I may have mentioned (*grins gleefully*) that I got Beloved a Wii for his birthday this year. I started thinking about looking for one way back in August, and even then was having trouble locating one. When I finally found one online at theSource.ca at the end of September, I jumped on the opportunity, ordered it online and had it delivered to my parents’ house.
At the beginning of November, I happened to be flipping through a Source/Circuit City flyer, and saw that they had (as had most retailers) dropped the price of the Wii console by $20. Great, I thought, and went to the store in the Rideau Centre to ask how I could get the $20 credited to my account. First, they said they couldn’t do it at all. Then they said the Wii I ordered was of a different caliber (??) and the price on those units had not dropped. Then a second person said regardless, you bought it online you have to talk to the online people.
Okay, fair enough. I bought it online, I will continue to deal with them that way. So I called the customer service number, and argued my way through an employee and two supervisors, all of whom declined to credit my account for the measly $20 difference. “Our price guarantee is only good for 30 days,” they insisted.
“But, it was a Christmas gift!” I countered.
“Well, you didn’t indicate that when you ordered it in September,” they said.
“I ordered it online,” I replied. “There was nowhere for me to indicate any such thing, or I would have.”
“Well, no,” they said. “You would have had to place your order by phone. And anyway, the 30 day price guarantee is firm. We’re sorry, but no.”
“But!” I sputtered. “I’ll just take the whole unit, still in it’s shipping packaging, and return it to one of your stores and then rebuy it. Why are you making me go through all this? It’s terrible customer service!”
“You can’t return it,” was the blunt reply. “The 30 day rule also applies to refunds, returns and exchanges.”
“But!” I sputtered again, by now appalled in addition to frustrated and annoyed. “What if there’s a problem with it?”
“We’re sorry, ma’am, but those are the rules.” was the helpful reply.
In contrast:
The same week, I found $30 worth of unused but long-since expired gift certificates from the Rideau Centre in an old purse. I had received them in May of 2006 and the expiry date on them was clearly marked as May of 2007.
Disappointed but hopeful, I brought my expired gift certificates to the customer service desk, thinking of all the times I’d heard that expired gift certificates were invalidated and not honoured and prepared to argue at least a little bit over their validity.
“Oh, that’s absolutely no problem,” said the friendly woman behind the counter. “Heck, we get them a lot older than this – sometimes ten years old or more. Hang on, let me convert those to a gift card for you so it won’t expire and you can use them any old time you please.” And I went happily on my way, fresh gift card clutched in my grateful fingers.
Now that’s customer service.
***
Just a quick question: on my laptop, my banner is not displaying. It’s fine on any other computers I’ve been on recently, including our desktop. Very weird. No photos I host on my own site are displaying on the laptop, whether I view through IE or Firefox. I was just wondering if any of you are having the same problem?
