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[LowSlowJoe]

About 4 months ago, my mom died...  her health had degraded for 4 years or more, so it wasn't a big shock.   My dad recently also died, after a about 8 months of battling with effects of hitting his head , after he fell last fall... His mental capacity deteriorated slowly during that time, his physical capacity also had deteriorated.  After my mom died,  he barely understood she was gone, and often when he woke up the next day, he didn't really know, and didn't really even fully understand he couldn't walk, so he'd just get out of bed and fall onto padding that was placed there for his protection.... well he passed away last week.   

Not looking for sympathy , or anything like that...  Life and death are all linked, it was time.

 So, then the day my dad died, my oldest sister asks me if I want to go on a trip to a place where we've gone fishing and relaxing as a family for like the past 60 years or so... part of the plan is to spread my parent's ashes... but part is also to vacation... set by the side of a remote lake...

   I haven't gone up there in about 7 years, my fishing gear neglected during that 7 years...   My old truck not really roadworthy enough to make the trip...  So, now I'm trying to get enough fishing gear read that when I make the 8 hour trip, I won't feel like I didn't have something with me that I wanted.   One of the items , is a depth finder...   My previous depth finder no longer working.   

 Wow, there's been so many changes in depth finders over the past 10 years or so since I last bought one.   I spent nearly a week researching, found the one that I felt fit my needs best, both on price and feature set.   I find out it's not in stock locally...  on 'limited stock' online.    I make a call to Cabela's about ordering one, how long it would take to get and such. I'm told, oh, well we could have it to you on Thursday, it'll go out 2 day Federal Express. So   order the depth finder...   Being kinda excited I keep watching the status of the order... it goes from 'limited supply' to 'back order' then to 'in stock', and back again to back order...     after 24 hours I'm getting frustrated, wondering if it's actually going to ship like they told me it would...

  I call Cabela's yesterday afternoon , I asked about my order.   I'm told it's on back order.  I say... I called Monday and was told it would be delivered on Thursday, now your telling me it's on back order?  I explained that I had seen it go from being limited supply, to back order,  to in stock, to back order again.    I also told them that I was very angry, in as calm of a manner as I could.  The customer service person was basically telling me that people all over the world can be ordering and such, and they can't really track the stock closely enough to insure that a order that is placed will not go on back order.   Well,    I don't like this answer, and actually find it hard to believe that a company the size of Cabela's in a modern era can't have a inventory system that actually sets product aside to fill orders that are placed, and leave those items set aside to fill the order, as opposed to just waiting to see if one is available by the time they get around to actually fully processing the order.   Customer service person eventually just tells me that's the way it is.  I say, well I've been buying stuff from Cabela's for at least 30 years, before the internet existed, and only mail order was done, the first time I had a problem of this sort, that I a am very angry and wondered if there is anything at all that can be done to help me get a depth finder in time to go on a trip in 10 days....  Well no, not really is what I get in reply.  SO, I asked if there as a supervisor or anyone I could speak to, and she nicely said yes, and did get her supervisor ( or senior customer service person ).

  Not expecting much, other then to further vent my frustrations, I start explaining my need to get a depth finder quickly, etc...    She says, well is there another one that you could use that we have in stock, I could maybe discount it.   I explained that I was already at the upper limit of my budget, and that the depth finder I ordered was the perfect match in terms of features and price... that the next higher up model was like probably $200 more.  I told her of some models that I knew of, she suggested one or two, I explained to her why those two she mentioned really wouldn't work well for me...   Long story shorter, she eventually says she will sell me the next larger one, and do it for like $30 more than I was going to pay for the one I originally ordered. I asked if she could go slightly lower, to get under a more or less hard $$ amount that I could spend, she basically knocks a few dollars ore off, and says that she can't go any lower because that is the actual cost of the product.  Well, it was a good deal, so I accepted her offer.  Now, I don't know if it really is the actual cost of the unit, but she knocked what effectively is 20% off the product ( no one discounts these at all from what I could see ).   Now, the reality is , that it cost me $30 more then I originally was going to spend, the ONLY feature I get that I find of any value is a 'keyed-assist' touch screen ( whatever that really gets me ) and it's like 0.5" bigger screen. ( it does have a couple other things, that I will never use )..  I would certainly never have spent the extra $150 to get those features... but for $30 and getting it by Friday, I'm happy.

