Even More Irritations of Life

Why do supermarkets have to keep moving their stock around their stores? I don't mean by putting it in trolleys and shifting it manually. I mean, when you, as a customer, get used to finding a particular product in the same place week after week, and then, for no accountable reason, they move it to entirely different aisle and shelf. This usually happens before Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, Mothering Sunday or any of the other 'festivals' or 'holidays' throughout the year. They seem to think it's fine to fill the shelves with stuff you can perfectly well do without, such as mince pies, Christmas puddings, crackers and so on, and whatever product you wanted is suddenly shifted to a remote corner without any warning.

Poor customer service is another irritation I can't stand. When I was at Milton Keynes hospital on Sunday I went to the branch of Costa they have in the newly refurbished entrance foyer (if that's the right term. I know hotels and theatres have foyers, so what is the entrance of a hospital called? Is there a correct word? Probably is, but I'm not sure what it is.) The queue was coming out of the door and into the corridor. I had to wait about 20 minutes before I could get served. A woman in front was fiddling with her mobile phone. What is it with people? Why is everyone so hooked on their mobile phones? Constantly peering at the little screens, looking at Facebook or Twitter, checking to see if someone has contacted them. Anyway, by the time I got to the till I had almost lost the will to live. I had taken a panini out of the display cabinet at the beginning of the queue and handed it to the girl at the till and paid for that as well as two drinks, I think they were lattes, but I forget now. Anyway, the girl I handed the panini to was going to heat it for me. Is that a microwave that heats the food or is it some other sort of oven? Whatever it was it did it's job efficiently and quickly. I had said I wanted to take the food away with me, but the girl put it on a plate. She had such a look on her face, it was as if I'd made some rude suggestion to her. More likely she didn't want to be working there, and particularly not on a Sunday. It wasn't so much the scowl on her face, but the fact that she hadn't listened to me when I'd said I wanted to take away the food I had ordered. THAT was the irritating part of this whole incident. She had such a look on her face, as I say, no doubt because she had drawn the short straw of having to work her shift on a Sunday. And who can blame her? Just didn't make for a very pleasant customer experience as far as I was concerned. Anyway, she made some sort of effort to place the two pieces of panini she had cut so nicely on a chopping board into a cleverly-designed cardboard container and handed it to me and I was able to walk back to the ward and devour the food and share the lattes with Carol. Just another of life's little irritations, when things should be better but aren't. Staff in such places can make all the difference to your experience, particularly at the checkout in the supermarket. If they scowl at you, as that young lady did in Costa, it can be a rather negative experience and put you off shopping there at a later date.

Non-Existent Customer Service at Currys/PCWorld

As I've posted a few days ago, we had problems with our washing machine. Not really a surprise when you come to consider how our beloved landlord had it installed (see earlier post.) We went to Curry's in an attempt to purchase a new one. I do on-line surveys and had redeemed vouchers to the value of £140 which we wanted to put towards a new machine. We had visited Currys/PC World at their Elder Gate branch in Milton Keynes a week or so back because it was going to take at least a week for the vouchers to arrive and to have a look at what they had on offer. This company seems to have a very poor reputation as regards customer care/service. In some respects it's non-existant. They are probably the last company where you can go to find domestic appliances in a warehouse retail environment, although it's easy enough to buy products like this online. We had even gone to their website to have a look, particularly at availability as the current washing machine needs replacing immediately and we need to do some washing fairly rapidly. The old machine won't spin properly, so that, at the end of a wash cycle you are left with a load which is totally sopping wet. All very well when the weather is fine and sunny as it is at the moment, but how do you dry clothes this wet when it's cold and wet outside and have to resort to drying things on radiators and clothes dryers. Not very convenient if those clothes are wringing wet.

