Share awesome (not awesome) customer service experience for Friday entertainment

[Bipolarcy]

One of my pet peeves is when my groceries are bagged poorly.
I worked at Hy-Vee in high school and our shift managers drilled it into our heads that there's a right and wrong way to bag groceries. Frozen food goes together. Crushable food is bagged separately. Raw meat is always in a separate bag, and never ever is to be put in the same bag as ready to eat food, because of the contamination risk. There were others as well, but the point is that they were enforced. These were the rules and you did not break them!

I don't want to sound like a crotchety old man, but these baggers these days are ****ing terrible. I get that bagging groceries is not skilled labor, and it doesn't pay very well, but **** does it piss me off. I usually let it slide and don't say anything, but when I see some numbnuts about to put raw chicken in with my bananas, I will speak up and ask them, in what I feel is a courteous and calm tone, to kindly bag the meat separately.

My wife, @Angie , tells me that these interactions appear less courteous from her perspective, with me possessing all of the warmth and understanding of a snarling pitbull.

The way I see it, she should appreciate my "directness" in the matter, every time she eats a piece of fruit and doesn't end up spending hours in the bathroom with salmonella poisoning.

There's a kid at the grocery store I frequent who just started about 6 months ago. The checkout person also bags the groceries at this store. This kid's line was stacking up behind him and I had to wait about 10 minutes before he got to my groceries. When it was finally my turn, I saw why he was running behind. This kid was checking items and shoving them toward the bagging area without bagging them, so he wound up handling each piece twice.

The kid is obviously flustered because his line is stacking up and I say to him, you know, it would go a lot quicker if you'd just bag each item as you check it rather than having to handle each item twice.

Blank stare. He just continued doing what he was doing.

 

[Frog]

Honestly a bigger pet peeve for me than improper mixing and matching. Takes up more room, and more plastic bags to throw away.

Don't go to Aldi every week, but it's nice to be able to bag your own ****.

And save a lot of money.

 

[Bipolarcy]

Welcome to the south. Slow.....was at a restaurant in Nashville and i went to the front. All the workers were just standing there talking to each other. No one in line. Still took like a minute or 2 to assist me.

I noticed this when I first moved to the South. Everyone moves at a much, much slower pace. It was especially bad at a casino in Mississippi where you could have sworn the employees had sloth blood in their family tree. I saw one guy counting out chips behind the counter, something a seasoned employee at a casino should be able to do blindfolded and do it rapidly. He wasn't waiting on anybody, just counting chips. He was doing it so slowly, I thought he was asleep on his feet. Slow, deliberate moves, like he was slowly counting each chip silently in his head and had trouble remembering his numbers.

 

[throwittoblythe]

We had CenturyLink for our internet provider for years. It wasn’t blazing fast, but it was good enough for our purposes, and affordable.

Until a couple of years ago, when their service went to crap. Our connection would randomly go offline, I’d have to reboot the modem … and it just progressively got worse to where I was rebooting the modem 6 to 8 times or more every day.

They sent techs out, who just shrugged or said the problem must be in my wiring. They sent me upgraded modems, which actually worked worse than the older ones. Their tech support on the phone was next to worthless.

I finally dumped them late last year, after they ended up crediting me for almost two full months (because my service was that intermittent). Mediacom has been great, especially during this first discounted year. My plan was to play ImOn off against Mediacom to continue to get a good price next year, but unfortunately we are moving to a property that doesn’t have ImOn service. Guess I’ll threaten to cancel and see what Mediacom can offer …

We had no choice but Mediacom when we moved to our new place. CL has service but only up to 5 Mb/s. I work from home so I needed faster speeds.

We schedule hookup for the day we move in. Tech comes out and says “your cable line is hung up in the tree with the power line. It’s not safe for me to hook it up. Someone will call and set up a time to clear the line.

