How to Spend Money Wisely » Shopping

What Happened to Customer Service?

What Happened to Customer Service?

I’m not much of a shopper but I’m forced to do more shopping during the Christmas season for obvious reasons. This Christmas I had both good and bad experiences when it comes to customer service and thought it would be fun to share these experiences with you.

Staples Failed Me

Having my own company for a couple of decades has made me a loyal customer of Staples for a long time. I always shop online and Staples is excellent about delivering my order to my door the next business day. This Christmas, I had to get some more toner for my color laser printer along with some other things so I put in my order and about an hour after my order was put through I got an email from Staples offering me 30 Air Miles on any purchase over $100 on Saturday only.

Since I actively collect Air Miles rewards, as soon as I go the email I emailed customer service to ask them to cancel my order so I could submit the order on Saturday. Alternatively, I suggested that they could make my life easier by giving me the 30 bonus Airmiles. The next day, I got my delivery so I gathered the order could not be cancelled. I also got an email from customer service that went like this:

Thank you for shopping with us. Hi Jim, thank you for your e-mail. I apologize Air Miles can only be applied at the time the order is placed we are unable to add them after the fact. Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can be of further assistance. Thank you for shopping with us. Rosalie, Staples Preferred Customer Care Representative e-mail: [email protected] phone : 1-888-515-8880 fax : 1-888-515-4440 url : http://www.staplespreferred.ca

In my opinion, this was a clear case where Staples failed at customer service. How hard would it be to give a long time customer of Staples 30 Airmiles?

Cabela’s and Wholesale: Who’s Better at Customer Service?

My sister and her family came up from the US for Christmas and my 13 year old nephew got a traditional bow and arrow from Santa. Unfortunately, there were some problems with the bow string so we headed out on boxing day to see if we could get a new bow string. We started at Cabela’s and unfortunately for us, we were faced with a demeaning employee who would not give us the time or day. He said “You bought a kids bow . . . what do you expect?” What was worse is he made my nephew feel pretty small that day. After realizing we were not going to get anywhere at Cabela’s, we went to Wholesale Sports in South Edmonton Common where we got completely different treatment. The person at the archery section not only was interested in helping but he put on the new string and had my nephew try out the new bow string a few times to make sure it was working to his satisfaction.

I guess the best part of this experience was watching my 13 year old nephew learn about the difference between good and bad customer service. The experience was so impactful that I have shared this story with many of my friends and family. Thanks to Wholesale sports for helping me to believe that good customer service still exists after my experience with Staples and Cabela’s.

Does anyone else have any recent customer service experiences to share?

Comments

  1. Miss J

    Staples failed me today as well Jim. I have been a loyal customer for almost 15 years but today took the biscuit. I placed an order on Thursday, Friday some of it came but 2 things didn’t even though I had been charged for them.
    The driver said they weren’t on his truck and left. Today the same driver came back and said well I was told to come but I don’t have those items on my truck. So I emailed my rep and asked several pertinent questions one of which being did they value my business? The response to all questions was that they were unable to provide answers to my questions and had passed it along to someone else and it would take a further 24 hours to figure out the problem.
    They have now given me a credit, but have left me disappointed about the fact that they could not offer any explanation as to what went wrong and where. But here I am with a credit and have been asked to re-order the product I wanted for the weekend. It’s now too late, I have gone elsewhere.

  2. Peter

    Had a terribleeeee experience with staples that I’m still dealing with… i will keep the story short…

    Pretty much found out they sold me an open box MacBook Pro 13” as a new product, as listed by them. The receipt shows it’s new and the employee said it’s brand new. I called Apple to verify a few months after purchase and they said it was purchased a year before me… they will not refund me my money; the best they said they would do is offer me back a gift card.

    How can I trust anything they sell now?
    I spent 1300$ on the laptop and another 200$ on a warranty… and there offering 1300$ on a gift card… I’ve never been put in this position, not sure what to do…

    Thanks for reading!

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked*