Seems like more and more lately, providing service is just not something most businesses do. This especially irks my wife as she works in the hotel industry and the ridiculous complaints and demands she sees regularly (or more accurately the concessions she has to make to please people and do her job) in comparison to what we see from the customer side of it shows a great gap in what she provides and her guests expect compared to how we tend to be treated at most places.

I could go one with examples and examples of thing just in the past year, but I’m going to go with the just one that broke the camel’s back and compelled me to write this. It serves as a perfect example of thew ‘not the end of the world” but ‘not insignificant’ shit we run into where the response when questioning it is pretty much little more than a grumbled, “Sorry.”

A few months back (the first day of school to be exact) some asshole old dude pulled out into my path and I tagged him and fuckered up the Camaro’s rear bumper a little. Mostly cosmetic, but the insurance guy was cool and hooked me up.

We figured we’d just go back to the Chevy dealer to have the work done. Due to the hail storms we saw over the summer, a lot of cars had a lot of body damge and they were super backed-up. We were ok with that and made an appointment for December 12.

Well, December 12th rolled around this past Monday and we were there bright and early dropping off the car. We asked how long the work would take and were told best case was it’d be done by end of day on Tuesday the 13th and to call and see where they were. Cool.

So we heard nothing all day Tuesday and figured we wouldn’t push, it probably took a little longer. On the 14th (Wednesday) right around noon my wife called to see what the staus was. She was put on hold. About five or six minutes later a second person picked up the phone and asked how he could help her. She explained everything again and was put on hold a second time. Roughly five more minutes pass and a thrid guy picks up the phone and asks what she was calling about. This guy didn’t bother putting her on hold he just laid the phone down. You could hear people talking in the background, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. A few minutes pass and the third guy gets back on and says the bumper just came in today. Best case scenario is that it’s finished by end of day Friday.

Wait! What the fuck. There’s so much wrong with this.

1. Why didn’t they order the bumper ahead of time?
2. Why didn’t they tell us they still had to order the bumper when we dropper the car off and have us drop it off when the bumper came?
3. Assuming neither of those, why didn’t they call us to let us know what was going on?

So my wife gives him a little shit and he pretty much mumbles, “Sorry” and pushes her off the phone.

At what point is something a fuck up and a case of shit happens and at what point has the business fucked up and the customer deserves to have it made right in some way? I don’t know where that line really sits, but it seems to be shifting more and more towards, “Too fucking bad, I fucked up. Get over it.” with every passing day.

What’s worse is that we’re finding if you try to take it higher, often those people are unreachable or just don’t care as muchas the lower-level people. And if you try to fight back via customer satisfaction surveys – well, those seem to be about as biased as anything. Surveys all seem to be worded in a way that doesn’t hit the issues. I suspect it’s stacking the deck in order to sell your “record-high customer service scores” to people.

I just see it happening too much to be coincidence. No one cares and nothing seems to matter much anymore. We live in a time where “Yup. I’m an asshole.” seems to be a valid apology.

I’m getting real close to making “knocking your teeth down your throat” the valid response to such apologies.