smoe.org mailing lists
ivan@stellysee.de
| From | DanAbnrml9@aol.com |
| Subject | Re: Plastic Fantastic is closing |
| Date | Tue, 13 Jan 2004 10:48:45 EST |
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In a message dated 1/13/2004 9:01:31 AM Eastern Standard Time,
audities-owner@smoe.org writes:
<<I made a special trip to Plastic Fantastic about 2 months ago and was there
about ten minutes when I was informed that they were having a store meeting
and
they were closing for an hour & I had to leave.And this was on a Friday
afternoon. I just went home & bought some stuff online from Bomp and they
lost a
customer.
I started going there back when they had a tiny store in Bryn Mawr & spent
thousands over the years but I say good riddance. >>
This is obviously inappropriate from a customer-service perspective, and was
clearly quite disappointing since you made a special trip down... but is it
worth "losing a customer" over? Speaking as a retailer I see this type of
attitude every day, but the fact is that it isn't some god-given right that a store
will be open. People who work in office jobs have the freedom to step out if
needed--for lunches, for emergencies, for MEETINGS (as is the case here) etc.,
but those who work out in the public don't have that. They needed to have a
store meeting and scheduled it mid-day (which is a dead time for most retailers)
to interfere with as few customers as possible.
There are also some times that stores HAVE to close, such as during power
outages (when it's impossible to ring out customers anyway and it becomes a
serious safety issue for the employees to continue to allow guests into the store),
major storms, or (in some cases) to give the employee(s) their
legally-mandated lunch break. It's obvious from the other posts that this particular store
had some customer-service issues anyway, but I don't think that this particular
one should be so inexcusable. "The customer is always right" is, strangely,
not a total absolute--lots of customers seek to rip you off, take advantage, or
otherwise cheat you, and sometimes stores NEED to do things that are not
completely, 100% customer friendly... it's simply a reality.
Sorry... it's just a pet peeve. I'm not saying that customers don't deserve
everything that qualifies as "great customer service", because in such a
competitive industry they most certainly do. But there are always exceptions; there
are always times and scenarios when it's just not feasible... and of course,
speaking as record store management myself, these are the ones I get yelled at
about :) --Jason
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