h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Some of the 'We'll take it back, no questions asked' promises do actually seem to work. For example, some years ago, I bought a wind & waterproof jacket from the Land's End catalogue (I don't work for them, and I'm not particularly recommending them, just telling my experience). They have a 'Refund or replacement at any time, for any reason' guarantee, but their prices are a little higher than normal, but I thought I'd give them a try. The jacket was fine.

Anyhoo, I didn't buy anything more from them (no particular reason), until about three years later, when I got a letter from them saying "You haven't bought anything from us for a while, yada yada yada, is there any reason why not? Please ring this number XXX XXX XXXX to talk to someone." Just for the hell of it, I rang the number. A girl answered, looked up my details, and asked me if I was happy with my jacket. I said sure, but it was pretty well worn out now. She told me to send it back and they'd replace it. So I did and they sent me a new one and refunded the postage. I was slightly gobsmacked, and consequently bought some more clothes from them. When the jeans wore through at the knees after about a year, I thought I'd test the guarantee and sent them back saying they'd worn out. They replaced them by return, no quibbles.

That kind of replacement-for-life guarantee makes jeans and socks look like very good value(!), and I wondered how they could afford it, when there are so many people who'd jump at buying 'everlasting' clothes. Out of curiosity, I emailed the customer information line asking this very question, not expecting an answer, but the customer relations manager responded, and once it was established that I was a customer, not a journalist looking for a story, she happily explained to the effect that "Most of our customers understand that the clothes they buy have a limited life expectancy, but nevertheless, the guarantee is absolute". In other words, they rely on the majority's sense of fairplay, and (no doubt) that old favorite, customer inertia (laziness?), and they don't lose enough from those who 'take advantage' to make it uneconomical.

I guess the initially higher prices and the scepticism about such guarantees discourages the mass catalogue buyers, but I'm still surprised that the freeloaders haven't clambered aboard en-masse... I must admit that since my first 'test' of the guarantee, I haven't been able to bring myself to replace any more worn out kit for free... am I a sucker or a saint?

Incidentally, Land's End were actually banned from advertising their guarantee in Germany, when other clothes retailers and mail-order outlets complained it would damage their business!

I'm not surprised!

Whilst it might sound great that you can wear a piece of clothing , wear it out under any circumstances (even normal wear and tear), and then replace it for free, how sensible does that sound? How much does that fly in the face of rationality?

And how long will it be before people are walking into other clothes stores and giving the underpaid and overworked clerks and assistants grief because they're store doesn't offer the same kind of service? It's happening already and has been for ages.

I'm glad to hear that you got such a great deal from Lands End, but it makes me so damn that they'll do something like that because it's the very reason for the genesis of so many of the stories in this thread - customers who develop outrageously high expectations of what they're entitled to, expectations generated by over zealous and downright irrational levels of customer service offered by big companies just to make more money.

to order 'everlasting' trousers from LandsEnd....

I'm not sure it's something to get angry about... Different retailers have different levels of customer service. Often a high level of customer service comes with a premium price. Customers can choose to pay a bit (or a lot) more to get a better overall level of service, or to pay rock-bottom prices and have to find and open a box in a warehouse themselves... Of course, this is only a rule of thumb, as some low-cost outlets give good service, and some expensive outlets give poor service, and online retailers have lower overheads; but it seems somewhat contrary to be getting angry because a certain retailer gives better than average service!

The odd thing about the Land's End experience is that their customer expectations don't seem to have been raised to the degree that they take full advantage of what's offered...

Surely the question to ask is how do they can do it and remain profitable over the years, and why doesn't or why can't anyone else?

