Conner's Blog

The Uhaul saga has come to an end. Thanks to Lacy, who happens to occasionally handle their Twitter account, Uhaul has at least partially appeased me. They got the truck being checked in on the wrong day issue resolved, and even refunded my parents half the rental fee. Overall they came through in the end to try and make things right. They didn’t quite go to the extent I would have liked for the amount of frustration they caused, but I’m dropping it, after this post.

I thought I would do something other than complain about the service I received, and throw out some ideas and suggestions that would have led to a quicker and happier resolution to the complaints. I copied the time line from my previous post and noted what I think should have happened under each event.

• Monday, my mother calls and reserves a 17′ truck from Uhaul in Belgrade, MT.
• 1 or 2 days later they call and ask if we would accept a 26′ truck. My mom says yes because they were going to give it to us for the same price.

They should have known at this moment that they were going to be very busy and might not have a truck available. Why not allow incoming renters to pay a deposit to hold the truck? That way if they don’t show you at least get something out of it. Just let them cancel 24 hours prior to the time they are scheduled to pick it to get the deposit refunded. If they are later than that they lose their deposit. Again, make it optional, but then you can guarantee the rental.

• Friday, my mom stops by to verify that a truck is reserved, she was told no trucks were available. But, they stated they would let Bozeman know they had messed up and they would give us a deal.

My mother should not have had to stop by to find out we didn’t have a truck. The second there wasn’t a truck available we should have received a phone call letting us know. It’s terrible service to promise something and not deliver. It’s even worse when you don’t deliver without a warning. I still don’t know what my parents would have done had we not been able to move out the day we did. They had renters moving in the next day and had to be out of the house.

• We call Bozeman’s Uhaul. They offer us a 17′ truck at the normal daily price price and mileage at 1/2 price. With one caveat, we have to bring it back to Bozeman.

Don’t pretend you’re giving someone a deal when you aren’t. 1/2 of the mileage with twice the miles to drive does not equal a discount. It’s insulting to your customers to pretend it is.

• I heard this and said, “No!” that meant we were paying the same price for the truck but someone was spending 3 hours(Bozeman is 100 miles from Helena) driving a truck back.

Again, I shouldn’t need to call you to raise a stink to get a deal to remedy your mistake. We didn’t fail to reserve a truck, Uhaul failed to keep it’s promise.

• I tweeted about Uhaul, they responded saying they would be in touch.

This was a comedy of errors in social media. First they should have followed me the second they contacted me so I could direct message them if I wanted to. Second, they continually asked for my phone number to be emailed to them. They should have given me a choice of how I wanted to communicate, especially once their phones went down the afternoon I first got a response.

• I talked to the GM at the Uhaul in Bozeman and told him we would pay 3/4 of the price initially quoted plus they needed to pay for the gas we used. They came back with a quote that I was ok with.

Again, I shouldn’t need to negotiate an acceptable rate due to your mistake.

• Uhaul on Twitter asks me to send them an email with my phone number, I did this.

I realized a few days later that this email got stuck in my outbox. My mistake, but still their was no follow up after this until I tweeted again. They should have contacted me 12 hour later to check why I didn’t email them.

• We pick up the truck. It’s been 24 hours and I haven’t heard from Uhaul so I tweeted again, they responded asking me to email my phone number again. I got busy and forgot

Again, my mistake on thinking I had emailed them, still as mentioned above, they should have followed up with me.

• We use the truck, bring it back on Sunday and dropped it off.
• Tuesday morning my mom gets a text message saying the truck was overdue. I immediately found the email address which was sent on Twitter and sent my phone number, Tweeted about it, and my mother called the Uhaul store who said someone would be calling us in 2-3 hours.

Here is where things went from bad to terrible. They are claiming we still have a very expensive truck and instead of showing a sense of urgency they make us wait.

• 24 hours later we had received no phone calls. I hunted down and called Uhaul’s customer service line. Spoke to a nice girl named Lacy, she said she had let someone named Donna (I believe I was told this was the regional manager) know about our problem and I would receive a phone call in 2-3 hours. Apparently the store had checked in part of the truck but not everything on Monday.