    So, what's this all about?    Well, mostly it's to say that Cabela's actually restored my good feelings about the company and in general  the fact that sometimes customer service is real.   I honestly wasn't expecting them to do anything at all for me, I was just going to vent a bit more.  Wanted to pass on that Cabela's customer service impressed me...   Now , I still find it hard to believe they don't have a decent enough inventory system in place to insure that when you order something , they actually know weather or not they can actually get the order out to you when they say they can.

 ( of course my new item hasn't actually shipped yet, but I haven't seen it listed as 'back ordered' yet either. )

[Bentley]

Someone at a company that tried to meet the clients needs...your story pretty much sums up customer service.

[imahawki]

I find politely but firmly explaining to a company when they haven't met your expectations to be practically the only way to get resolution in situations like this.  If you don't squeak a little they have no motivation to help you at all and if you berate some CS rep who had nothing to do with your situation, they're not going to help you even if they theoretically could. 

Part of the problem today is lack of loyalty and/or long term relationships.  In my dad or grandfather's age a company might take a loss on a product to make the customer whole.  But today I don't blame companies for not wanting to go there as most customer relationships are fleeting.  I can tell you that outside of Amazon, Target, my bank, etc. the companies I do meaningful repeat business with are very few.

[LowSlowJoe]

My beef with lack of customer service in general goes back at least 20 years or so... 

To get to that point I have to go back to a memory that goes back even longer , when I was maybe 10 or 12.. My parent's bought me a train set for Christmas , me being a wonderful mechanical kid, I over oiled the train gears , or something... and the engine died. Now, I'm sure the train set was bought at K-Mart... but obviously K-Mart doesn't have service of that sort. So, my mother took me to a place called the Toy House... they had everything imaginable, prices weren't very cheap though, not the place my parent's would typically buy our toys from.  We took the train in, showed it to the guy behind the counter, he looked at it, reached on the shelf , grabbed a box containing a new train engine, and gave it to us.  No, I'm 100% sure my original wasn't bought there, and he never asked for a receipt or money... just gave us a new train engine.   Now after that point, bought a lot of train stuff from that store ( which went out of business about a year ago, they held on way way longer than I ever thought they could  in this day ).

  So, my first REALLY negative customer service...  some 20 years ago.   I go to a different hobby store, a place where I had probably was buying at least $1000 a year from at that point in time....  like two months earlier I had bought a air brush from them, the salesman told me it was impervious to all known solvents, sounded good to me , so I bought it, over this other metal air brush.   I didn't really uses the new airbrush much at first, then after a couple months I pulled it out of the box and started using it with some lacquer based paint, and cleaning it with lacquer thinner.   Well the darn thing like disintegrated, literally it just fell apart.   I took it back to the shop, and explained the problem and how they had told me it was impervious to all solvents.   The guy points to a sign behind the counter... 30 day return policy... I was like 60 days since I had bought it.  He would not do anything for me... he said I'd have to send it to the manufacture under warranty ( year warranty ).    I asked, well can you at least send it in, spare me the cost of shipping?  He says... no.      Well, that was the last time I stepped foot in that toy store.   They went out of business about 10 years ago... probably not from loosing my $1000 bucks a year, but maybe it all added up.   

   Anyway, that last hobby shop story, was really the start of the point when I no longer took it for granted that you could or should expect better service from a brick and mortar store than you could get off the internet.  I hate to say it, but I don't just buy local anymore... Unless someone has a good reputation for service, I don't give them much benefit of the doubt when I'm spending my hard earned money.   It's so hard to find a real local business these days anyway... and I for one refuse to assume that was because people just decided that internet was more convenient.... no for me , it was when I realized I often was able to get better service from the internet much of the time.

[Trooper]

The drive to Cabela's isn't that far for you LSJ,
I would've driven to Dundee and dealt with the Customer Service people on a 1-on-1 basis rather than on the phone or internet.  I would've done that because maybe you would've been treated like you were treated with the electric train and walked out with a very satisfactory depth finder at a decent price.

[LowSlowJoe]

The drive to Cabela's isn't that far for you LSJ,
I would've driven to Dundee and dealt with the Customer Service people on a 1-on-1 basis rather than on the phone or internet.  I would've done that because maybe you would've been treated like you were treated with the electric train and walked out with a very satisfactory depth finder at a decent price.

