business. I’m in charge of my own financial resources, and I have policies too. My policy is simple: make it hard for me, and I’ll do business elsewhere. You need my business, so you better act like it. That’s the whole idea of a competitive marketplace – it gives you choices.
Clair
How about this one – harass the crap out of loyal customers, at a time when your product is becoming this generation’s buggy whip?
These are great examples. On a personal note, I recently tried to use a coupon for takeout from a local restaurant and the person told me the coupon could only be used when paying cash. Nowhere on the coupon does it state this. The individual on the phone sounded like the owner or at least manager. Was it really worth saving that merchant discount with the credit card processor to turn me off as a customer?
As far as sales associates, cashiers, and other employees that deal with the public are concerned…this is absolutely the responsibility of the owner or sales manager to make sure the business is being run correctly. It should be instilled in the employee that their interactions with the customer are what keeps them in a job and they should be rewarded for a good job (in many ways, including $).
I think as long as you are honest and loyal to your customers you are suppose to do good business.
Devils Advocate here…
Have you ever worked in retail? Well i do full time. And it makes me look at thing from the perspective of a customer and a salesperson.
The main thing I want to comment on is your door slamming comment. I don’t know about you, but when closing time rolls round I want to go home. But in retail i’ve experienced someone who just needed “one thing” wander around, and keep a whole crew of people from going home.
Would you like to stay at work longer than you have to because of one asshat who can wait until 8am the next day?
Thanks everyone for your comments!
ABT: I did (for one summer) so not to the extent that you have, but at least more than none. I have friends who were store managers, and I’ve heard from them how much it can suck being in retail.
I hear you, and I certainly wasn’t suggesting that it’s all right for customers to do what you’re talking about. I watched as one of my relatives wandered around for a good 15 minutes after a store closed “looking for something.” That behavior embarrassed me. I do my best not to pull that behavior.
Notwithstanding that, though, slamming the door on a customer says, “My need to get out of here is greater than your need to shop and greater than my boss’s desire to make money.” Now, if you keep the doors open, and the customer ends up buying a lot of stuff, you could say to your boss after the customer leaves, “Gee, I’m glad we stayed open! That was a big purchase!” That way your boss will at least remember it. No guarantees, but it can’t hurt. But otherwise, bending a little will help keep you off the short list to be let go. (But you probably already know this.)
Businesses that operate like this apparently believe they don’t need to earn their customers, they’re entitled to them. I once took a ski trip with a friend and stayed in a hotel that turned their water off at night (!). No flushing toilets, showers, nothing. The owners of the hotel appeared to be from some south Asian country, so I assume that’s the way they operate in their own home culture, but it certainly doesn’t fly here. When my friend griped about it, they initially didn’t seem too concerned. Unbelievable.