Customer Service 5 - Computer Says No

In my ever continuing series on customer, I have some more stories following from the last post.

Kin, Jo and I were at Rebel Sport in Southland Shopping Centre to pick up some ski gear for our trip this Friday. Since its nearing the end of the ski season, a lot of gear were on sale. Jo and Kin picked up some great pants and gloves from a bin that had 50% off marked on it.

As we went to pay, it was near closing time so everyone was queued up. The queues weren't that long, but with two other people in front of us, it took a good 15 minutes for our turn. Firstly, the girl behind the counter is working so slow that I thought she didn't have breakfast. To make matters worse, one staff was bouncing a footy the whole time rather than come over and give her a hand. Finally, she asked a guy who was chatting up a lady customer to give her a hand. He says ok and gets behind the counter and starts taking the tag. However, he keeps yapping to the lady customer so only managed to take off ONE whole tag. When it's the turn of the next customer before me, the customer bought a pair of shoes. It's in a square box about 40cm by 20cm. The girl scans the item. Then, here's the bit where I nearly fall down laughing. The guy turns to the girl and says "Which bag should I use". My goodness, do they teach people to think anymore at school. This guy wasn't exactly 6 years old, he looked to be 18-20. There are only THREE plastic bag sizes, all layed out on the counter. The fact that two of the bags were clearly too small would reduce the options. Even if there were two bags that fit, I think you can make a judgement call and pick one bag. What a total dimwit.

When we go to leave, Jo looks at her dockets and sees that they had incorrectly reduced the price. Instead of taking off 50%, they had only taken off 20%. She goes back in and asks one of the supervising staff, who goes with her to look at the bin. It did say 50% so he tells her to go back to the counter and to tell the checkout girl to fix it. Jo does that, only that the girl doesn't believe her and says "The computer has already deducted the amount." Jo says "Look at the price, $160 down to $128 is definitely not 50%." "but the computer has already deducted the amount" the girl insists. "Just do the maths yourself" Jo said.

Is this the level of maths and common sense they teach in schools nowadays. We are in a lot of trouble if it is. So then the girl still has to call the supervising staff to check that it is 50% off, despite the computer telling her it is. Finally, she starts to give Jo a refund. So although she had only saw Jo two minutes ago and charged her credit card, she now needed ID proof that the credit card is indeed Jo's and asks for a drivers license. What the? You charge the card two seconds ago, now the refund is going back into the card but you need ID? How does that work, what's there to gain for Jo. It's not like she is getting the money back in cash so if she had stolen the card, that would work to her advantage.

After the girl refunds the money, she then scans the prices again and did another deduction. Despite looking at the price tag THREE times for the jacket which cost $269, when the computer scanned it and it came up as $216, it didn't click for her. She then took 50% off that, down to $108. Hence Jo made a handy saving indeed.

I'm so dismayed that most kids can't even use some common sense. If the computer says one thing, it doesn't have to be write. It's how you use the computer that determines the outcome. If someone had incorrectly entered the wrong discount, the computer will only calculate the correct value for that incorrect discount. Use some common sense and use your brain.