Two days go by, no call. I call them, they say they have to work internally to figure out what to do and they’ll call back. They don’t call back. It’s now been 2 weeks. So I call the power company to see if they’ll clear the line. They come out and say it’s not actually cable and power that’s tangled, it’s cable and fiber. I explain my predicament and ask for a favor to untangle the lines. They do, thank God.

After 4 weeks with no Internet, I finally get mediacom out there to hook it up. The tech is a different guy and very helpful. I explain to him everything that’s happened and he says:

“I hate to say this, but the first guy who came out could’ve easily hooked this up even with them tangled in the tree. He probably just didn’t want to get on the ladder and do it.”

 

[KidSilverhair]

I wonder if someone was spoofing your number and making robo calls with it.

Nope. Guarantee it was the noise on the line generating the tones to make calls. It was f*king crazy.

 

[besserheimerphat]

Not my story personally, but going through a McDonald's drive-thru and overheard the following exchange:

Manager, in the middle of disciplining an employee: "You have to be smarter than that."

Employee: "Dude I work at ******* McDonald's - how smart do you think I am?"

 

[Gunnerclone]

Not my story personally, but going through a McDonald's drive-thru and overheard the following exchange:

Manager, in the middle of disciplining an employee: "You have to be smarter than that."

Employee: "Dude I work at ******* McDonald's - how smart do you think I am?"

Tell that manager to fix the Ice Cream machine.

 

[WoodCy]

2 years ago we went to Legends Sports Bar in Marshalltown following a volleyball tournment. The whole team went. Most of the families sat in a side room but a few of us had to sit in the main dining room after all of the seats were full.

This waitress came over to get our order. First, she flat-out stunk. She reaked. Her aroma was a pungent mix of BO and dirty butthole. I don't know when she had last taken a shower but it had been too long.

We order our drinks and food. Above the server order entry station was a tv that had the Cyclones on. As I was watching the game the server asked "Can I help you?" I respond, "No, I was just looking at..." and before I could finish my sentence the portly gal says, "My butt?" "Um no, the basketball game." The other dads at the table almost laughed out loud.

The restaurant wasn't busy but our group seemed to have thrown them for a loop. The food trickled out of the kitchen. A plate here, a plate there. This would make sense if one ticket was completed while another ticket was not. That was not the case. Some family members, on the same ticket, were done eating while others had not gotten their food. It was a mess.

 

[besserheimerphat]

Being members at the Blank Park Zoo gets you a discount at other zoos. We went over to the Henry Doorley Zoo in Omaha and the guy at the ticket booth asked if we were members. Explained we were at local zoo and it he applied the discount. Some how this "discount" amounted to more than the normal price of admission posted on their giant entrance board. I questioned how this was possible and he assured it was correct. He continues to assure that its correct and eventually a manager comes over and also states its a correct charge. No one seems to understand that a "discount" isnt supposed to result in an upcharge. At this point i ask them to remove the "discount" and just charge me the normal rate because that would be saving me money. A Third person finally comes over and does something that results in the correct charges.

The kicker is the guy working the booth behind the glass stated that the return mic wasnt working so he couldnt hear me well. I was having to half yell at the guy which made things worse and got plenty of stares. Im sure i looked like a lunatic.

Lots of zoos and aquariums have reciprocity lists - we check almost every time we go on vacation. Between that and having a big family that used to homeschool, our memberships easily paid for themselves even before counting gift shop discounts.

 

[besserheimerphat]

3rd party travel agencies like Expedia or Travelocity all have bad customer service reputations, but last week it came to our attention that a trip we had planned would have to be changed in a significant way in order for us to attend my son's military graduation in November. I tried using Travelocity's Virtual Agent to change a flight date but it could not help with hotel and resort stays or our return flight. I got kicked out of the system and sent back to the beginning twice before asking for a live agent to assist. It took some time, but Milton, the agent we were connected with constantly through phone and chat, was able to move everything to an earlier date, same room, same resorts, same time flights and layovers--and even saved us $400 in the process over the trip I had originally planned.

I understand that this is not in keeping with the general theme of the thread.

