If you've been reading this blog, you know the only thing I like more than a good customer service story is a bad one.
Most of the bad ones mentioned here happened to me, and now, for your reading pleasure, I submit the most recent incident, without the slightest embellishment:
Last Friday, I took my shirts for the first time to a dry cleaner next door to a breakfast place I stop at once or twice a week. It seemed convenient and the first time I took the shirts in the person behind the counter smiled and was friendly.
When I picked up the shirts yesterday, they were apparently clean and on hangers, but each one was wrinkled.
Not unlike the way they would look if the shirt fell onto your closet floor and you decided not to pick it up for a few days.
Or what would happen if you took a nap in it and couldn't get comfortable.
"Were these pressed?" I asked.
"Yes, they were," the person behind the counter answered flatly. "But we don't use the kinds of big machines that press out all the wrinkles. We use a different machine," she said, as if from a script. "It doesn't take out all the wrinkles. But you're only paying a dollar sixty-five."
I looked at her.
She looked back at me. She blinked a few times.
I looked around to see if anyone else may have heard this inane reasoning, but there was no one else there.
When I had walked in, I had placed four shirts I wanted cleaned onto the counter before checking the order I was picking up. I decided after learning that they don't consider completely pressing as part of the $1.65 service that I should take my shirts somewhere else.
She didn't try to stop me, or offer a better service for more money.
I wouldn't have taken her up on it.
And come to think of it, their interesting pricing strategy may have explained what I observed when I looked around the store for some consoling:
There was no one else there.Labels: bad customer service, dr david weiman, dry cleaning, laundry, marketing jewelry
