Thursday, November 08, 2007

Hair today, gone tomorrow

I’m sorry. There have been *issues.* Posts have been eaten. Phones have been thrown across the room. People have been cursed. Supervisors have been requested. I'm sure that I'm on "customers_suck" on LiveJournal at this point. Comcast is the worst company in the free world when it comes to customer service. Also the worst when it comes to actually keeping their product, I don't know, WORKING! I hope every single one of their local, regional and corporate offices burn down and all their phone monkey slaves die with their idiotic, condescending and unhelpful tails tied to their chairs.

Anywhoo.

I’m slaving away, as per usual. It’s a Sunday. My feet hurt and I regret mightily eating that leftover Olive Garden takeout for my lunch because it is just causing *issues.*

Every 20 minutes I’m praying the customers leave me alone and screaming “Dequetta (my supervisor, name changed to protect the innocent, but she IS a ghettolicious superstar), can you watch Customer Service for a minute? I got to go.” That’s what kind of a day it is.

In the midst of all this fun comes one of my regulars, a hot-blooded twenty-something who seems to make a pastime out of buying and returning clothes. She’s the type of upscale consumer Wal-Mart would love to attract more of – but hates to try on clothes in the store. And she buys four sizes of everything and returns three of them.

Mizz Thing is working it today. I guess she visited the new bebe store in town. She’s rocking a pink and white bebe sport outfit today – sweatpants, tee and hoodie. Of course, the letters hit RIGHT where it would do the most good – right across the boobs and the buns. Not that this sister needs any more attention. She’s got just enough curves in all the right places.

What I do notice is that she’s rocking a new ‘do. She’s added some purple highlights to the black shag on either side of her face. Dramatic, but cute.

Today she’s returning a hair-dryer. We’re talking heavy-duty hair-dryer here. Leaves would tremble in terror at mere mention of this thing. Seriously. She slammed it up on the counter and at first I thought it was something from hardware until I looked at the receipt.

Cue the fun:

ME: “Can I help you? How are you doing today?” If I know you, I'm friendly. At least until you try to run game.
HER: “Good. I just need to return this hair dryer.”
ME: “OK. Do you have your receipt?” Almost always does. She knows the score.
HER: “It’s right here.”
ME: “OK.” Receipt is a month old.
ME: “Uh. Was there a problem with it?”
HER: “Oh. I didn’t use it. I bought it for my sister and she looked at it and said she didn’t want it because it was too big.”

ME: Looking at the box. It’s one of those clear plastic case things, and there is something bothering me.
HER: “So how have you been? It is so busy today.”
ME: Distractedly. “Fine.” Something about this box and the hairdryer is tickling my admittedly tiny brain.
HER: “That’s good. Is it always this busy on Sundays?”
ME: Still looking at the box. “Yeah. It was real busy earlier.” I finally figure out what is bothering me. Something is missing from the box. There's actually an empty space where something should be and that something isn't there.

HER: “I came in and didn’t see you earlier. I guess you were on your lunch or something.”
ME: “Um. Did this come with an attachment or something? Because it looks like there is supposed to be something here.”
HER: “Oh. It did. It had a diffuser attachment. I took that out because it fits on my other hair dryer. I decided to keep it and just bring the hair dryer back.”

ME: “Um. Um. I …” Houston, we have a problem.
HER: “I don’t want this hair dryer though. I just wanted the attachment. That’s all I bought it for.”
ME: “Yeah. I kind of need the attachment if I’m going to give you the money back for the whole hair dryer.”
HER: “But the whole hair dryer is there. Just not the attachment.”

ME: “Yeah. It’s kind of not. It comes with an attachment. And you still have the attachment.”
HER: “I want to keep the attachment.”
ME: “If you keep the attachment, you can keep the hair dryer.”
HER: “I don’t want the hair dryer.”
ME: “You can’t return it without the attachment.”
HER: “Why not?”
ME: “Because you bought it with the attachment – and you have to return it with the attachment.”
HER: “That’s not fair. I only want to keep the parts I want and return the rest.”

ME: “But they’re sold as a set.”
HER: “I think I should get to keep the attachment. I shop here all the time.”
ME: “No.”
HER: “That’s not fair.”
ME: “Well, you can’t get something for free.”
HER: “I don’t want something for free. I bought a hair dryer and I’m returning a hair dryer.”
ME: “But you’re keeping the attachment. You’re not returning everything you purchased.”

HER: “That’s what I said. I want to return the hair dryer.”
ME: “If you bring the attachment.”
HER: “But I want to keep the attachment.”
ME: “No. Hair dryer and attachment, I’ll return it. Otherwise, no return.”
HER: “That’s just not fair.”
ME: “Well, I’m sorry, but that’s how it’s going to be.”

Finally, she pouts some more and walks off. As she leaves, I notice she has bebe written in pink over her rump. It ought to be "baby."

Sheesh.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, at least she was honest about it (lol).