"Customers can choose to pay a bit (or a lot) more to get a better overall level of service, or to pay rock-bottom prices and have to find and open a box in a warehouse themselves"

As has been repeatedly pointed out in this thread, most customers are not rational people, and even people who are perfectly rational in every other aspect of their daily life seem to leave their common sense and rationality at home when they go shopping, hence the customers who come into the store where I work (a locally owned pile-it-high-and-sell-it-cheap kind of place) and demand to know why we don't give the same kind of service as the multi-million dollar national chains. Who demand to know why the chains can sell a new copy of a title cheaper than we sell it used. Who get all bent out of shape and take out their misplaced frustration on people they have no right and no place to take it out on.

I've seen customers reduce young kids (and a few not so young sales assistants) to tears with utterly ridiculous demands and threats. That's bang out of order mate. No-one should have to put up with that kind of treatment in their working environment. People who work in offices and factories and who get that kind of bullying from their superiors or even from other workmates can take them to court for harrassment. When was the last time you heard of a sales assistant taking a customer to court for being unreasonable?

Sales assistants are too damn scared of losing their job by transgressing either the customer service ethic or the company's customer service code (usually dreamt up by some twerp in an office who never has to deal with customers) to fight back, because a great many sales assistants are young kids on minimum wage who are inexperienced and easily intimidated.

"Surely the question to ask is how do they can do it and remain profitable over the years, and why doesn't or why can't anyone else?"
They can do it because very few others do. If everyone did that... well, they couldn't. Think about it.

I worked for a department store chain with what was essentially an everlasting guarantee on their merchandise. They're out of business now, but I don't believe it was the few who took unfair advantage of that guarantee that brought the place down in the end - I think it was actually their reluctance to prosecute shoplifters, and even in-house shoplifting rings that brought it down. They lost a tremendous amount of money to the shoplifting that went on because they were understaffed or staffed with those who were only too glad to help themselves to what they thought they "deserved" because the place only paid minimum wage.


The truth of the matter is that if a dress or pair of shoes came back because they were worn out after a number of years, fashion changes quickly enough that there was no exact replacement, so they'd have to refund the original purchase price, once that price had been determined. Considering the fact that most people wouldn't have kept their receipt all that time, the refund would have been the lowest sale price recorded for that item. Even if they still happened to have the receipt, with the rate of inflation that meant the store ended up losing *very* little by refunding the money for a worn out item that was a couple of years old.

Sounds suspiciously like Chapters....

They cut staff to the bone and blamed us for the fact that sales dropped off, and for the shoplifiting, when they flatly refused to take any precautions or action to prevent the shoplifting.

They even instituted a bag-search policy of staff at the end of the day.... but when faced with a shoplifter stealing several thousand $ worth of stuff, simply did nothing....

No wonder the went into receivership...

This was a Virginia based department store chain.

I think they did finally prosecute a couple of employees who were robbing the place blind, but I have no idea if the charges stuck or not - I'd moved out of the area by that time and never did hear about the outcome.

I entirely sympathise with staff who are harrassed and abused by irrational customers. However, it seems equally irrational to blame retailers who give unusually good service.

Where the customer is at fault, it is (if anyone) the customer who should be blamed (or educated, ignored, sued, or whatever), and the retail management who should be handling these incidents better.

I wholeheartedly agree with you on both of those points, but being an imperfect world, it's very rare for either of them to be satisfactorily dealt with.

Actually, it's more because it's a business and money based world. Retailers are loathe to do anything which may cut the number of customers spending money at their store. This is exacerbated by the fact that such a large proportion of retail business operates on razor thin profit margins because there's always someone else ready to take another penny off the price to attract more customers.

They're also loathe to pay a decent wage to their workers, which is why so many sales assistants are kids, or women contributing a second income to the household - in other words, people who don't mind too much working for minimum wage.

Nor do most retailers give their workers the training necessary to deal confidently with abusive and irrational customers. They'll pay tens of thousands to a consultancy for dreaming up a new "We'll take it back, no questions asked" option, and millions promoting it, but hardly a bean on training their workers to deal with the customers who get pissed off when they find out that the large print giveth and the small print taketh away.

