Can Retailers Win

ssmith6287

Just after been in a well known electronic store. Happened to pass by the computer repair place where I saw an irrate customer shouting at the customer service guy. The customer had a hard drive which im guessing was faulty. It looked like he was after a fight, to the credit of the cust service guy he didnt bite. The staff memeber kept asking the customer if hed like a refund or replacement. The guy was shouting saying he knows his rights bla bla bla. From what I could see the cust service guy was doing his job correct by the law. Im guessing it was the content of the hard drive that the customer was giving out about. But as far as i know the harddrive was sold empty so they are only responsible for the hardware. I heard Joe Duffy being mentioned. Im rambling now but the point im trying to make is how can a retailer win in these situations. An uneducated customer shouting in their store and the retailer is doing everything right.

ben.schlomo

Thats a lot of assumptions in one post.

ssmith6287

well the customer calling the hard drive a piece of sh1t was a giveaway about the faulty hard drive. the customer service offering the replacement or refund would have me believe he was acknowleding a faulty product. What else would you get so angry about with a faulty hard drive other then the content being lost? I think my assumptions were fair

Lux23

Do you mean the customer could have lost content as a result of a faulty product?

ssmith6287

well yeah, but that's not the retailers fault. They cant be responsible for content. they are purely responsible for the hardware

wingnut

Lux23 wrote: »

Do you mean the customer could have lost content as a result of a faulty product?

No way possible you could hold manufactures/retailers responsible for data loss. Hard drives are mechanical and fail at some point.. some last years, occasionlay one may last a couple of hours.

I can image there would be some people who would blame the stores, and loosing your family pictures etc would be upsetting but thats what backups are for!

wmpdd3

OP, welcome to retail. I used to get the same treatment about milk!

ben.schlomo

wmpdd3 wrote: »

OP, welcome to retail. I used to get the same treatment about milk!

In fairness if you sell milk as a storage device then you deserve to be shouted at!

Oryx

The greatest myth ever sold was that the customer is always right. The customer is rarely right, in fact theyre mostly wrong, and quite often they are a complete knob because they know they are wrong, but think shouting and bullying will get them their way anyhow. (And often does with chickensh1t managers).

Retail workers look calm, and act calm, but really, they want to stab bad customers in they eye.

foggy_lad

Oryx wrote: »

The greatest myth ever sold was that the customer is always right. The customer is rarely right, in fact theyre mostly wrong, and quite often they are a complete knob because they know they are wrong, but think shouting and bullying will get them their way anyhow. (And often does with chickensh1t managers).

Retail workers look calm, and act calm, but really, they want to stab bad customers in they eye.

BUT I WORK IN I.T.!(sells dodgey games consoles and pirated crap)

TheDoc

No excuse in 2015 to be oblivious to the issues related to data loss, and to not have a backup procedure in place, be it business or at home.

rubadub

ssmith6287 wrote: »

Im rambling now but the point im trying to make is how can a retailer win in these situations. An uneducated customer shouting in their store and the retailer is doing everything right.

If I was a retailer I would have a file full of laminated articles from various well known newspapers about the topic of consumer rights. There have been plenty.

It would be an idea for the government to issue one themselves so stores could have it as backup, as I have seen mistakes in consumer issue articles in papers.

BoB_BoT

rubadub wrote: »

If I was a retailer I would have a file full of laminated articles from various well known newspapers about the topic of consumer rights. There have been plenty.

It would be an idea for the government to issue one themselves so stores could have it as backup, as I have seen mistakes in consumer issue articles in papers.

I have some "Shoppers' Rights" cards I got from the NCA. Has a couple of bullet points about your rights. It includes the repair replace refund line on it, which comes in handy. Thankfully I've only ever had to point them out two two customers who were pig ignorant :P. We happily have them on display at the till for people to take. We still have a large amount of them from when we got them.