Bad retail customer service

KaptnKaos said :

Transact is also on the KaosRadar as a bad service organisation, they have a monopoly on our utilities and have treated KaosKave accordingly, KaosKlan would love ACTGubbmint to introduce some competition to them, but too many mates there for that to happen.

Sorry, I’m a bit confused here. What utilities does Transact have a monopoly on? I’ve never been a Transact customer for anything except using their carpark when going for dinner.

corncob said :

The area is set out like office cubes and the seats were comfortable. Free tea and coffee just like the TAB!

Sadly, most TABS don’t even have free tea and coffee any more. Some rubbish about someone possibly burning themselves on the hot water urn…

First contact for Transact and the KaosKave was good, since that first encounter though it seems KaosKlan are blackmarked (have a friend who works there to confirm the blackmarking) for asking why electrical services have been cut off ramdomly (yes bills are auto deduct so nothing overdue), why calling about water being brown is a Kaos problem and not theirs, why accounts have been stopped for no reason other than Kaos “must” have called and cancelled when it was an error on their part. I have heard great things about Transact from people, but have heard many more bigger problems/bad service than those that Kaos has encountered, especially with new housing areas.

KaptnKaos said :

Unfortunately Canberra is rife with bad service and it is usually the “bigger” chain stores that are to blame – have run into a number of shocking salespeople at HN in the past and have walked out, oh and to the Guzzi sales guy at McGrath’s – why do you even bother showing up. Transact is also on the KaosRadar as a bad service organisation, they have a monopoly on our utilities and have treated KaosKave accordingly, KaosKlan would love ACTGubbmint to introduce some competition to them, but too many mates there for that to happen. Having said this, DSmith at Woden and Tuggers are good; Aldi anywhere have always been helpful.

This shockingly horrid service is now spilling over into the restaurant industry, but being small businesses, the problems here can be sorted quite promptly.

Tip for when confronted by the unhelpful, talk really really loudly repeating everything they say so that their manager and everyone else in the store hears – yes it’s juvenile but it I have found it gets results and attention. Email/phone the store’s head office and complain, cc emails to ACA and TT, name and shame on the riot, it’s time to change the service quality in Canberra.

RiotACT just got Transact installed in our new office and found the customer service great.

Unfortunately Canberra is rife with bad service and it is usually the “bigger” chain stores that are to blame – have run into a number of shocking salespeople at HN in the past and have walked out, oh and to the Guzzi sales guy at McGrath’s – why do you even bother showing up. Transact is also on the KaosRadar as a bad service organisation, they have a monopoly on our utilities and have treated KaosKave accordingly, KaosKlan would love ACTGubbmint to introduce some competition to them, but too many mates there for that to happen. Having said this, DSmith at Woden and Tuggers are good; Aldi anywhere have always been helpful.

This shockingly horrid service is now spilling over into the restaurant industry, but being small businesses, the problems here can be sorted quite promptly.

Tip for when confronted by the unhelpful, talk really really loudly repeating everything they say so that their manager and everyone else in the store hears – yes it’s juvenile but it I have found it gets results and attention. Email/phone the store’s head office and complain, cc emails to ACA and TT, name and shame on the riot, it’s time to change the service quality in Canberra.

farnarkler said :

Buy a photo printer from an overseas online shop, then write to Gerry Harvey explaining why he won’t be getting any of your money.

No, don’t do that, or he’ll renew his campaign to force people to put up with his staff’s incompetance and the uncompetive prices. We can’t have this people voting with their feet, and their wallets shennanigans.

Like too many people in Canberra, they thing that they’re owed a living rather than having to work for it. Doesn’t apply to everyone, but way too many.

I hate people like that. And these days I’ll complain. Usually I at least get a response, and sometimes the assurance that the issue will be/has been raised with the person I complained about.