Again, why was it my responsibility to follow up? I understand the local store was very busy, but when a customer thinks you lost a truck that they dropped off two days ago, it’s a pretty big deal. This had some large financial repercussions if they continued to argue we didn’t drop it off when we actually did.

• 5 hours later I had received no phone call from anyone at Uhaul.

And again, no follow up. I didn’t call Donna the next day, which I meant to do. It took me sending out another tweet, getting that message retweeted by four other people until Lacy called me. To be honest she seemed to be the only one working for Uhaul that I spoke to that cared one bit about the situation. And though she was very polite and took action immediately after our phone call, she did make excuses for the local store during most of our conversation. Being busy is not an excuse for the service we received throughout the entire life of this rental.

I was really hoping, once Uhaul responded to my first tweet, that this story would be about a company leveraging social media to provide great customer service. Instead it became a story of a company in dire need of a customer service overhaul regardless of the platform.

How do you get me upset? There aren’t many ways, but one is to provide me with awful customer service and then respond to my complaint in a childish manner. So here begins my tale of an attempt to get a camera repaired by Darn Toothy Sam.

Back in October I was out with a friend and dropped her point and shoot while taking a picture. Unfortunately, the lens was out and it ended up getting bent. After attempting to repair it ourselves and deliberating between buying a new camera or getting the broken one fixed we decided to get it repaired.  I checked a few different repair services and finally settled on Darn Toothy Sam due to it’s price and the fact that it is based in the Minneapolis metro area.

So I shipped the camera off on 11/18 to be repaired. According to their website they take 7-10 days once they receive the camera to repair it and send it back. Taking business days as the 7-10 days I expected to receive it sometime in the first week of December. Well that week came and not only did I not receive the camera, but I hadn’t heard anything at all about the camera yet.

On December 3rd I sent a status request using the company’s online form. I didn’t hear anything back for four days so on December 7th I sent an email to their listed email address for inquires.  Still no response so I called. One number did not provide a voice mail box and the other number was never answered though I was able to leave a voice mail. They also have an online chat function that for the first 2-3 days of perusing this never appeared active when I checked it. I emailed once again, and finally resorted to hunting for them on Twitter and Facebook to attempt to solicit some sort of response.

Finally on day five of attempting contact I checked the website and lo and behold the chat function was working. I logged on and chatted with someone named Eric who was sort of helpful. He told me the part for the repair had come damaged so they had to order another part. I requested an email when the part arrived and a response from management both of which were promised.

Two days later the camera shipped. It required a signature confirmation and it took me until Friday to pick up the camera. It works like new and I am satisfied with the quality of the repair. I received one written apology for the delay in the repair from the owner, but that wasn’t until I had to work my butt off to speak to someone. At no point did anyone offer to do anything for me other than mail the camera once it was repaired and let me know when it was shipped.

I should note that I paid for this using Paypal, I filed a dispute after the initial four day wait for a response as it was becoming my only recourse. This is the final message I received before I closed the complaint on Friday.

Thanks for the nice messages on Twitter. It’s interesting how we stole your camera and yet shipped it back the day after we got in the part and fixed it.

We attempted to deliver your item at 4:40 PM on December 12, 2009 in MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55405 and a notice was left. You may pick up the item at the Post Office indicated on the notice, go to www.usps.com/redelivery, or call 800-ASK-USPS to arrange for redelivery.

I responded to this final message

The problem was your lack of communication. You took longer than the promised time and did not give any indication of why this was. Once I attempted to contact you it took THREE days to get any sort of response from you despite multiple calls and emails. I appreciate the fact that it was delivered and repaired as promised but your overall lack of responsiveness leaves me unable to recommend your services to anyone. Additionally your response to this dispute has done nothing to help solve your glaring customer service problems.

The three days is actually incorrect, it actually took over 5 days and took me logging onto the website and finding the chat function working. I wrote the dispute response before I checked my email logs.

The whole reason I’m writing this is to either encourage Darn Toothy Sam to reach out to me and prove that they actually give a damn about customer service or to discourage anyone from using their service.  It’s quite disheartening to send someone money and a camera and not be certain if they even received it or are planning on repairing it.

