Discount Tire rant....

[The_Ghost]

I purchased all-weather tires for my car on Wednesday. They came in yesterday, but had no appts available to install them. I agreed to an appt at 3pm today. I left work an hour early to make it there by 3pm today. I arrive and I'm told that they had a transformer blow up out back and it took out their fuse panel and compressor controlers in a blaze of glory. Okay, fine. Can I have them installed at another location. "well, we really don't do that". Me: Look, we're going to have a low of 28 Sunday night and high of 40 on Monday, and I don't have any way to get a company car now for Monday morning. You didn't call me to let me know, even though you knew at 1130 this morning. Him: "Okay, we can give you tires to take to another Discount". Me: "Um, NOOOOO. I have white interior, I don't think so". Him: "Okay, let me make a call and see if I can get a runner. Sir, I can get a runner and the tires will be at this other location in an hour". Great. I leave and give them an hour and a half. I arrive at the other location and nobody knows what's going on. I'm told there is no such thing as a runner. Now I'm fuming. I call the other branch and of course I get a call center customer service agent. I ask to please just put me through to the branch. Nope. I wait 15 minutes while this person is trying to figure out what I'm talking about. Finally I lose it and tell her, "look...just put me through to the branch instead of you trying to play hero and figure this out". So she puts me through. After finally talking to the guy, I'm told that the guy that promised to come get the tires, went home for the day 5 minutes after he talked to him.

But wait, it gets better!! So the manager of the new store comes out and tells me that he will personally call me to say whether or not he's got my tires for 8am tomorrow morning. Guess what....I got no phone call. So, I might lose it again tomorrow morning I role my rear out of be at 630am on a Saturday only to find out my tires aren't there.....

Being in automotive almost my entire life and working with the public for a good portion of that, this is completely unacceptable. (and for the record, I won't use BelleTire because they tore the exhuast off of my Solstice the last time it was there and then tried to tell me that it was rusted....funny, it's stainless steel!!)

 

[rubberduck]

CS is degraded to a low level in almost every facet of consumer interaction. I’ve noticed a sharp uptick in businesses that won’t even take direct phone calls. They expect everything to be done by chat with someone in India or email.

It’s sad, but unless I know the business well from previous interactions, I expect something will go wrong and think ahead of a contingency plan. I travel for work by airlines and I’m always thinking of my backup plan if I can’t fly the day I’m scheduled. Got stranded in Minneapolis a few weeks ago for the night. If I had a meeting that I absolutely couldn’t miss I would arrive one day ahead of time.

In the end, me getting upset isn’t going to change anything except shortening my life expectancy due to self-induced stress. Keep calm and carry on.