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They aim to serve

The New Neo Posted on by

Lately it seems that nearly every transaction any more complex than buying groceries at the local market must be performed at least twice, sometimes three and four times.

A recent mail-order product return, for example. I had bought some jeans that I loved, but when I washed them, following the instructions, they shrank so much that they were unwearable. I decided to get another pair and figured I wouldn’t put them in the dryer at all this time, and so I went back to the store. But they were out of them.

The jeans still existed online—success, or so I thought. I ordered them, but when they arrived they were of a different style. Now, anyone who knows anything about jeans knows that that just won’t do. So I phoned and said I’d send them back and wanted a refund not only for the jeans but for the ten dollar shipping fee I’d paid, because the mistake had been the store’s (which was, by the way, a major nationwide retail chain).

No problem, they said. Thank you so very much, they said. They also said they’d email me a label for the return postage, too.

Great, right? Except for the fact that the label never came. So I had to call back a few days later and wait through their tooth-grinding phone message again. Listening to it was like going on a involuntary treasure hunt, it was that difficult to find a way to access an actual agent rather than a recorded message.

But I prevailed, and after some discussion with a human being, this time the label arrived as an email attachment. I prepared to return the jeans and even managed to get them back in the original shipping bag, although they have to be mailed by way of UPS, which involves a bit of a drive.

But before I managed to accomplish that chore I got a letter (that’s a real letter, a snail mail letter) from the store saying that “your shipment was recently returned to us because it was undeliverable by our carrier.” Now, how had that been generated? Nothing had yet been shipped back by me, and therefore nothing could have been undeliverable and returned. The refund amount listed on the letter was merely the price of the jeans alone minus the ten dollar shipping fee. Another error, which meant I had to call again (third time now), wait through the purposely confusing (are we getting paranoid here?) phone message, not to mention the hold, and talk to another person.

That person told me to disregard the letter. We’ll see whether I’ve heard the last of the matter. My guess is that there may be at least one more call to the store about this in my future.

I wouldn’t be complaining if this type of thing hadn’t become standard operating procedure rather than the exception. Is it super-important in the large scheme of things? No. But it’s the sort of petty annoyance, day after day, that chips away at people’s sense of trust and equanimity, and fosters the idea that something is falling apart, or perhaps has fallen apart.

What is that “something”? I’d say it’s the expectation of competence—caring if the job you do is good or not, and taking responsibility for your actions, both on the personal and corporate level. The entire thing is accompanied by the most galling (and almost Orwellian, under the circumstances) canned read-from-a-manual assurances about how valuable your patronage is and how very very much you are appreciated as a customer, in addition to fulsome praise for every small thing you might do such as give your name and address when asked, which is received with a heartfelt “thank you so much, Miss (fill in the name)”—all of which have the net result of making the call seem even more interminable than it already is (and almost as interminable as this sentence).

In other words, every such transaction now resembles an interaction with a government agency in terms of competence. And every such transaction now resembles an interaction with Uriah Heep in terms of fawning obsequious insincere pronouncements designed to divert you from what’s actually happening and create a false sense of service rendered.

NOTE: It took a while, but I found a tiny clip of Heep in the 1935 Cukor film “David Copperfield,” a favorite of my youth. He’s the guy who’s clasping his hands together:

I love those old black-and-white films.

By the way, in case you’re wondering: no, they would not give me any money back for the price of the original purchase, the jeans that had shrunk in the wash even though I used cold water and moderate heat.]

Comments

They aim to serve — 29 Comments

  1. “I wouldn’t be complaining if this type of thing hadn’t become standard operating procedure rather than the exception.” neo

    “The society which scorns excellence in plumbing [or customer service] as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy [isms of the left] because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.” John William Gardner, President of the Carnegie Corporation and Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson

    “no, they would not give me any money back for the price of the original purchase, the jeans that had shrunk in the wash even though I used cold water and moderate heat.” neo

    But 20 years from now, as bankruptcy looms, upper management will scratch their heads in puzzlement…

  2. You’re not putting me in a good mood. I ordered some automobile tie rod ends from Amazon and received the wrong parts. I’ve spent the past 2 days trying to get a return authorization. The box has the right part number on it but the part inside is not what I ordered. I ordered premium parts and what I received is not what was shown in the picture. I can’t believe the vendor would try to pull a scam because it is obviously the wrong part in the box.

