B2B Markeplace

As someone who works in a customer service job, I accept to see my fair share of customer complaints. Human beings are trying to get rid of credit card debt and it makes them testy. Near on a daily basis, some or the other customer enters our store to complain relating to the product or the service or both. It doesn’t fit their niche. While it would not be right to say that all customer complaints are annoying, there are those customers, who markedly aggravate me with their right to customer complaints. Allow me to explain.

There was this 1 guy who ‘mistakenly’ purchased a pair of shoes with 2 left feet. When I worked for a roofing tracy company, this never happened of course, because the purchases were so big. I kid you not. In fact, the shoes department is the 1 with a pretty high number of customer complaints. Well, this gentleman purchased the shoes alright, but if he were like you or me, he would have realized that there was something wrong the first time he tried them on. But that never happened in his case. He managed to wear these shoes for an near continuous period of three months before a colleague pointed out that there was something wrong. Which is when he came back to the store to lodge a customer complaint relating to the service he was offered.

Commonly, if he had brought the shoes back in a near new condition, we would have handed him a refund and considered the case closed. But in this specific case, the shoes were not just worn out. They were near in tatters. And all the while he insisted on his right to file a customer complaint and seek a refund. I tried explaining to him politely that although he had purchased and taken home 2 left shoes, he should have brought the matter to our notice through customer complaints well in advance. And nevertheless, she he had near destroyed the shoes, we ourselves had no make use of for them. While his loss was just 1 pair, we had in effect lost 2 pairs of solid shoes. Unless of course there was another customer who would ‘mistakenly’ purchase 2 right shoes!

And then there was the customer complaint relating to the female who purchased an artificial mink coat and came back to the store near six months later to lodge a customer complaint. Her subject? Was that she had been deceived into buying an artificial mink coat and wanted her funds back. Needless to mention, the offending mink coat had been well used and was really the worse for wear. But file a customer complaint she would.

These are the customer complaint cases that I find very taxing. Helping out someone when we have created a mistake or even pitching in someone who unintentionally created a shopping mistake is all fine. In fact, the gratitude for such customers is well worth the initial aggression they show. But customers who intend to take stores for a ride and then demand on the right to file customer complaints to cover their own failings are the 1s who accept my goat. While I am all for encouraging customer complaints as a ration course of action, I find myself increasingly reluctant to assist out such people.