Great Job Opportunity - crap wood selector

[Dave Liquorice]

In an ideal world, but not in this one where profit is king. Some chains are worse than others for this. DSG Retail(*) are, IMHO, the worst offenders. I have bought two items shrink wrapped, sealed, "as new" from DSG Retail stores that have been faulty and obvious customer returns on opening.

Why should the manufacturer foot the bill. The goods as supplied by them where not faulty and complete. The store has to take the loss, how they deal with that is up to the store. As you say the incomplete product should not go back on the shelf "as new", about the only option they have is to put it in the "reduced" but it really needs to be labeled "incomplete" as well.

Oh, you do know what being assertive is rather than agressive. B-)

(*) DSG Retail = Dixons, The Link, PC World, Elkjop, UniEuro, Currys, Dixons Group Business Services, Partmaster Direct, Mastercare, pc service call, PC World Business, PC City & Electro world.

Bung "DSG Retail" into google and see the great long list of court cases, complaints consumer support groups...

[Dave Plowman]

'Yup' means I agreed with your view. So nope.

[Steve Firth]

I have. And I found the manager at our local Homebase to be arrogant and complacent and completely uninterested in my complaint. So I complained to head office and he was changed for another imbecile. I don't know if this is a "win" or not. It doesn't feel like one.

[Steve Firth]

Maybe he had his jaw wired shut after breakin git in a terrible accident? There i bet you feel really bad now.

And about Homebase management in general. My experience of them is that as well as charging prices which are about the most expensive of any DIY store their management are particularly surly and incompetent.

[N. Thornton]

Hi

The solution is simple, and the fact that it is not implemented shows only one thing, only one person to blame: the manager. It is the manager who is responsible for resolving problems like this, and it is the manager who is in the position to do so.

And the solution is... the MANAGER puts a bin somewhere with a notice on it saying something like 'We are keen to ensure high quality goods

100% of the time. So if you ever find an item that is not upto standard, if you place it in here and we will take it up with our suppliers /handlers etc. to ensure it doesnt happen again' Something like that anyway.

No staff checking expense, many less pissed off custmers, hence more trade and more profit.

Now I have part 2 on that as well... but thats a trade secret.

Regards, NT

[Frisket]

SWMBO is a manager with a retail outlet and a sweeter, more helpful person you couldn't hope to meet (yes, really, she's not looking over my shoulder) but some of the arrogant, ignorant a*******s she has to deal with on a daily basis under the guise of customers have to be seen to be believed. It's the one time I'm glad I'm in a trade (although some of our customers aren't much better) but I'd cheerfully hang one on some of these berks. My friends wife works for a supermarket that rhymes with Hasda and their customer policy is superb - take anything back, anytime and they'll give you a refund - including the woman who returned a birthday cake, half eaten, the day after the party saying it wasn't just what they wanted - AMAZING! I'd've told her to stick it up her arse Richard

[Andy Hall]

I think that a lot depends on the part of the retail sector and with the general ethos of the store. We had started with talking about the DIY sheds and as I think I mentioned, I have generally had good results at B&Q and poor results at the others in terms of customer service.

In a different part of the retail sector, I was recently looking for some shirts of a particular type, colour and style and found them on Marks and Spencer's web site. Wanting to go and look, I called their nearest store with convenient parking (in Camberley) and asked them to confirm that they had stock of the particular style and size. They said that they had plenty.

I went over there (about 10 miles each way) and they didn't. I explained the situation to the department manager - that I had made a special trip that had been a wild goose chase. She apologised and gave me £10 in cash for the fuel cost, plus a little apology card with her name written inside. Moreover she committed to call me when they had stock. She did, and asked me if I wanted to come in again or for her to arrange shipment from their web site organisation instead.

Supermarkets are a different ballgame anyway. Both of my kids have been through that (tread)mill in school holidays.

The return/refund situation is all factored into the business model.

First of all, they throw away large amounts of dated fresh produce each day anyway, although good stock rotation and management and price reductions on dating products minimises this.

Secondly, for food sales there is a whole bunch of legislation whereby they will almost automatically be quite heavily fined through action by Trading Standards - e.g. foreign bodies in products, food that has deteriorated etc. The refund and replace schemes such that the customer goes away happy and hopefully they avoid being prosecuted.