  3. The 1950s shall not return. The longer I live the more I long for the 1950s when all transactions were conducted on a personal, face to face basis. The only thing I do on line is purchase airfare. Every other form of commerce is local.

  4. You have realized your mistake – the expectation of competence. Companies don’t want to waste money on job training. Shove a manual at them and let them learn on the job. That and hiring the unqualified. Wait until you can’t be rescued from your burning house because it’s not fair to not hire people who can’t fulfill the physical requirements of the job.
    Related to laundering your jeans, I have had trouble lately with sheets shrinking. Recently I opened the dryer before it was quite done (on the low setting) and was surprised at how hot the clothes felt. Like maybe the temp setting had failed. Using extra low setting now, for the sheets.

  5. Neo: ” Is it super-important in the large scheme of things? No. But it’s the sort of petty annoyance, day after day, that chips away at people’s sense of trust and equanimity, and fosters the idea that something is falling apart, or perhaps has fallen apart.”

    I disagree. Trust basis is “super-important in the large scheme of things”. It’s core and foundationally important.

    Trust is like the ligaments and tendons that hold together our bones and muscles. Smaller than the main parts of our bodies in the larger scheme of things? Yes. But without them, our bodies fall apart.

  6. It seems to me that you’re paying more in time and frustration than the product is worth. I would simply write off the cost to experience, and never do business with them again. It’s worth the cost to learn that they’re not reliable. Also, I would shout from the rooftops the name of the store.

  7. Eric:

    We don’t disagree.

    The point I’m making (or I should say trying to make) is that the jeans and the money are not important. The underlying principle of trust IS.

  8. For many decades I have had very good service from L.L.Bean. They were mail order well before the internet.

  9. you are in violation of microagression code law XX.2343.Y and a drone will be along in a few days to pick you up for your scheduled time at the re-education center.

    What is that “something”? I’d say it’s the expectation of competence–caring if the job you do is good or not, and taking responsibility for your actions, both on the personal and corporate level.

    to look at competence, is to discriminate and oppress others… if one looks at competence, how can women take up the same jobs as men?

    The FDNY for the first time in its history will allow someone who failed its crucial physical fitness test to join the Bravest, The Post has learned.

    Rebecca Wax, 33, is set to graduate Tuesday from the Fire Academy without passing the Functional Skills Training test

    and of course watson lost his research center and was banished from history as he dared to imply that some are not as competent as others

    and now… look.. you just got me in trouble with the new mansplaining laws that would send me to re-education if i tried to explain to you what its about and so, implied your knowing wasnt competent enough

    and of course, if burger flippers are less competent, how can they get $15 an hour?

  10. on another note:

    Law student Mikhail Kosyrev used to have a negative view of Stalin but his attitude has drastically changed in recent years, he said, insisting the wartime tyrant meant well.
    “Over the past five years I’ve often watched documentary films about Stalin, about that time on television and learnt more about him,” the 29-year-old told AFP.
    “And now I don’t have any negative feelings towards him. He had good intentions.”

    [and yet, he does not get it that hitler had good intentions too… as good as stalin and mao and pelosi and obama… its just some had more power]

  11. you can have competency, or you can have affirmative action… you cant have both…

    this is what happened in the soviet union as their idea of affirmative action removed the competent, and replaced them with others that were picked for other reasons…

    affirmative action does the same…

    but says the reason is that these people are as competent but its their race or gender that is the reason they cant get the position

    the truth is that a more competent person in a competitive state, would win over lesser incompetents.

    but remember… these are protected classes and the law specifically says that you are allowed to hire a less competent person for affirmative action against a more competent white male or similar, and its ok.

    now, if you read they will argue that to use race or gender to decide would violate other laws, but the TRUTH is that they now choose what laws to enforce or to ignore, and that protected class laws negate that concept…

    the whole of the segment is the idea that when applying affirmative action, your not selecting a lesser qualified person… but then why have affirmative action?

    do you really think that when the EU mandated a certain percentage of women replace board members so as to equify the thing, that they did not select by gender? did not make a place in which others could not win? did not remove others because of race or gender? and could find so many women or others to fill the position that there was a selection?

    the academics who write for this contradict themselves constantly…

    example:

    preferential hiring (df.): a policy that “go[es] beyond affirmative action by seemingly changing the job standards in an effort to hire more women and people of color” (243 / 250); there are two types:

    · preferential hiring from among equally competent applicants: when there is more than one equally qualified best candidate for a job and when there is a woman or minority member among those best candidates, the woman or minority member is to be preferred.