The last time I complained was about the Capital Chemist at Lyneham. I dealt with 2 different staff there when I had to get a script filled. Neither of them used the words thankyou or please or even goodday or bye even once during our interaction. The first one basically just grunted at me. The second one openly rolled her eyes at me when I accidentally put my bank card away before I’d paid – because I got so distracted by her rudeness!

I never got a response to my complaint email, which must mean that management either doesn’t check the mailbox or that they don’t care if they’re staff does not use basic politeness. In any case, I am never going in there again. Fortunately there are 2 other chemists nearby.

trevar said :

You’re quite right, that’s extremely poor service, but there’s not much that can be done about it because the issue of bad customer service has more to do with the labour market than anything else. If someone has good people skills and is motivated to do a good job, they’re more likely to go and get a good job instead of working in a shop. If they’re willing to work in a shop, chances are they’re either not very bright, not very motivated, or not very polite. You drew the short straw and found someone who probably has all three of those characteristics.

That’s not very fair! I work in retail and I don’t consider myself to be any of these three things! I go to work and I work as hard as I can and I be as polite to my customers as I can as well. People don’t just work in shops because they aren’t good enough for anywhere else. I work in retail because I need to pay for textbooks for uni, food and rent and because I love talking to people and helping them out!

The area is set out like office cubes and the seats were comfortable. Free tea and coffee just like the TAB!

agreed

If I were you I’d be emailing a complaint..Making a complaint face-to-face or by phone is useless as they can ignore it and pretend they never heard from you..Emailing the head people always gets some action..

Also I prefer Dick Smith…I always hit them up for a discount and they always give me the full-extra warranty free of charge. (usually around $60 to $110 depending on the item purchased)

My wife was at HN fyshwick, she asked for a better price on a telly. The guy asked how she was paying, and she replied that it was on the interest free promotion.

The guy laughed in her face and said “Oh no, we never do discounts on that.” She said well in that case I’ll just go elsewhere. He said “Fine, suit yourself”.

She negotiated $990 for a Telly with a $1600 sticker price elsewhere — and they threw in a beat little hisense telly to boot. All on the never never after all.

I hate HN.

farnarkler said :

Buy a photo printer from an overseas online shop, then write to Gerry Harvey explaining why he won’t be getting any of your money.

+1, maybe that will keep him off our TVs for a litttle while!

farnarkler said :

Buy a photo printer from an overseas online shop, then write to Gerry Harvey explaining why he won’t be getting any of your money.

+1

trevar said :

If someone has good people skills and is motivated to do a good job, they’re more likely to go and get a good job instead of working in a shop. If they’re willing to work in a shop, chances are they’re either not very bright, not very motivated, or not very polite.

I’m none of the 3 and can’t get any job. Generalisations, generalisations everywhere.

trevar said :

You’re quite right, that’s extremely poor service, but there’s not much that can be done about it because the issue of bad customer service has more to do with the labour market than anything else. If someone has good people skills and is motivated to do a good job, they’re more likely to go and get a good job instead of working in a shop. If they’re willing to work in a shop, chances are they’re either not very bright, not very motivated, or not very polite. You drew the short straw and found someone who probably has all three of those characteristics.

That’s the thing, I didn’t know our economy was actually doing that well. It would make sense if businesses were booming, unemployment was dropping and businesses were finding it hard to employ good people. But during my shopping in the last few months I just didn’t get that feeling so I would’ve expected that retail staff would be trying very hard to hold on to their jobs.

Generally when I get poor service like this I would make a complaint to the management. But with HN I’ve found that the overall customer service levels are pretty low so I didn’t think to waste my time.

Buy a photo printer from an overseas online shop, then write to Gerry Harvey explaining why he won’t be getting any of your money.

You’re quite right, that’s extremely poor service, but there’s not much that can be done about it because the issue of bad customer service has more to do with the labour market than anything else. If someone has good people skills and is motivated to do a good job, they’re more likely to go and get a good job instead of working in a shop. If they’re willing to work in a shop, chances are they’re either not very bright, not very motivated, or not very polite. You drew the short straw and found someone who probably has all three of those characteristics.