Do you think I overreacted to their delayed response or was I right to be upset? Have you ever had a camera repaired, and if you had where did you get it repaired?

Inspired by comments to  my post on Customer Service Rules.

You walk into a retail store/restaurant/bar/grocery store, what do the sales people expect of you?  Here are a few tips to get the best service when your out spending your hard earned money.

• Remember the sales people are people -  Just because they work in sales doesn’t make them a lesser person.  Treat them with respect, they want to help you, make it easy for them.
• Educate yourself – Don’t walk into Radio Shack looking for that thing that connects your DVD player to your TV.  Sales people aren’t mind readers, if you don’t have at least a passing familiarity with what you want, expect them to sell you the wrong product.
• Don’t waste their time – If you’re having a bad day and need to talk to someone, get a haircut or go to a bar.  Don’t walk into a store and spend 15 minutes talking to the sales person without intending on to buy anything.
• No swearing, yelling, or name-calling – Even if you do these things regularly, if you can’t shut it off in the presence of those you don’t know, don’t expect respect.
• Get off your phone – If you are really that important, maybe you should pay more.
• Listen – You expect the sales person to, so you should to.  If they tell you they can’t do it, don’t have it, or it will be in next week, don’t ask them if the item will be in tomorrow.
• Stand aside – Especially if it’s busy, if you want to look a product over and can see the salesperson has other customers waiting, tell them it’s okay if they take care of the other customer.
• Be clear – Sales people are generally good at deciphering things, but don’t ask for the thingy from the doohickey, that’s just incomprehensible.
• Be appreciative – A simple thank you can make anyone’s day.

Getting great service isn’t always possible, sometimes no matter how forgiving you are your experience will be horrible.  Still, it’s a good idea to remember you are in a business transaction, if the opportunity cost to the sales person is too high because your a pain, they aren’t going to give you their full attention.

I’ve been having some horrendous customer services experiences as of late.  In frustration I’ve written down my 11 rules for sales.

1. Smile -  Nothing dampers my mood to buy faster than a sales person who looks like he’s about to go on a shooting spree.
2. Listen and pay attention – Do not assume you know what’s going on.  If you hear someone talking about cell phones and cameras and whether something works on one when it’s labeled for the other one, don’t assume it’s a memory card.  They could be talking about LCD screen protectors.
3. Don’t lie – This should be obvious, but I’ve had it happen.
4. Don’t make things up – If you don’t know the answer either find someone that does or look it up.  If you cannot figure it out let the customer know.  I’m more likely to come back if I know you’re willing to admit you don’t know.
5. Don’t just read the box – I’ve had several experiences where sales associates didn’t see Linux written on the box and just said it wouldn’t work.  I’ve asked them to do a quick Google search for me and have always been denied.  Google is your friend; just tell the customer that unless the manufacture supports it, you can’t provide any support.  Chances are, if they were willing to purchase it unsupported by the manufacture, they wouldn’t come to you anyway.
6. Know your co-workers – When I used to sell computer components, I knew which one of my fellow employees would know the answer to certain types of questions.  Everyone has their area of expertise, don’t hesitate to use them.
7. Never ignore the low cost items – Your customers usually want to spend as little as possible.  Show them the lower priced items, and then tell them what benefit they get by spending a little more.  No one enjoys looking at a $400 laptop and having the salesperson push a $1200 laptop.
8. Never answer the phone – Ok, maybe never is a bit much, but if you have customers in the store let the phone ring.  The customers in the store can buy something now, the person on the phone is most likely price shopping.
9. Learn to handle more than one customer – This may seem like bad service, but if done right you can do it.  Pay attention and know when to say “I’ll give you a minute to think about it” or similar.  Walk over to the unattended customer and let them know your there.  Just acknowledging the customers presence goes a long way toward making them happy.
10. Know your competitors – This does not mean you should go wander through their stores on a weekly basis, but you should know who would have something you may not have or be able to get.  Also knowing things like who has the best cable prices will earn you repeat business, even if it is not for cables.
11. Break the rules -  If your customers aren’t walking out the door happy change something up.  What worked yesterday may not work today.