And, on an unrelated note, from SupermarketNews:

Holiday Return Fraud to Hit $3.7 Billion: NRF

Loss prevention executives anticipate that nearly 9% (8.93%) of holiday returns will be fraudulent, up slightly from 8.67 percent last year, according to the National Retail Federation’s second annual Return Fraud Survey. As a result, return fraud will cost retailers an estimated $3.7 billion this holiday season, up from $3.5 billion last year. Retailers will lose $10.8 billion to return fraud in all of 2007. Despite the prevalence of fraud, more than a third of retailers (35.0%) have stated they made their return policies more lenient during the holidays to accommodate holiday shoppers.

Larry Kollar said...

Good luck getting your Comcast issues resolved. What's the scoop? Cable going out?

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your kind words toward "Comcast phone monkeys." I'm sure we all appreciate the death wishes when all we do is put up with the same kind of bullshit from customers all day long that you take such joy in cynically posting.

You're being a bit of a hypocrite by acting as if those people who are stuck on the other end of the phone listening to you bitch and moan about something that is completely out of their control are doing it just to spite whereas you, O Mighty Wal-Hell Employee, are merely the victim of a poorly constructed corporate machine. Comcast is the same goddamn thing and if you think abusing the people on the phone is going to miraculously make a shitty product better, you've got another thing coming. If you think it's a piece of shit, don't use it.

AtYourCervix said...

We had outages of our Comcast services over the past week, but luckily, they did reinstate said services pretty quickly. And professionally too, I might add, when I called the last time about On Demand not working for several days.

Problem fixed. Thanks Vanessa! (the nice phone rep from comcast who helped with the On Demand problems)

Anonymous said...

"But that's not fair!" I'm used to hearing that phrase from a 6-year-old, but not from a Bebe babe.

Hope your technical issues get resolved soon.

Cyndi said...

Dude...Mr Comcast needs a nap

Anonymous said...

"If you think it's a piece of shit, don't use it."

The problem with Comcast (and verizon, cox, etc.) is that they have a local monopoly. If you want cable, you're stuck with them. There is no one else to go to except for the phone company for internet access, and in many cases the phone company sucks just as much. 2 options is not enough. Thus you have people who really want to go somewhere else calling the help lines to scream obscenities.

Matt said...

Cry it up, anonymous Comcast monkey.

Anonymous said...

I have to agree with BBC here...Comcast is the worst company I have ever dealt with. I am always nice to the phone reps, though, because it's not THEIR fault corporate won't spend money to properly train them or give them information they need to do their jobs.

But yeah, between December 29, 2006 and February 11, 2007, Comcast was at my house a total of 12 times because their DVR service wouldn't work. The box wasn't downloading the program guide, which would be fine if I could just check TV Guide, but apparently you can't choose a time slot and set things to record unless all the show info is there. All our guide said was "To Be Announced" for every time slot (like it does when you try to look more than a week or so ahead, only it wasn't giving any information for the current date/time).

I finally got rid of DVR and digital cable when I found out Comcast had been charging me for HD service when a) I don't have an HD TV and b) HD TV is not available in my rural area. Their billing office is in a more populated area, so they have the code to charge for HD, they just don't offer it to customers in my area.

Larry Kollar said...

I have to be careful when discussing Comcast, because my employer has Comcast as a large customer. But I can tell you that there are a thousand natural shocks that cable systems are heir to. Some drunk moron hits a utility pole (heck, you don't even need to be drunk, just overreact as a dog darts in front of you) and takes out a fiber node, there goes several hundred homes right there. A few r00ted Dozeboxes can wreak much havoc (which is why they are not allowed at FAR Manor). Rain can get into a pedestal (those big metal boxes on the ground).

The blessing & curse of digital data transmission is that everything seems to be working fine… until it stops working entirely. On our landline phone, the increasingly loud hum tells us we need to check the interface box, then call the phone company (but we can usually make a call even with a loud hum that blows the DSL away completely).

Erin Bradley said...

This is one of my favorite posts ever.

Tiffany said...

But Bebe is baby....in French. I'm sure you knew that, and apparently my boss is having Comcast issues right now, too.

Anonymous said...

Heh, that happened to me once at work too; with a mouse and mousepad set. The guy kept the mousepad and returned the mouse... except the plastic on the package was so big for the mouse that I couldn't understand how you couldn't see something was missing.

I was just cashiering on the next register, and I told the girl doing the return "That's supposed to come with a mousepad too" as she was just going to take it blindly. The customer said "Oh yeah I forgot that at home" and left.

Two hours later, guess what was in the "put back" bin >.> That's why these guys try it, they sometimes get away with it.

Kelley WC said...

"I hope every single one of their local, regional and corporate offices burn down and all their phone monkey slaves die with their idiotic, condescending and unhelpful tails tied to their chairs."

Dear God, this seriously made me cry laughing! We should be best friends!

Sorry to hear the blog is ending - I just came across it for the first time - but glad things will be better for you :-) Looking forward to 21 Minutes.