One could argue that this is too much in favour of the consumer, but the supermarkets know the rules of the game and factor it all in to the pricing.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[Snowman]

OK, so you accept that there is a difference, so give us an explanation of that difference and explain, FROM MY POSTS, why you you think I would use aggressiveness rather than assertiveness. Remember I did say not to confuse the two and non of my posts have used any kind of aggressive language.

Or do you think you should not be assertive in any situation where you are given shoody service, given the run around or sent on a wild goose chase by a DIY shed or any other sort of store for that matter?

Peter.

[Peter Ashby]

In my experience with the French if you try your best with their language to start with they then won't mind too much switching to English. It's starting in English that gets their backs up, understandably.

Peter

[Andy Hall]

Agreed, and if it's somewhere like Finland where people don't really expect anyone, with the possible exception of somebody from Estonia to speak their language then even a basic attempt is much appreciated.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[RichardS]

The Dutch, however, fall about laughing at one's fumbling attempts in dutch pronunication, IME....

-- Richard Sampson

email me at richard at olifant d-ot co do-t uk

[Andy Hall]

The trick is to wait to visit until you've had a bad cold...... ;-)

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[RichardS]

It's kind of ironic that "Ik spreek geen Nederlands" ("I can't speak Dutch") is quite difficult to pronounce!

-- Richard Sampson

email me at richard at olifant d-ot co do-t uk

[Dave Liquorice]

And there is nothing wrong with that. I nearly added smile and laugh about the communication difficults to my orginal post. B-)

The worst pronunciation problems I've had was with Chinese, not sure if it was in Mandarin or Cantonese, but that makes little difference, the problems revolve around the "tone" of words. There are several (many?) that have completely different and unrelated meanings dependant on the "tone" but to western ears they all sound the same. I tried everything I could with what I thought was the "tone" and just got *very* puzzled expressions back. I sometimes wonder what I was actually saying...

[Peter Ashby]

Agreed very much, the more obscure the language the more gratitude you get. I don't think I'll forget the huge smile on the waitress's face in Finland when I said 'thankyou very much' in Finnish to her (can't remember the spelling). The French though have a reputation of being sniffy about people not speaking French. A reputation probably from monoglot Brits who couldn't be bothered.

The only time I didn't make much of an effort was last year in Germany. That was because both kids speak reasonable German from school. One chap in the post office paid our eldest the complement of correcting her German in German. She was most chuffed that she had understood. I can however do the above list in German.

Peter

[Andy Hall]

Kiitos.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[John Armstrong]

I once had an odd experience in France. Ordered some drinks in French, barmaid told me how much it was in English, I thanked her in French. But then maybe she was English too....

[James Hart]

You should have seen my sister and a couple of her friends trying to order a meal in Austria despite them not knowing any German. They'd seen a plate of something come past that they liked the look of and had a go at trying to order it, and failed miserably. It descended into making animal noises and gestures to work out what was what on the menu, in the end they ordered 3 ham pizzas out of desperation. I came in afterward, used my very basic German to deal with the pleasantries and the gal serving asked me what I would like in English, just prooves if you make the effort so will they. All came to a dead stop nearly with the Hungarian waitress in the bar though, at least "beer" and the raised number of fingers seems to work in any language.

[Dave Liquorice]

Ah the British Reserver getting in the way again. They should have kept an eye open for which table it went to and then pointed or even got up and followed it in a large restraunt, the take the waiter to the relevant table. You do need lots of smiles, laughs, puzzled expressions it really is great fun. Even more fun when there is no common langauge at all other than basic, universal, signs and gestures.

Yep, but be careful with those fingers, especially for one and two. B-)

[Bob Eager]

The best one I saw was my wife (English, from North London) trying to buy a loaf of bread in the bread shop. I stood outside and watched.

a) She didn't know the local word for the particular kind of bread she wanted.

b) She couldn't understand the shop assistant

c) The shop assistant couldn't understand her

Lots of smiles, pointing, holding out handful of money while correct amount was taken....

Wheer was this? Gateshead!