    · preferential hiring from among applicants who are not equally competent: hiring a woman or minority member even though he or she is not the best qualified applicant for the job; critics refer to this form of preferential hiring as “reverse discrimination.”

    7 reasons why reverse racism doesn’t exist
    http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/reverse-racism-doesnt-exist/

    Here’s why.
    1) Racism = privilege + power
    2) Anger is a legitimate response to oppression.
    3) Attempts to rectify systemic injustices are not examples of reverse racism.
    4) Having spaces set aside for people of color is not racist.
    5) White people are not oppressed.
    6) Prejudice and racism are not the same thing.
    7) Hard truths aren’t racist–they’re just hard to hear.

    So in the case of the professor who says this isnt happening as it violates laws, cant be aligned with what the other academics and others are saying and what is being applied.

    so in truth… affirmative action mostly puts less qualified and competent people in position – and the argumetns that they give are waht makes the invalid valid and ok.

    [another thing to combine with it is that marketers are abysmall leftist morons mostly, and so what they tell the techs to do doesnt work… think dilbert… ]

    the assumption is the same as the soviets
    that anyone can do the job, and its racist to think that a qualified person is the real reason…when racism is the reason to them, you can just replace white with black…

  12. Neo, I’m always surprised when I receive top notch service and customer support, because most service interactions these days are as you described – death by a thousand paper cuts, designed to exhaust you into submission and acceptance of subpar and often unfair treatment.

    Now, I am willing to pay an extra premium for good service. For example, Zappos is consistent and helpful. Shoes cost a little more, but it’s worth it in terms of headaches saved if you have to return a pair. I also apply the same principle to medical care – I pay a yearly premium for a concierge medical group that guarantee online booking, same day appointments, and prompt attention. All this extra $ just to enjoy an interaction that isn’t inefficient and riddled with incompetence.

  13. Mr. Frank, you should try to return things to LLBean, Amazon (both .com and .ca)or JC Penney from Canada. They mean well, but the Canadian government has imposed duties and sales taxes, that make purchases awkward, should a return become necessary.

    The vendors have never tried to avoid their responsibilities in my case, but the procedure is awkward, nonetheless. The result is that I now try to make major purchases locally, though the price is much higher.

    Regardless, when I buy things locally, I can insist upon specific performance by the vendor, such as removal of items which are being replaced, or setup of the new product. The service makes the higher price worthwhile, in my case, though it took me many years to appreciate that.

  14. Mr. Frank, you should try to return things to LLBean, Amazon (both .com and .ca)or JC Penney from Canada. They mean well, but the Canadian government has imposed duties and sales taxes, that make purchases awkward, should a return or replacement become necessary.

    The vendors have never tried to avoid their responsibilities in my case, but the procedure is awkward, nonetheless. The result is that I now try to make major purchases locally, though the price is much higher.

    Regardless, when I buy things locally, I can insist upon specific performance by the vendor, such as removal of items which are being replaced, or setup of the new product. The service makes the higher price worthwhile, in my case, though it took me many years to appreciate that.

  15. Back when I still read Reader’s Digest, they would occasionally run a humor piece with the exchange of letters between an unsatisfied customer and the store. That was updated, sometime in the late fifties or early sixties, to be an exchange with the customer and a computer. The thing that made them funny, of course, was that so many people had experienced the same frustration (absent the witty persiflage) in their own lives.
    So, it doesn’t look like we are making much progress.

    As for why clerks are sometimes not the brightest penny in the cash drawer, Steve Allen attributed it to a phenomenon he labeled “dumbth” — a necessary consequence of the opening of educational opportunities to hitherto underserved socioeconomic groups, including women.
    In a nutshell, Jeeves was smarter than Bertie but he could not ever become anything “higher” than a butler. Now, he can be a rocket scientist or a CEO or a brain surgeon.
    Thus, the smart plumbers and auto mechanics gravitate to other jobs, and the ones who remain are those who reached their level of incompetence very early on.
    (There are, of course, many very intelligent plumbers, mechanics, and butlers who CHOSE those professions; would that there were more of them!)

    And not everyone who makes it out of college is bright — but there is still a kernel of truth to Allen’s hypothesis.