Given the shortage of skilled workers in this town, I’m surprised that customer service overall is as good as it is! I’d love to hear some ideas about how that can be dealt with. So far, the best advice anyone’s given me is use the smallest specialty shops you can find, because that’s where you’re most likely to be served by the owner; but the grumpy old woman who runs the Australia Post outlet in Erindale makes me doubt the validity of that theory too!

Just for sport, go to the laptops section and tell them you’d like to buy a laptop with a serial port.

Its not a question of whether they will know what models are still available with a serial port, but more of whether they will actually know what a serial port is.

Comic_and_Gamer_Nerd said :

uhg. typical of canberra. people seem to put up with the bad service here rather than letting them know you are going elsewhere. if everyone did this, things would improve.

you think? sales people who treat you badly will never learn until they don’t have a job. Then it is too late. They probably blame you and similar clients for the reason why they were sacked.

I have mates who are experienced at HN Woden – computer section, but they seem to have had their hours cut shorter – young people cost less?

uhg. typical of canberra. people seem to put up with the bad service here rather than letting them know you are going elsewhere. if everyone did this, things would improve.

back in the early days of Harvey Norman, when I worked there, an assistant like this wouldn’t have been around for too long.

I was looking for a wireless access point to allow me to plug in a printer to my wifi network on thursday. I went to woden HN, spent a long time looking at the range of wireless devices and waiting patiently for a sales assistant to come and help me. No Joy.

I approached a young lady – probably the same one you had a run in with, who told me that if my printer doesn’t have wireless, the best option would be to buy another printer. It is far cheaper (she said), than buying a wireless device to plug into the printer, and would take less time in the long run to get it to work, considering that wifi is very technical and probably too hard to set up easily.

I have been in the ICT industry now for 18+ years, can remember when wifi first came onto the canberra market, and know how to setup a gateway, router and AP.

I voted with my feet, down to dick smith, where at least they treated me as having some shred of knowledge in technology.

Vote with your feet (as always). Dick Smith downstairs has a much better service, they actually calibrate their printer unlike Harvey and BigW in Woden. I routinely get 8×12’s printed for business purposes – the resolution and colour matching is far superior and the stock is better. Right row I think they are doing 10 cent 6×4 prints as well.

They have the same problem as Harvey though in that photos take ages to load on the system, I think the kiosks are very old and aren’t running at USB 2.0, so if you have high resolution photos (or 1000 like you) then it will take a while.

Oh, and the Fujifilm unit they use does not cost anything like $500k, I believe they operate on contract whereby the unit cost is offset by the printing you do, bit like a mobile contract on steroids. To break even they would need to print 5 million 6x4s, even before you take into account labour, consumables, power and harvey’s enormous rent overheads…

Wow, that’s just… wow.

#1 Attitude:
Basically I think she just wanted you to go away and stop nagging her about a loss-leader that you were going to ruin her afternoon with.

Surely there’s some online alternative that’s cheaper – not like there’s much else HN do that isn’t cheaper/better online.

#2 Virus:
No, it makes no difference what physical medium presents itself as a USB mass-storage device. I could give you a piece of paper with a virus printed on it. Bytes are bytes.

I thought about putting some kind of crib-sheet in here about what virus risks there are, but it’d be too wordy and still too short.

The real issue is Harvey Norman should not have a publicly accessible system that has known vulnerabilities. Sounds like they put-together a really slap-dash system.

I tried the Tuggeranong Officeworks ‘Print Shop’ a few weeks ago. And it was fantastic.

The area is set out like office cubes and the seats were comfortable. Free tea and coffee just like the TAB!

The staff were great. We didn’t have cause to flag one of them down, but they weren’t pesky. We had several gigs of Christmas photos that needed to be reviewed and printed. They didn’t hassle us about LoveBump’s tweens trying out every gas-lift chair in the store while we selected the printworthy.

Oh, and the photos came out well.