Thursday, October 23, 2008

Customer "Service"

My wife and I recently purchased some baby furniture, and had to wait for Babies R Us to order the dresser. I was called on Monday and informed that the dresser was in. The woman who left the message stressed very clearly that the dresser was preassembled and I'd need a big vehicle to pick it up.

Yesterday I borrowed the shop's van and went to pick it up. I informed the woman at customer service that I was there to pick the dresser up. I waited while she paged the furniture department to get the dresser brought up. After a minute or so, the phone behind the counter rings. The customer service woman answers it, nods and asks me, "What kind of car do you have?"

"A van." I answer.

"What kind of van?", she asks, "We want to make sure it will fit before we bring it up."

"It'll fit."

"OK, but what kind of van? We just want to make sure it will fit before we bring it up."

"I swear it will fit. Can you just bring it up?"

"Is it a big van? The dresser is one piece and we don't want to have to take it back to the back."

"The van is fine, IT WILL FIT." I was getting a bit irritated by now. I mean the frakking thing is a dresser, not a fully assembled, king sized waterbed.

"Sorry sir, but we just want to make sure it will fit in your vehicle. We don't want to have to take it back to the back if it doesn't."

"I understand that, but I'm the one that bought it. I know what size it is. It. Will. Fit."

"Is it a cargo van?"

"Yes. I guarantee it will fit."

"OK." She replies, uncertainly.

They finally brought it up and sure enough, it fit with enough space for about 6 others. By this time I was so furious I almost left the damned thing. I get that some people may try to fit a dresser in the trunk of a sedan, but CHRIST. I think that what got me the most frustrated that it was a relatively small dresser. There's not a single van in the world this wouldn't have fit in. I wanted to go back and comment on the differences of male and female spacial relations.

Another thing that got my goat was that they brought it up on a dolly. So the inconvenience of "taking it back to the back" involves rolling the dresser about 100 yards. The horror! What happened to the service part of customer service? I know that the days of the customer always being right are long gone, but this was a bit ridiculous. Or did I over-react?

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