Tag: Customer Service

You Can Leave But You Cannot Check Out

Hav­ing moved to Fort Wayne, we no longer need our pre­vi­ous isp. We kept it for awhile so we could get the email. Yes­ter­day I went by the Mar­i­on cable office to return the modem and set­tle up. I gave the woman the modem and told her to shut it off we have moved. She asked for our new address. I almost protest­ed that they had no need for the new address, but I was lazy and gave it to her.

She told me the amount I owed and I hand­ed over the bills while she fur­ther explained that the amount was only an esti­mate and that we would be sent a bill after the sys­tem fin­ished cal­cu­lat­ing the final bill.

???

I told her (with a smile on my face) that any sys­tem that could not come up with the final bill right here and now was an ef’ed up sys­tem (that’s how I said it).

And I walked away laughing.

The famed effi­cien­cy of the pri­vate sector.

Checks At Checkout

Yes, I still write checks.

I wrote a check for gro­ceries yes­ter­day. The clerk had me fill out the check com­plete­ly. Then she ran it though the reg­is­ter, had me sign a receipt the reg­is­ter print­er out, and gave me back my void­ed check with my receipt, the mon­ey being elec­tron­i­cal­ly removed from my account.

Why do I have to fill out the check?

A cou­ple of years ago, Wal­mart was not yet doing the elec­tron­ic check, but they were offer­ing the option of the reg­is­ter fill­ing out the check as opposed to the cus­tomer fill­ing out the check. The cus­tomer was asked to sign the check and then the clerk would run it though the reg­is­ter. Pre­sum­ably this saved time. On a cou­ple of occa­sions, I sug­gest­ed that I would sign the check after it was filled out. Both times the clerk respond­ed neg­a­tive­ly and repeat­ed that I need­ed to sign the check first.

Why do I want to sign a blank check and hand it over? Sure, they let the cus­tomer look at it after print­ing, and I can under­stand that it might save time, but if a cus­tomer objects to sign­ing it first, why would­n’t they accom­mo­date that?

Noth­ing to do with a check, I stopped at a gas sta­tion for gas the oth­er day. I was going to pay cash. I pushed the but­ton to choose “pay inside” and wait­ed for the machine to process. And wait­ed. Well, thir­ty sec­onds. Then the voice comes over the inter­com to say that if I am not pay­ing by card at the pump I have to prepay.

Why is there not a sign on the pump? I know it is just thir­ty sec­onds, and it is not like I don’t have the time to waste.…