  16. What you’re dancing around is that the top management has numbed out its own central nervous system — its feed-back loop.

    We see this across Silicon Valley:

    No emails reach Yahoo — itself; nor phone numbers.

    Parallels, the software firm — just sells and sells. It has no contact point that is not a payment route — payment from you to them, that is. It provides absolutely no connections: email, phones…

    Like wise PayPal, recently divorced from eBay, has long had no links to get redress. You have to jump through a million hoops to find ANY mechanism to contact them about something going awry.

    And so it goes…

    Famously, a century ago, United States Steel had the IDENTICAL reputation. They shipped steel and never took complaints. With time, intermediaries arose. USS simply stopped dealing direct with retail customers. (Hard to believe, but true, there was a time that Andrew Carnegie’s steelworks would pick up a telegraph!)

    As you might imagine, USS steadily lost market share… for decades on end.

    That Yahoo is driving clients away PERMANENTLY does not yet bother the top kids.

    Ditto for the rest of Silicon Valley.

    MAJOR blow-ups and melt-downs lie directly ahead.

    For no Silicon Valley shop has a handle on customer revulsion.

    &&

    Something like that is under way in TV land. Their product totally stinks.

    Top management has no clue… and no mirrors.

  17. Just to offer an opposite experience, I recently received a little wireless speaker as a gift that, although it had excellent sound and looked great, didn’t quite work the way it was supposed to. I contacted the company’s customer support by email and — within a few HOURS — received a courteous reply offering to send me a new speaker, and asking me to return the defective one, using their free shipping label, so that they could examine it and figure out what went wrong. The new speaker arrived within a few days and works like a charm, and the old one is on its way back to the factory.

    I confess that I was completely astonished by this company’s superb customer service — I had been geared up for a struggle more like Neo’s with the jeans. Nevertheless, old-fashioned service still lives in a few redoubts — for instance, I agree with the commenter above who mentioned Zappo’s. And last year, now that I think of it, Lands End rushed me a replacement bathing suit by overnight mail just in time for my vacation, after they sent the one I had ordered to the wrong address. Those are the companies that get my return business. Neo’s blue jean store would be right off my list.

    The speaker company’s name is Anker, by the way, should you be looking for a reliable source of things like that.

  18. It is not a lack of competence. It is a Vast Village Idiot Conspiracy.

    This is not all that recent a development, either. They started treating us like village idiots years ago.

    Back in 1988 I flew from Chicago to Detroit to demo a computer system, taking with me a CRT monitor and a modem to link with the demo system, both of which I checked.

    After I got on the plane the pilot made an announcement that due to problems with the #2 Thrust Converter we had to exit the plane and make other arrangements.

    At the ticket desk they got me on a later flight and assured me that my checked computer gear would be transferred.

    When I got to Detroit there was no checked baggage waiting for me.

    After mounting a Hue and Cry throughout the United terminal somebody suggested I check with the desk that deals with left luggage. I did and there was my stuff.

    They told me it had come in on an earlier flight. The very airplane I had been sitting on and had to get off of because it couldn’t fly.

    On the return flight I was recounting the experience to a lady sitting next to me and before I had fairly got started she stopped me and asked, Number two thrust converter, right?

  19. KLSmith: “You have realized your mistake — the expectation of competence. Companies don’t want to waste money on job training.”
    Slight correction- at some earlier point in our history the public school system had a desire to actually train and educate its subjects. Now their primary purpose is to take care of the teachers and indoctrinate their subjects. If the schools were actually taking their responsibility seriously, the companies would not have to try to train semi-educated employees. And of course if you call and get a training center located in India you have exponentially increased your problems. 🙁

  20. This is what I refer to as, “The worsification of everything.” For many years in my life, and more than a century prior, most every iteration of a thing was better. Transactions got more efficient, products were engineered better, lighter, cheaper, lasted longer…

    Now I notice most everything devolving.

  21. The Pacific Educational Group (PEG) espouses a lot of controversial and stereotypical concepts regarding minority students in K-12 schools.

    For instance, the organization teaches that black kids are less likely to respond to fundamental ideas like working hard to achieve success, or being on time for school or work, because those ideas are supposedly foreign to African-American culture.

    and THIS is why you need affirmative action…
    and THIS s why it DOES do what the academics say it doesnt do, which is put people who cant do the work into the position for the purpose of race, gender, and economy

  22. There is a chain of electronics stores out west called Fry’s. If electricity runs thru it, they sell it. It used to be the go-to place for low-priced computer components. I bought a hard drive there, took it home, and installed it. It lasted about a week, so I took it back to exchange it for a replacement.

