Totally unrelated picture of my daughter with a foster kitten at our friend's house
Customer support
I really have to lower my expectations in terms of receiving customer support. I've known it for a while, yet I always seem to fall for the trap where I expect things to go right and if not, things to be solved correctly. Why do I still think this is the case while 90% of the time, it's either completely the opposite or only half solved?
Stupid scripts annoy the heck out of me. I know it's a normal thing that these customer support agents work with scrips, I mean their bosses tell them to so it's not something I can hold them accountable for. To be fair, if things go smooth with scripts, I don't even mind.
Simple yet effective
For example, we have a delivery service for food and one supermarket also offers their customer support through the app. It's very simple, you open your order, click on help and then you have a menu where you can select "missing item" or "bad quality" etc, when you click it it asks for which products, you select those affected and then you either see a refund option which you can accept or transfer to an agent, OR you get an agent who will look into the case and eventually you will receive the refund as well. It can be quite simple as you can include images to show the state of the product for easy case building on their end.
This same supermarket that is included in their app, and has probably delivered faulty, expired or damaged products for about 10% of the time seems to be rotten to the core on customer support level when dealing with their own direct delivery services. I always suspected it because the company offering their deliveries through the app always asks me for the receipt of the groceries and they have not once included the receipt while I probably ordered twice a week on average for 9 months when we didn't have our own transportation.
Criminal behaviour
This is their way to get away with wrong pricing, underdelivering of orders with a certain weight and discounted products. They act like criminals to be honest. And yes, at first I also gave them the benefit of the doubt, clearly. You don't instantly assume they deliberately send you discounted stuff, but after so many grocery rounds with errors, I can't conclude otherwise. Yet there are some items I usually buy there as I love a certain baguette with seeds they sell and the steak we use in our salad. After my most recent experience I should actually boycott them all together.
Strawberries with Greek yoghurt, love it, not part of this round groceries but they look delicious, don't they?
Prepping a week menu
Being on a tighter budget this month meant I was looking for ways to unlock some more money while not spending more and there it was, an email from this supermarket where you receive a coupon for 20 euro for your first online order at their website if you spend 90 euros. Now let me be straight here, I never once ordered close to 50 euros in their supermarket because it's highly uninspiring and often lacks enough variety in fresh food at once. It's either this is available fresh and in bulk and one or two more things are at the same time, but then most other things are not available and vice versa.
Yet I also know that with a proper food planning for a week and actually prepping the food in badges so nothing goes to waste, it's possible, even if it comes from this supermarket. I just need to take into account that it won't all be fresh but partially frozen food, which is ok.
The delivery
Waiting two days before there's a free delivery slot is normal, it doesn't happen often that there's one the same day or even the next. I knew I couldn't start with my food prepping menu until it was delivered so I made sure to have a few extra things at home. Although within the agreed time slot, they came at the very last minute so I should have already prepped dinner. I checked all groceries and 6 items with issues, sigh, not again!
My boyfriend was like "told you so, you should not order more than a few things from them". Damn it, he was right! You will soon find out why this was not worth the 20 euros discount, at least not if you value your time and your sanity. The meat that was supposed to go into the pasta salad that evening (because short prep time, ideal for late deliveries) and the chicken filets were so close to expiration date that I should have prepped them all at one day or the next. That's not going to work for me when buying a week's worth of food.
Customer support
The delivery person can't be held accountable for what they pack as they bag the items in badges and then throw it in boxes for them to easy transport to the clients. A pack of sugar was opened, onions were rotten and dripping juices and the leek was fresh but close to half of the paid weight. Some error in weight is ok, but not half of it, come on.
So in the end I had 20 euros worth of shitty items which I'd never bought in-store. No worries, they will pick it up and exchange it for new ones, so I learned after spending an hour on chat with customer service. Another hour of my time wasted but hey, at least it will be resolved, right? It will take two more days miss, before there's a free slot. Seriously? You don't even fix this shit the next day. Well, ok, let's do it then, I mean otherwise I'm definitely not happy.
Beetroot shake, not my favourite but that's ok
No show!
I received an email from them Friday morning that they tried calling me (not true) and that I should get back to them to agree on a time. Which is odd because we booked a time-slot, you'd think it's settled then? I mean it's fine that a delivery person calls you to ask if you're home to not waste his or her time, but 6 hours before delivery? Of course I made sure to respond by chat and tell them listen someone is home between these hours, so even if they can't reach me, please come because I need the groceries for the weekend!
I go to the cinema with my daughter and come back at 7 to hear nobody showed up! I received another email the same one as in the morning and my blood starts to boil at this point because I already did this in the morning, so why on earth are you bothering me again? This level of inefficiency is something I've become allergic to over the past years.
Then a woman calls me and starts chattering a whole story in Spanish which I could understand for 25% tops because she was speaking too fast and I was too tired by that point to connect the dots to understand what she was telling me. I understood that because of the "3 kings parade" they could not come. I just passed that street with my daughter and it was still accessible so that was not even true!
Accepting the mess
I hate lies more than anything, it makes me furious but at this point I knew there's nothing I can do to make them exchange the goods today. Accept it, go to the supermarket on Saturday and make sure to add things for the weekend.
If only I'd known that everything was closed that day, I thought I knew all the different holidays in Spain by now but I missed the memo of Jan the 6th, lol. No groceries, so we went for that great walk I wrote about a few days ago. Either way, I didn't let them mess up my weekend.
Problem solved?
Today was the moment they'd finally exchange things, mind you, a week later! Guess what? They only delivered half of my chicken!! Someone just threw in the item without checking the weight because the weight was clearly from 2 packages. Oh boy, not again! I really didn't want to contact them again but I had to otherwise I might as well throw our money in the bin. This time I said don't bother to bring me new chicken, I want a refund as I'm done with this issue.
So even though it cost me another hour of my time, at least I will now get a refund, and they refund both packs of chicken. So there's that. I would have preferred a smooth delivery over free chicken though. These things stress me out, and it's simply because I expect too much. I will never order from them again though, this was an eye opener.
The lesson I learned (once again) today is that I really should not expect much customer service and lower my expectations big time. Whenever someone actually delivers great service, that's just a bonus, instead of what's considered normal.
Curious
End of my rant, now I'm curious if you experience such bad customer service in your country as well? Have you seen a HUGE decline in customer service over the past decade as well? I remember working as a customer service agent and I surely went above and beyond compared to how it's considered normal today.
Thanks for making it all the way through :) Good night!