Yeah well he's probably getting ready to burn the place down since they moved him to the basement (and Lumberg stole his god damned red Swingline).

 

[besserheimerphat]

A few years ago:
Me getting to the airport, going to the Frontier station to get ready for a trip to Portland.

Front Desk person: 'It appears you're not on the flight. You were removed back in May' (this was in July).

Me: 'Who removed me?'

Them: 'You should have gotten an email'.

Me: Sifts through my phone to find the email. 'I didn't get an email'.

Them (rudely): 'Well call and ask Expedia'.

Me: (half laughing) 'So I'm just not on the flight?'

Them: (Rudely) 'You're not going to Portland'.

I never found out why I was not on the flight or who was in charge of the decision.

A different desk person got me a different flight for an overnight just using my original ticket, which worked out because I just stayed with family in the stop over. However, I was bringing a bunch of camping equipment so checking my bags was like $75 and I had to pay that twice.

Haven't flown Frontier since.

When you book a flight/hotel/car/whatever through a third party, the actual service provider is not obligated to resolve your issues. You need to sort it out with Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, etc.

 

[madguy30]

When you book a flight/hotel/car/whatever through a third party, the actual service provider is not obligated to resolve your issues. You need to sort it out with Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, etc.

True and it makes sense and is fine.

But their approach was less than informative and behaviorally they were awful about it from a treatment of customer perspective.

If I buy a car from a dealer, I'm not going to expect to be chastised by a different mechanic if something goes wrong with the car that isn't from their doing.

 

[madguy30]

2 years ago we went to Legends Sports Bar in Marshalltown following a volleyball tournment. The whole team went. Most of the families sat in a side room but a few of us had to sit in the main dining room after all of the seats were full.

This waitress came over to get our order. First, she flat-out stunk. She reaked. Her aroma was a pungent mix of BO and dirty butthole. I don't know when she had last taken a shower but it had been too long.

We order our drinks and food. Above the server order entry station was a tv that had the Cyclones on. As I was watching the game the server asked "Can I help you?" I respond, "No, I was just looking at..." and before I could finish my sentence the portly gal says, "My butt?" "Um no, the basketball game." The other dads at the table almost laughed out loud.

The restaurant wasn't busy but our group seemed to have thrown them for a loop. The food trickled out of the kitchen. A plate here, a plate there. This would make sense if one ticket was completed while another ticket was not. That was not the case. Some family members, on the same ticket, were done eating while others had not gotten their food. It was a mess.

Not the same experience but I did eat there a few years ago and all I can say is that it was a place with food.

 

[besserheimerphat]

Our family has become "that family" for restaurants, and I hate it. I am low-carb but I'm capable of just not eating the bread or whatever when they don't offer a bunless option. But my son is vegan and my wife has an onion-and-garlic intolerance. It's technically not an allergy but eating anything that has any trace of onion or garlic makes her really sick for a couple days. It's actually pretty terrible and I feel really bad for her, but between the three of us it means we are a nightmare for kitchen and wait staffs.

Onion Allergy: Symptoms, Causes, Treatment

Having a true onion allergy is rare. A food sensitivity to onions is more common. Both conditions share certain symptoms, such as gastric distress. Learn more about onion allergies including symptoms, causes, diagnosis, and treatment. We'll also provide food substitutes for onions.

www.healthline.com

 

[besserheimerphat]

A couple of good stories:

We have Xfinity cable/internet, which is just rebranded Comcast and I was prepared for the worst after hearing some people's stories. But over 9 years of service they've always been great to work with - fast response times and solved the first time.

We've been consolidating debts and closing some accounts recently. Called one financing company, that we apparently had multiple accounts with, to close all but one if them. They warned me multiple times that closing an account could not be undone. The system was totally automated and sent a text at the end to confirm account closure - they only closed the one account I wanted to keep open. Called back immediately and they escalated to a manager right away who was able to reinstate that account in a couple minutes. Turns out my wife had opened the other accounts to make some specific purchases (exercise equipment and furniture) but never activated the cards so they didn't exist on their end.