Did I Offend You?

October 17, 2007

I’ve had a really bad flu bug for the last three weeks, which I can’t manage to shake off, so I’ve struggled to just do the basics.

So, I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who has continued to visit - even when I wasn’t able to respond to all the comments. But, I’m catching up on them now. One of my pet hates is bloggers not responding to comments. Some of them do it religiously, and from talking to others, I know it gets up most visitors noses.

Most bloggers don’t deliberately offend their readers, just as most businesses would not purposefully offend their customers. But unfortunately, there are some business owners who are extremely shortsighted. And I’ve stopped using several businesses over the years. But often it wasn’t due to bad service or products, it was just down to general rudeness.

Recently, we were introduced to a bathroom supplier who promised to pass us work and we would do the same for him in return. We’ve passed him one customer last week, and another one today. He hasn’t passed us a single one yet, but that’s not the issue.

Stuart called in today, on behalf of the second customer. The bathroom supplier was quite offhand and rude. And he didn’t bother to thank him for referring either customer to him.

Well, later on, we spoke to the first customer we’d referred, only to be told that the supplier had actually tried to steal the job from under our noses and pass it to someone else.

Naturally, I was livid. And as a result, we recommended that the second customer use an alternative supplier, and we won’t be sending anyone else his way. His greed and general rudeness has lost him a lot of sales.

Has a business offended you so much that you wouldn’t use their services again? Did you tell them why, or did you just stop using them.

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Comments

6 Responses to “Did I Offend You?”

Opal Tribble on October 17th, 2007 11:29 am

Yes, It was a local cable company. When I canceled my service I told them why that they were being canceled. Their customer service was unprofessional and I frankly grew tired of dealing with them. for the most part they knew nothing about “tech support” although that was what Comcast was calling them.

I had to correct a few of them politely and tell them what they were telling me was incorrect. I have a tech background and did trainings within the corporate setting.
Ian on October 17th, 2007 11:57 am

There is one company I do work with who do a fantastic job. They serve the same clients as us, but I have only every had 1 referral in 7 years. He has had close to 100 in that time.

But he’s such a great bloke and the work he and his team do always reflects well on us too, even if I found a supplier that could offer reciprocal work, I would worry about the quality of their work and the risk of upsetting our customers with a poor job is too big to take.

Conversely, a rival company we once referred did an absolutely awful job, upset the client, didn’t work to the brief and refused to part-refund the client for work that wasn’t done.

I ended up writing out a cheque to the client to keep the relationship. That company will never work with our clients ever again.

Their MD was the rudest most commercially-blind person I had ever dealt with.

He even recorded the phone conversations I had had with some of his engineers in an attempt to trip me up over some minor briefing issue for the original specification of the job.

And he played me back what I’d said!

I couldn’t believe it. I was actually asking him to consider getting back the client relationship FOR HIM by offering as a gesture of goodwill to refund a minor element of the job.

He couldn;t get the point. He just wanted to win the battle over the briefing to prove we were wrong (which we possibly were!).

It was a bit like getting an electrician to re-wire your house and you agree the entire job and because you didn’t specify a main fuse as part of the work, they blame you for missing it off. Even though they are the experts and any reasonable person would expect them to just include it, not argue the toss over a paltry amount just to prove how clever they are at sticking to the signed brief.

Anyway, they lost a client and close to 100 referrals.
SEO Optimization on October 17th, 2007 11:21 pm

Rudeness is a word and behavior that should literally not exist in business other ways it will cost a lot.

It has happened to me in business, but more often with companies that offer services or simply with a store where i used to go shopping. The last time it happened was two days ago when I went with my GF to do shopping, and the girl that was SUPPOSED to serve my girl with the clothes she picks, she was like “Yeah those jeans are there” and since my GF is a shy type she was like oh ok i’ll go get em…whaaat? Are you being paid for that NO, she is, why should you serve your self.

Well, they lost a client even tho the owner offered us a discount and a gift (dunno what happened with the girl that works there, but might pass after few days and see how things are).
cathlawson on October 18th, 2007 1:51 am

Opal - that is really bad. I don’t understand these big companies. They spend a fortune on acquiring new customers , but they don’t seem to care about trying to keep the ones they already have.

Ian - he sounds like a right tosser. And he was breaking the law by recording your voice. I hate it when you refer a customer to someone else then they totally cock it up, because you just know that person is not going to trust what you say ever again.

Astrit - that was one lazy sales assistant. But at least the owner tried to put things right. I have noticed the lazy attitude a lot in retail and often it’s not down to poor training because you often get a really helpful assistant in a shop then a really lazy one next time you visit.
Barbara on October 19th, 2007 7:15 am

Hi Catherine,

This is great post.

Referrals…we get most of our work on referrals, however, we are very cautious as to who we refer. It seems like a lot of people don’t “walk their talk”, as we say.

If I have anyone ask me, I just tell them to look in the phone book under the appropriate category.

With regard to being treated badly by a company, when that happens, we just stop going there. And, then we tell others too.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when I call a business and the person who answers the telephone, acts like I am bothering them. I guess they were busy filing their nails, or something. I especially get peeved when it’s a government office, and I know I am paying part of their wages.
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