'We apologise for your experience'

I'm dealing with a terrible shipping company, Couriers Please if you must know, who have never successfully delivered anything but rage and disappointment. The details are not important, needless to say I've wasted more time arguing with the shipping company than the value of the items in the package. However what makes me build and rage and spit is the unwillingness f anyone to take ownership of the mistakes, the (presumably) overworked and underpaid delivery driver who doesn't care enough about his job to do anything than drop my package a a milk bar two suburbs over, the crappy systems etc.

Any way what made me boil over today was the email that contains 'We apologise for your experience'. I realise every lawyer reviewed customer service manual will never allow anyone to take ownership or admit liability but is anything more infuriating? a Little 'We fucked up' goes along way. It's very much not the people, its the systems running the people.

anyway bitch about customer service annoyances ITT

one time I was living in a suburb of Prague and a rumour started going round that there was one little shop that was importing rice krispies, which at the time you couldn't get anywhere in the country for some reason. one day I discovered this was true, a friend had been there and actually bought some, she kindly drew me a map with instructions on how to get the tram there, so I took an afternoon to go on a mission to find them with my (czech) then-girlfriend. we arrived at this pretty small, average-looking grocery shop on a suburban street, spent 5 minutes looking around, then had my gf ask the woman at the counter. she just said "we stopped selling them, there were too many people coming in here"

and this is why the Czechs have the best attitude to customer service anywhere in the world.

ha, Ed, when I worked in pre-press in the 1990s we used to roll our eyes when clients asked us to use Couriers Please because they were so unreliable and shitty.

I do purchasing at my job and alternately marvel and fume at the systematization of passivity that capitalism has engendered... to do customer service well is constant affirmation of helplessness. Amazon Logistics has it down to a pure science, they are perfectly attuned to your personal well-being while being utterly constrained from taking any action that might benefit you.

The general attitude underlying these sentiments saturates practically every minute of my workday, person after person doing the Pass-Agg Buck Pass. I wish I was able to manage my expectations and just accept that this is the way it is, but I'm constitutionally incapable. And so I die in tiny bite-sized portions of 'not it!'

I’m turning into a very crotchety old man.

This is a response to another recent complaint

‘Thank you for your feedback and sorry to hear that you are experiencing difficulty with our products and services;’

The difficulty I was experiencing was the dishwasher packed up and it took 4 weeks to get someone in their service department to pick up the phone and send a technician.