Or that big printeth does not mean that the "unless you argue with the sales clerk", or "unless you happen to be the person happens to be you".

Some German shops used to have a policy of 'If you don't like it, return it within 2 weeks and you can have a refund, no questions asked'. After a time they added an exclusion - wedding dresses and accessories. They found that women were buying the dresses a few days before the wedding, wearing them for that one day and then returning them for a refund. The dresses would often come back stained with food/wine and be unsellable.

"Or that big printeth does not mean that the "unless you argue with the sales clerk", or "unless you happen to be the person happens to be you"."

That made no sense whatsoever....

I meant "unless you happen to be the customer"...

Apart from a stint as a teenager working for peanuts as a Saturday girl in a department store, I have no experience of retail work, and hadn't realised how badly paid it still was.

Quite honestly, as a thinking customer, I would rather go to a store which had well-trained and contented staff, who felt some loyalty to their employer, and adequate staff to prevent shoplifting. After all, I am in the long run having to pay for the stuff these people have nicked.

Actually I hardly go shopping, except for food. a. I don't have the money, b. I don't have the time. The rest of the working world outside retailing is doing 12 hour days and if they're anything like me, come home, spend 30 - 40 mins on Hootoo, feed the family if they're there and then drop into bed. No wonder we're jealous of those in the retail trade with their set working hours. (On the face of it.. there is still some to do when the place shuts, but it's not endless like an office job.)

If employers (of all kinds) would realise that people having more money and more time would spend more money on consumer goods and better quality necessary goods, they might get the economy back up and running again. The situation is particularly bad here in Germany, but the general position is the same everywhere - or heading that way, I reckon. It's like the 1930s all over again.

""Or that big printeth does not mean that the "unless you argue with the sales clerk", or "unless you happen to be the person happens to be you"."

That made no sense whatsoever....

I meant "unless you happen to be the customer"..."

On re-reading it, I think actually the fact that it makes no sense at all makes it quite adequate for the average "problem" customer... After all, relying on good sense and good judgement ain't what comes naturally to that ilk of "customer".

So, with the addition of "who", my quote stands...

"unless you happen to be the person who happens to be you"...

Please carry on...

Every year for WinterLude (Ottawa's mid-winter festival) http://www.canadascapital.gc.ca/winterlude/index_e.asp , MuchMusic hosts their annual "Electric Circus" concert at Parliament Hill.

Keep in mind that the concert ends at about 10 or 10:30 pm, this is February, in Ottawa, in Canada, and Chapters is just down the road from Parliament Hill, has public washrooms, comfy chairs, heat, and lots of lovely merchandise and is notoriously understaffed.... and was open until 11 pm, 7 days a week, in fact the ONLY place open after 8pm in the heart of downtown.... (They close earlier now).

Between 10:15 and 10:45, about 10,000 people come streaming off Parliament Hill and most of them are very cold, very drunk (or high), and in need of a bathroom....

As usual, our manager, worried about not being able to collect the approximately 3 cents in revenue that we are most assuredly going to miss if we close early, has decided that Chapters is some sort of "essential service", and despite our reminders about "what happened last year" has decided that we will remain open... with our usual compliment of staff (in other words, not enough for a regular evening, let alone for welcoming 10,000 free-loaders).

10,000 people stream into the store and immediately, all hell breaks loose. The toilets start over-flowing, what bog-paper wasn't used, was either stolen or used to block the sinks, people start throwing up in the Art Books section, and I, being alone in my department (Computer Books and Software, ironically and unfortunately and, yet, somehow propitiously, labelled by some boob at head office as "Chapter 11") am confronted by a group of 8-10 young thugs.

These guys are standing blocking the only entrance to the software section of our department and I am inside and have already called for a manager to come because I knew that these guys were up to no good. Of course, no manager came.

These guys were wearing the usual Hip-Hop gear, baggy pants, oversized hooded sweatshirts, and Nikes. However, they also had their t-shirts pulled up so I couldn't see their faces from the eyes down, and their hoods pulled forward so I couldn't see their eyes.