We drove over to the Currys/PCWorld branch at Elder Gate. It was around 9.15 a.m. There appeared to be very few customers in the store. We went directly to the washing machine area. We had decided when we visited a week or so ago that we'd have a Hoover model and had intended ordering it there and then, part-paying for it with the vouchers which came in the post yesterday. No staff came towards us as we browsed, as we looked at other washing machines in the display, but the price of the Hoover model suited our budget. The a male assistant appeared, but as soon as we said we were interested in buying a machine he disappeared, saying he'd get another assistant to help with our enquiries. Then a female assistant appeared. When we asked if we could buy this particular Hoover washing machine she said she would have to look at their computer to find out whether one was in stock. It soon turned out that they didn't have one in stock and they weren't expecting another delivery until Friday. It would be another two days after that before we could have it delivered and plumbed in as well as having the old washing machine removed. She made absolutely no effort to offer us an alternative model at a similar price nor did she attempt to find out stock levels. So we left somewhat annoyed. It was at this point that Carol decided we should complain. When we returned home we found Currys/PCWorld's phone number on their website and after around 10 minutes waiting in a queue I spoke to an agent and I told him the problem we had endured in their store in Milton Keynes. He was very apologetic when I explained how our enquiry had been handled. He said he would pass on our complaint to the manager of the store and we would get a response when the complaint had been dealt with. So I await some sort of feedback. We mentioned how we wanted to buy a washing machine and he said any machines which were in stock would be shown online. Carol found a suitable model which appeared to be in stock and available for delivery (something which should have been apparent to the in-store staff, but wasn't.) Carol began to order it through the website but when she came to enter the long line of digits on the vouchers she couldn't get it to work. So we decided to return to the Currys/PCWorld branch, somewhat reluctantly it has to be said since we had put in our complaint. On returning we went to the customer service desk where a lone lady was on duty. She didn't seem to know exactly how to make the transaction on her computer and needed to be shown by the manager of the store. Not exactly helping with our trust in the company. Eventually the transaction was made and we will have the new washing machine, a Kenwood, delivered and installed on Sunday. We were further annoyed when it turned out we would have to pay delivery when it had said it was free on the website but we managed to get it free. We also added extended warranty for the machine in case it breaks down. We have this for our fridge/freezer (the old one broke down and began defrosting when we were out visiting Twycross Zoo, you may recall if you read my earlier blog post.) But I'm afraid this whole incident has put us off buying anything further from this particular company.

When we walk out of the store and into the carpark, there is a lady about to get into her car, parked near us. She is carrying a pile of shoe boxes. It's evident that she's been to Brantano, the shoe store, which is a few units along from Currys/PCWorld. They have a sale on and she tells us she always buys her shoes in Brantanos sale. We discuss our recent trip to the Doc Marten factory shop in Wollaston where we have bought shoes for really low prices. She hasn't heard of this and says she will have to visit. We mention our recent experiences in Currys and she says she never shops there because of their non existent customer care. It seems the store has a really bad reputation. I don't personally blame the staff. I think the company needs to train their staff better. It seems none of them have any idea how to deal with customers. If you have a customer who is eager to buy a product you don't let them walk out of the store until they have bought something. That is surely a bad salesman or woman. If they can't get a sale then they're not doing their job properly. It seems the first assistant had no idea how to keep a customer. If they could't get the product we wanted she should have made some effort to find out and it was more than annoying that we did eventually manage to find what we wanted through their website.

Broadband, Landline telephone and television Switched to Sky

We have today transferred our broadband, television and landline telephone contract to Sky. It has been a relatively painless operation. I have to say, all things considered, they have been extremely efficient. It is barely two weeks since we rang to order our package. We have had the multi-channel package for around a week and the engineer who installed the dish and set up the Sky Plus box was very efficient and swift with the instillation, arriving more or less exactly as predicted, although we didn't get a phone call early in the morning to tell us what time he was expected to arrive. As I've mentioned in an earlier post here, we were with TalkTalk, which has probably the WORST customer service of any company I can think of, who really seem to have NO IDEA what they are doing, so I can't recommend this company. It seems to be a case of 'the left hand not knowing what the right is doing.'