    At some point during the return process, I started counting. When I was done, I had talked with eight people in at least six different areas of the store.

    Never again.

  24. “I wouldn’t be complaining if this type of thing hadn’t become standard operating procedure rather than the exception. Is it super-important in the large scheme of things? No. But it’s the sort of petty annoyance, day after day, that chips away at people’s sense of trust and equanimity, and fosters the idea that something is falling apart, or perhaps has fallen apart.”

    Neo, you’ve nailed everything wrong with Western civ in that one paragraph. Really, with trust gone what else is there? Nothing.

    While it is minor in the grand scheme of things; I am currently working at a company that has within the last 6 months – “furloughed” me twice (without pay mind you) for a couple of weeks, screwed up my hours and therefore my pay too many times to count (even though they do eventually fix it).

    And, just last week, they mentioned that I might be furloughed again. I started “talking loudly” (I don’t think I was shouting) at the manager who shockingly asked “why the animosity? Why are you upset, we always fix your pay and we do want to back.” Clearly, she just doesn’t get it. or, is it me that doesn’t get it? This is the new normal? Screw things up and promise to make it better. But keep right on screwing things up.

    Should we blame Clinton and company for lowering our expectations? Go ahead and lie to us as long as you sweet talk to us later.

  25. Charles:

    It is the new normal.

    And once enough people don’t remember how it used to be, it will become even more widespread, and worse.

    I think it’s a combination of people not being held accountable for anything (self-esteem movement, special interest groups given preferential treatment, etc. etc.) and the extremely widespread use of drugs (even mild ones like grass) in adolescence affecting the development of the brain. I really do think the influence of the latter is underrated.

  26. Don’t you love how all those folks in Bombay are named things like “Ralph” and “Shirley”? (I always ask what their real name is, but they stick to their guns.)

    Y’all could use a laugh; this is from a 90-year-old friend of mine:

    SENIOR TRYING TO SET NEW PASSWORD

    [I can’t stop laughing, despite the crude language.]

    Bet this has never happened to you.

    WINDOWS: Please enter your new password.

    USER: cabbage

    WINDOWS: Sorry, the password must be more than 8 characters.

    USER: boiled cabbage

    WINDOWS: Sorry, the password must contain 1 numerical character.

    USER: 1 boiled cabbage

    WINDOWS: Sorry, the password cannot have blank spaces.

    USER: 50damnboiledcabbages

    WINDOWS: Sorry, the password must contain at least one upper case character

    USER: 50DAMNboiledcabbages

    WINDOWS: Sorry, the password cannot use more than one upper case character consecutively.

    USER: 50damnBoiledCabbagesShovedUpYourAssIfYouDon’tGiveMe AccessNow!

    WINDOWS: Sorry, the password cannot contain punctuation.

    USER: ReallyPissedOff50DamnBoiledCabbagesShovedUpYourAssIfYouDontGiveMeAccessNow

    WINDOWS: Sorry, that password is already in use!

    /sigh

    BTW, those of you who haven’t been herded into Obamacare yet? it’s Even More Kafkaesque than this stuff. Take all our retail woes and multiply them by a thousand, with No Other Vendor for recourse.

    Somethin’s gotta give.

  27. Bit of advice:
    For clothes, best customer service I’ve found is Banana Republic/Gap. Find your size, stick to them.

  28. I addressed this topic in my post Mindless Verbal Taylorism:

    http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/8034.html

    Excerpt:

    It’s interesting to note that the organizations that are most rigidly Taylorized on the talking level are often not effectively Taylorized at all on the doing level. The restaurant in which the words spoken by hostess and waitperson are most formulaic is also likely to be the restaurant which has never realized that people ordering hamburgers are also likely to want ketchup/mustard, thereby requiring hundreds of unnecessary trips across the floor for their servers. The call center that precisely scripts every word spoken by their agents has very often failed to do an intelligent job of thinking out the flow of problem resolution for orders, health care claims, or whatever useful work they are supposed to be doing. It sometimes feels as if we are becoming a society of people whose most important activity is reciting precanned verbal formulae to each other, in an almost ritualistic way.

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