I had a wonderful experience yesterday. The power head on our vacuum was not rotating. H
tried to disassemble it an I found a belt after hours of searching online. I decided to take it to
the small local store where I bought it and just talk to them. The lovely young man gave me the
prices to fix it/to sell me a belt. Then he said he wanted to check something and in the end it had a jam
and works just fine. He showed me the reset button :)). He was very polite and nice and did not make
me feel foolish and also would not take any money. It was just a nice experience and I gushed my appreciation.
Re some of the recent posts about employees shoplifting: I believe that Barbara Ehrenreich in “Nickled and Dimed,” mentioned that in low-paid customer service jobs in retail stores, the employees would be told that the majority of shoplifting losses were caused by employees. This caused the employees to regard each other with suspicion. I don’t know whether it is true or not–possibly just a bad management technique.
^ ^ ^
It might have reduced employee tardiness whenever new shipments arrived. Everyone would hurry into work before all the good stuff was gone. 
lol, TonyK!
quantmech,
yes it is true . also like at the airport where they take your bottle of water from you , toss it a barrel that sits there with 1000x of other bottles of water,for days.if they were of any real threat they would be disposed of by the bomb squad. but while your kids apple sauce and you nail clippers are taken away, 1000x of people and trucks move freely back and forth from the runway,in and out of the terminal, on and off the planes 100% unchecked. so while it is true customers do steal, employees have much more access to steal and on a larger scale.
so unlike security theater as they call it at the airport, business just have to build losses from employees into the price.
^at least our airport donates all of my many bottle of water 
My husband’s flight from JFK to Portland got delayed due to weather this week. JetBue gave each passenger a voucher for $8 so people could get a snack while they waited. The next day, he got an email that he would receive a $25 credit the next time he booked a flight on the airline. We were pretty impressed, since the delay wasn’t even JB’s fault.
I leased a car for the first time, nervous about keeping it spiffy. About 6 months into the 2 years, I got a white paint scrape on my dark car (backed lightly into something. )
I stopped by a local body shop, explained to the owner it’s a lease, could I schedule a repair? “I’ll do it right now.” He would only have to buff out the white paint (I hadn’t realized it was superficial.) I asked the charge.
“Nothing. Maybe you’ll come back in 18 months and we’ll clean and prep the car for when you turn it in.”
Have to revive this thread for this story . . .
Was having issues with my car a couple of weeks back - first, it wasn’t starting easily, then it died at an intersection. Finally got it started, got it home, parked it, and made arrangements to take it to my mechanic last weekend. Well, he ended up cancelling at the last moment due to a family emergency, and I needed the car. Made some calls (on a Saturday morning!) and found a mechanic who was open and told me to bring it in. An hour later, I was on my way out again - and now had a car I could trust!
And the icing on the cake was that this mechanic - of all the mechanics in my area - was the closest one to my house! But that’s not where the story ends . . .
This past Saturday - exactly one week to the day from when I had it repaired - the car started acting up again. First, I had trouble getting it started . . . but it finally started up, so I didn’t worry about it. My mistake. I made it about two blocks before it died. In traffic. But right in front of a restaurant parking lot, so I was able to pull off the road safely.
Called the mechanic, since I now knew they’re open on Saturdays. Well, not quite. Their used car lot is open all day on Saturday, but their mechanics leave at noon. Uh-oh! Not to worry, the guy said - the owner will be in shortly, and I’ll have him give you a call back. A half hour or so later, he calls, tells me he’s busy with customers, but as soon as he’s done, he’ll come have a look. I went home, and a couple of hours later, he called to tell me he was on his way. Picked me up at my house, and we both went back to the restaurant. Took him less than a minute to figure out that the part his mechanic had installed the week before was defective. He jumped in his car (with me riding shotgun), and went looking for the part I needed. First auto parts store didn’t have it, but the second one did. He bought it, drove back to my car, switched out the defective part for the good one (which took all of about five minutes), said, “you’re good to go!”, jumped in his car and drive off.
Now that is customer service!!!
Our mechanic swapped out our defective battery and put in a new one at no charge to us. He’s made other repairs of defective parts and never charges us. I always feel bad and hope he’s being reimbursed somewhere somehow for labor.
A good mechanic is priceless!
For those of you guitarists, drummers and other musicians, Sweetwater can’t be beat. My husband, my son and my father have all ordered guitars from Sweetwater. You deal with one salesperson for your entire order, including emailing or talking on the phone about what type of guitar you want, what kind of music you play, etc. etc. Then before your guitar is shipped, they take photos – like THIRTY PHOTOS! – of your guitar … not just a guitar that is the same model, but the one that is actually being shipped to YOU and they email you the photos. My dad got his guitar and didn’t like it, sent it back and ordered a different one, no hassles at all. My son has become Facebook friends with his salesman!
