The Customer is Rarely right

coalkirk wrote:. I had a clown call me yesterday and thought I should be responsible for his dishwasher that quit 8 months after he moved into his home. Give me a break.

What is your crystal ball out getting repaired . That drove me nuts when I had my garage.I'd put air in someones tire and there battery would die the next day,some how it was my fault .

Tread drift warning! Yep, the last person to touch it is responsible. I've done this a long time, 20 years next week infact, and I've heard it all. Having a digital camera and using it in my inspections has helped alot. It's hard for someone to dispute something if there is a nice color close up of it.

coalkirk wrote:Tread drift warning!

Not anymore, we have a new thread.

I had a guy order a full load of coal once up by the New York border which is abouta 1.5 hour drive. He could only fit half of it in his bin and he wanted me to take the rest back. Ummmm no don't work that way. First he got a discount for it for full load, secondly I would never take just 3 ton by itself to 4 miles from the breaker let alone New York and lastly there was no way for me to do it since I had no way to weight it....

I had another new customer order one ton which I ususly didn't take but I had room for it and it was on the way. I get there and its last drop off point for the day and no one home. Not a huge deal EXCEPT the coal is dripping wet and its 20 degrees out...

Yet another one calling me begging for coal because they didn't have any so I being the nice guy take it only to find out it has to go around the house in saturated yard... "we don't want it then" she says...

Numerous other things.... the issue with coal delivery is if you're running slpit loads you can't get the other deliveries off until you get the first on off. so if someone screws you the whole load is screwed up.. I'd usually end up offering customers I knew in the area a deal they couldn't resist just so I could get that load off....

What I truly hate about this is the fact that after a business has a few shady/dishonest customers they tend to treat all customers that way. I am a very honest customer. My main problem is I don't like being caught lying. I was raised to tell the truth because you never have to justify the truth or have to prove that you are wrong. It is 100's of times easier to keep telling the same truthful story over and over again therefore you don't have to remember what lie you told. The other thing is being polite and respectful to customer service...(this does not work at Home Depot's service desk ). Politeness and respectfullness has worked for me over and over again.

Bought a snow blower last year. I'm very anal so I had the guy give me a quick lesson on it. After he left the house I read the operators instruction and preventive maintenance on it. First snow hits, very excited about how well the blower worked up until the spring on the discharge shoot broke. No problem, the dealer was extremely helpful in getting me a replacement...(manufacture warranty covered the spring believe it or not). I removed what was left of the first spring, replaced it exactly like the first was installed...(there was no directions in the manual about this spring). Next snow hits...spring breaks again...immediately it is my fault, I must be doing/handling it wrong/no other blowers have this problem...2nd spring provided without a charge. Now I'm going thru the manual and still can't find anything about this spring so I find a decent enough picture on-line and son of a B...it shows that the spring was installed wrong. So a polite call to the dealer the next day to tell him what I found and an apology was returned.

I'll go along with the title of the thread "The customer is Rarely right" but please don't forget that there are actually some very honest customers in this world....and we don't need to be treated like the others.

My brother took his car to the garage for routine work, and also asked them to check because the cruise control kept disengaging. The tech spent an hour diagnosing it, and ordered some kind of a control module for $250. My brother took it back home (control module would be a few days coming) and started checking around the brake and clutch pedals. He found a mis-positioned switch on the clutch pedal which was tripping the cruise control just from vibration of the pedal. He fixed it, called the shop, told them nicely what he had found and that he wouldn't be needing the control module. Didn't get mad or ask for a refund or anything like that. Two days later he got a check in the mail for one hour's labor. That's part of the reason why he and I and others in my family do business there.