Yeah, well I drove down there twice in the past week or so.  Choose my depth finder after probably spending like 5 hours in the store with my hands on them, playing with the menus , trying to figure out which one I liked the best.  Then, I was told they had none in the store... at least none other than the display model, and they told me they no longer sell the display models , too many problems with them.  I did learn one thing... if you look for status of the store's inventory while online, they will say 'limited supply' , which means they have less than 5 of them... however they always include the display model.  So, if you look online and it says limited supply, it could mean they only have the display model, which they won't sell you.  But anyway,  they don't have them in stock...    That was when I started calling the online folks, when I was told ... "oh, you can have it shipped to you in two days, but it could take 10 or more to ship to the store "..

But actually, there was a guy in that department there in Dundee, that helped me out a lot in trying to understand all the features of various models.   One of the features I most wanted,  was something that Garmin calls Quickdraw contours... this allows you to create depth charts from actual sonar data you collect.  Other brands have similar feature, but some cost more, do less, or are more complicated to use. So, I did get good customer service there too.

[dk117]

a few thoughts on this one.   First it seems maybe only Walmart and Amazon have their supply chain really figured out including their online presence.  Maybe Cabela's isn't there yet.  Second, I work for a huge domestic company you all know that has average to poor reputation on customer service as does the entire industry.  Rather than go into details there, I will tell you that these large companies are extremely complex and the service rep, the service rep boss might have nothing they can do other than look at a screen and read you status or scripts.  I was pleased with your story that the boss was able to make a comparable swap for comparable price.  That type of leeway is exactly what low level leaders need.    Third is Victoria's Secret purchase for the wife (get your head out of the gutters guys, we're talking pajamas).  I had a very similar experience to LSJ over Christmas.  I order in November, says will be here December 6.  That comes and goes.  I get online, chat with a rep who says they are out of stock.  I throw a fit as politely as I can.  Online says they are out for the entire season.  This actually goes on three times, online chat with me making my case, them offering completely unrelated products to me for modest discounts.    The odd part is that the pajamas showed up in plenty of time for Christmas.  Victoria Secret did fine, they just have not mastered their supply chain yet nor their online presence.  Caused a lot of angst and frustration for me and the three customer service reps.  They even gave me my money back for failing to fulfill the order that was actually fulfilled.    I'll order pajamas from them again this November.

DK

[Chris__M]

Customer service has been very much on my mind lately.

I bought a new "smart" controller for my central heating. It needed professional installation (both legally, although many people would ignore the requirement, but also because it meant climbing into my loft, which I didn't want to do).

So I ordered a 3rd party installation service via Amazon (who sold me the device).

The first two appointments were no-shows, with lots of missed promises ("Yes, he's 2 hours late, but he will be with you shortly ...").

The third appointment, an engineer came, but after he left, I discovered he had wired the controller in reverse, so the CH was on when it should be off. It took them two days to get an engineer back to me to fix the problem.

That's the bad customer service. Now for the good stuff.

When I was trying to stop my central heating from coming on in the middle of a heatwave (turning off the boiler was an option, but would give me no hot water), I contacted the device manufacturer for reassurance that it was not me. Even though I had no direct contract with them, they called me, talked me through connecting the device online, then connected to it and ran a diagnostic, confirming that the device was connected wrong, and wasn't faulty in itself or badly configured by me. He then set up the controller so that it wouldn't ever go off (which meant my mis-wired boiler would never come on), and told me what to do to reset it when the problem was fixed. He then walked me through all the features of the controller. He was probably on the phone to me for 40 minutes, and was happy, patient, and very very helpful.

The ridiculous thing is that because the third party contractor cut their fee in eventual compensation, and then Amazon gave me "We're sorry" credits for the no-shows, I ended up paying £5 for the installation, rather than the £120 I should have paid. I still would have preferred to have paid the full price, with no drama, though.

[Mudflap]

Many many years ago my mom got mad at Sears customer service.

We lived in a two bedroom house and me and my brother shared a small bedroom. Just enough room to walk between the beds. For Christmas she ordered from Sears one of the fold up Foosball tables that would fit under your bed. I think it was around $150. Well come Christmas morning we were told to go out in garage and get the last present of the morning. My brother and I went out and found this big box. We opened it and it was the top of the line botcher block Foosball table. One that had to be put together with bolts and would not fold up. We were thrilled to get it but mom was not. Inside was a note that said Marry Christmas we were out of the other one so we sent this one. This one was over $300. So from that day on my brother and I had to make sure we got out of bed carefully not to get hit in head by the bars sticking out from table. I think I was about 8 or 9 when we got it and I sold it about 10yrs after I got married....


Mudflap