They also sell drums, microphones, speakers, and other items.
Went to the post office this morning. Now, I know not to expect much in the way of customer service at USPS, but this was terrible…
After using the self service machine to post my package, I was unsure where to put the package. I saw two postal workers in conversation with each other so I figured I would ask them. It was weekend chit chat, nothing urgent or business related. I approached the two and politely said “excuse me.” Their conversation stopped, the smiles left their faces, and they turned and walked away. AWAY! I followed one and asked where I should place my stamped package. Without turning to me, she lifted her hand and pointed to the line leading to the service desk. I felt like cattle and she just pronged me.
Thanks. But not really surprised.
Well, I have to respond to the USPS critique . . .
Mailed a priority mail letter last week, using my own postage, and the clerk forgot to give me a receipt with the tracking number. I forgot about it myself, as well . . . until the next morning when I realized I had no way to track the letter. Called the post office and was told, “sorry, it would have been in yesterday’s trash, and that’s already been tossed.” Well, that was that, I thought.
Five minutes later, I got a call back from the post office. Someone had figured out how to find the prior day’s receipts on their computer system, so they had my tracking number for me. The woman who called not only gave me the number over the phone, but also printed it out, put it in an envelope, and sent it out with my mail carrier the following day!
@dodgersmom To be clear, I am a huge fan of the USPS. In all my years of mailing things I don’t think they have lost more than one or two letters - an amazing feat. And the customer service folks are usually very nice and helpful.
But I was disappointed by my treatment this morning.
One of our USPS carriers stopped by one day when I was outside with our dog and she gave our sweet girl a treat. We got to chatting and I told her that K was ill. Until the day our girl passed away, whoever delivered our mail (there’s a rotating group) put a treat in our mailbox. I cried every day I opened the mailbox.
I really do need to write a letter to their manager.
Do they have to put a stamp on it like everyone else?
I used to run tech at a small company. We had a $1000/month leased line from Verizon to run our website for online customer service. The line would die often on a Friday afternoon, I would call them and they would invariably tell me “it’s kinda late on a Friday and we don’t work weekends, so we’ll come by on Monday to take a look”. I explained to them that this is an expensive business service and if they don’t fix it right and fix it quickly, they will lose our business. I called the local cable co that was starting to compete for commercial telecom business, they gave us a superior technical solution at a lower cost, and it never failed. Called Verizon, told them I am not paying the bills for outstanding contractual obligations, and they can sue us if they don’t like it. That got their attention. They fixed the problem and credited us for months of bad service, so I kept them as a backup solution to the cable co. Never needed the backup solution fortunately. This is why there always needs to be competition.
I keep the local cable co in my house, despite Verizon FIOS being available for years now, just because I hear their many war stories about FIOS billing mistakes.
Anybody in NYC area find that switching from Verizon cell phone to others was cheaper/better ?
Sprint advertises they are within 1% of the Verizon reliability for cell phone service.
Anyone try and and agree it’s worth switching ? I have not switched due to inertia and because my own
policy of only performing tasks their website can handle has helped to avoid customer service interaction and mistakes. If I really need to do anything their website can’t handle, think I would just switch to another cell provider.
We spend part of the year in a town where there is no mail delivery – you have to go to the post office a few times a week and pick up your mail. There is a postal attendant at one of the windows that is so unpleasant that I will actually let the person behind me in line go ahead of me if her window opens up at my turn. I pretend to fumble with something in my purse and say “please go ahead.” I have more than once seen her literally screaming at customers who then ask for a supervisor and a whole fiasco ensues holding up the whole line. I prefer to avoid the chance of such an encounter because I really don’t trust myself with what I might say if I was on the receiving end of that treatment.
We filed a claim on our CC for the broken rear window of our rental car. I sent a cover letter summarizing each of the documents attached, corresponding with the list of documents required. Today, I got an email listing two more documents they need which were in the documents I already transmitted. I called the department listed on the email and spoke to a very nice lady, reviewing what I sent and what they said they need. She agreed with me that they received everything they need and she will note it for the file and have the claims agent (who was unavailable) get back to me if there is anything else needed. She agreed with me that we have submitted everything needed and the claim should be processed within 5-7 days.
Frustrating that the claims person didn’t look at the documents already submitted more closely! I don’t want to re-send and confuse them.
Wow, I feel I am getting my taxes worth… Called the city to discuss an issue, and a human picked up right away! 