Bradley's Buzz

You Want Service? Go F**CK Yourself

It has come to my attention that the terribly dwindling art of customer service has officially died and been buried in an unmarked grave. This weekend I finally went to Best Buy to buy me that brand new car stereo I so desperately needed. I had gone a few days before and knew just the one I wanted and then the Leivas, being the Leivas that he is, handed me a coupon for FREE INSTALLATION if you bought a CD player over $99 and bought it M-F before 6 pm. Not a problem for most people but if you live in West Hollywood and work until 5 pm, you're really pushing it if you are trying to get into Hollywood by 6.. but I did it.

Of course there were a few snags once I got there. First, the salesman called the installation guys to see if they could put the stereo in for me. They told him to tell me to bring my car up for them to look at, before I even bought the stereo. So I descended the two stories of parking, pulling my Escort out of the bowels of LA, and brought her up to the level where the installation people lived, it was all very CHUDS really. Once I was able to maneuver into their strange ass blue cones, that would be ten times around the parking lot, I pulled in. They informed me if it was just a matter of pulling out and plugging in, the installation would be free. Can you guess whether or not it was free? That's right! $45 and another trip up to the store to buy the stereo.

The fairly nice salesman got me my stereo, took me to the cashier and she rang up my charges and then handed me the stereo and receipt. "Can't someone bring this up to the installation guys?" I asked so Midwest naive. "NO," was the snotty bitch's response.

So after I beat the bitch with my new stereo, I ran back down to the installation department and gave them the stereo. The nice boys there told me it would be an hour, so at 6:25 I ventured back up to Best Buy to check out every single item they sold. By 7:35 I still had no phone call and I knew the stock better than the dumb asses working there. So I ran back to the stereo department and asked the salesman to call up to the installation guys to see if my car was done. Well, what do you know? It was done, when exactly it had been done I'll never know because they never called me on the cell phone number they insisted they needed, and I insisted that they had.

But alas I do have a stereo (and a grudge) but it doesn't end there, instead I went to that devil bin of a store called Wal Mart on Saturday. I found some wonderful photo paper which is apparantly only sold at old Sam's retail rotunda of oppression, but there was only one packet of it, and that packet had been opened. So I, feeling ever so cheeky, went to a store employee. A man behind the counter in a tie looking at a cell phone. I said, "Hello," he stared at his phone, I said, "Hey!", and he looked at me. I told him my predicament regarding the paper and he pointed across the room to the gaggle of girls in the photo department, "That's photo paper right?" he said, "That's the photo department."

So after beating him with his cell phone and my ream of photo paper, I went to counter of the photo department where the three female employees were all leaning over and talking to some woman, who did not have an immediate Wal Mart problem as I did, but instead was entertaining them all with a story of her latest off time shenanigans.

After I bitch slapped the line of girls with the ream of paper, I put it back and declared that even when I was crabby at my many, many past customer service jobs, it seemed I still had time to provide, oh what the hell is that called? Oh yeah, frickin' customer service.

Well, I'm off to write a letter on paper I did not buy at Wal Mart....

posted by swivek @ 4:57 PM