They sort of walk away a few times, huddle, then sort of do the "I'm looking at the merchandise, but not really looking at the merchandise" thing, walk away when I head towards them, huddle, look, whisper, and then, while two of them stand near the top of the escalator, the rest mosey over to where I am standing in the entrance.

One of them, obviously the one selected to "lure" me out from the software section, asks "....ummm... You got computer books?"

"Yes. Yes, I do." I say, not moving.... "Right over there" pointing towards the books outside the archway.

"....ummmm... okaaaayy... thanks...." and his "posse" wanders a few feet away, looks sort of blankly at the books and then huddles and whispers... (Geez... How stupid do they think I am???? AND, WHEN is the manager going to get there????).

The posse sidles back over while one of them goes to update the two by the escalator. "....Ummmm... Do you have any books of HTTP?" (Seriously... HTTP.... Now this guy must think I am REALLY stupid....).

"Sure, right over there...." I point to the section right beside them.... "In the internet section...".

"... ummm... ohhh..." (huddle again, mumble, whisper, update the lookouts...) "Ummm... could you show them to me?"

"No..." I say, "and," (conspiritorially) "if you don't F$%K OFF, I am going to dial 911..."

Huddle, mumble, whisper... and they all toddle off as quickly as their little legs chould shuffle in their Hip-Hop pants....

I told the manager as soon as he finally arrived 15 minutes later. I didn't mention my telling them to F#%k off, but there was very little chance that they were going to call in to complain.... "And don't ever expect me to work the night of the concert ever again...."

Actually, we never had to argue that point, as I quit that April...

The next morning, the staff compared notes.... a toilet was smashed and the washrooms remained closed the next day or so until repairs could be made, someone had been conducting a voodoo ceremony in the women's washroom involving chicken bones from KFC and some sort of powdery substance that stank, a whole pile of lot books were stolen, and several of the comfy chairs had to be thrown out (no one wanted to KNOW what was done to them), and it was nearly midnight before they finally cleared all the hooligans out of the store with the help of the local constabulary.

Yepppp, worth getting those 3 cents in revenue, wan't it?

I don't know whether this will bring a sense of hope and joy to your hearts, or simply make you jealous. I spent Sunday helping my Mum in her little tea-shop - the Gardens where it is were open for a special charity day and she couldn't get any other helpers. We were doing light lunches, cakes and cream teas. There was only my Mum and from 3 o'clock onwards a washer-up. We were very very busy and we've only got seven teapots, so service (ie me) was slow. Not one person complained. Not one person made a fuss. Not even when we ran out of scones and I had to tell people that they couldn't have a cream tea. They just cheerfully said they'd have a different cake, then, and it was their fault for not coming earlier (!!!!!!!!). Lots of people made sweet remarks on the fact I must be very busy and not to rush, they didn't mind waiting. And they all said flattering things about the cakes (my Mum is the best cake-maker in England. I have this on the authority of the Women's Institute, who sometimes visit the gardens, and they should know). AND quite a lot of them tipped (considering they had to wait, this is near miraculous kindness). I floated home on the late train on a cloud of goodwill to mankind that quite took my mind off my sore feet.

There is hope! A whole tea-shop full to bursting with decent sweet-tempered people! I have helped out before, and we have had people who run off without paying, people who don't like ginger but order carrot and ginger soup and then send it back (it said ginger on the menu! Dammit!) and Small Children From Hell running riot and breaking things. Yesterday was waitress bliss.

I think that story exemplifies "What the good Lord taketh, the good Lord giveth back".

I was listening to the CBC today, a special on Laobour Day. Anne Medina was interviewing people about work (topical, eh). One of the people she interviewed was a woman who has the following site. I haven't actually checked it out, but it sounds very amusing.

http://www.kissmyfreckledassbye.com/main.html

a bus ticket.