Your Best/worst Customer Service Anecdote

[Hop]

Guys, at the supermarket today (not in Argentina), they announced over the PA system that any customer wishing to check out soon should get in line as they needed to reboot their system and this reboot would be taking an entire minute and a half.

as i was leaving, i heard some customers complaining that they were in line for 10 whole minutes. que horror!

 

[cbonanni]

Went with the wife to a new "fashion" restaurant in Palermo Soho. This was a few years back. Ordered fish , lenguado I believe. It arrived and was awful. Complete mush. There was no way I was going to eat it , and we advised the server. She was maybe 18 years old. Manager comes. Explained it was overcooked and tasteless. Was not going to pay for it.

After waiting 30 minutes , and deciding to leave , they brought a comment card , that I had to fill out before they would take the fish off the check.

Have seen plenty of bad service here in Buenos AIres. But not as bad as some of the horror stories others have posted in this thread.

 

[REMMIRAMALDI]

My favorite three:

1. The classic whiskeria scam, go down for a preview of a pole dance show, ordered a tequilla shot, two bimbos approached me to strike a converstion, waiter asked me what the girls are drinking, I said "I don't know" apparently that meat I was invinting them to drink anything they wanted. When I asked for my bill it wa 780.00 pesos. One tequilla, 4 glasses of Dom Peringnon. Ouraagged I walked out found a corrupt police officer, explained the scam, two bouncers were next to me. The police said I had to pay or face arrest. The folowed me to the ATM, CC not accepted (chargeback), thank god my limit was 300 left for the day. Had to signed a note to return with balance. Left Hotel next day, never paid balance.

The bouncers kept calling me Yankee, as a pejorative, the ignorance level is astonishing. I explained Yankees refers to who the the confederate state citizen where called during the Civil War; what Civil War they asked? I wanted to asked them if they could count their pelotas twice and get the same number, but I was pushing my luck!!

2. Taxi Driver when I arrived at Airport to hotel. Stole the bag with 2 Nikons, A Sonny HD Video, 1 Laptop; I arrived at 2:00am, classic sucker scenario.
Purchased several clothing items, leather jacket, etc. hailed taxi, asked him wait a minute while I went into a Greek Bakery for Baklava, in less than a minute a turned arround he was gone with my purchases, gave police all details, never heard from them again.

3. A wire transfer on a bank. A clerk quickly gave me two thousands pesos in 100 denominations 3 were fake, no recouse.

The next year I went back to test If I leared anything, and I did get scewed once. A fake 20 from one cab driver, that in turn served to pay another car ride!!! Yeah

 

[Lamb]

When i just arrived, didnt have anything to do yet during the day and my ex boyfriend always being out to work, i used to go to a kiosko and hang around there for hours. Watching tv, chatting with all the costumers, and always having a coffee even though they didnt actually sell coffee normally. I have a 3 pages long list of cursewords that they taught me in there, and the stories have given me more cultural classes than i couldve imagined.

I will also never forget the taxidriver that took me home at 3 am when i was having a fight with the same ex boyfriend and started walking home by myself, angry and half crying. I had almost no money on me, and i even woke him up banging on the window to ask how far he'd take me for the bit that i had. He told me to just get in, took me to my house and told me to keep the money and have a good night sleep

 

[Lamb]

Oh and i forgot the time that i had to change the date of my flight with Iberia, during Easter. Of course the office in town was closed, and i really had to change it that day, running out of money and needing to go home fast. I called but no answer, more trouble, couldnt do it, no answer etc. So i decide to get on the bus to the airport (at that point i couldnt even afford a cab, so bus it was), do the 3 hour trip to the one place where someone would be available to attend me. Arriving there, there are 4 people working in Iberias office, but none of them can change the date of my ticket. They have a special guy for that, and hes arriving in 4 hours. Going back and back again by bus would take me about 5 hours, so my only option is to spend 4 hours at boring Ezeiza. But the best part was that the guys working just invited me into their office, let me use the computer, put me some music, shared some maté. The old guy tried to hook me up with one of the shy younger ones haha, and in the end i got some books that they find left on planes and nobody comes to pick up. 4 hours like that are really not that long, then the special guy arrived, found me a cheap seat, everything changed in a second, and i go back on my bus happy and with 3 new books to get through the 3 hour ride.

 

[alicia30]

I once bought something at Mimo & Co. For a child's birthday party. When I asked the lady to remove the price tag, she wouldn't do it and said if she removed it then it couldn't be returned. I told her I didn't care, it was a gift anyway. She ignored me and went ahead to put it in a box. I opened the box and suggested she cut it off with a pair of scissors, and she looked very annoyed and yanked it off with her hands. She could have totally tore the garment I bought! I pointed at the tax free sign behind the counter and demanded my tax free receipt and she just said unless I said it earlier there was nothing she could do! Which I would have if she didn't spend all this time arguing with me! I was very angry and posted what happened to me on their Facebook page, surprisingly someone wrote back and asked for my contact info in order to make some kind of arrangement with me. I left the info and of course I never heard from them. I will never shop at Mimo & Co. again, and honestly I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.

 

[Jaredberryman]

I've got a lot of good ones, but one that really was a strange incident was when some friends of my wife visited from Chile (Chileans). We were taking them around downtown and I think we ended up taking them to eat parrilla at some random place in Recoleta. We had a young waiter, and apparently he was very inexperienced. He was incredibly annoying and took orders wrong, then instead of apologizing, went into long speeches about his mistake. We could not even talk, because he always had some soliloquy about something. He brought everyone's (and this is a table of about 12 people) order wrong, because he took it down wrong. And on top of it, he was blah blah blah blah. Well, sometimes Argentines are terrible tippers, but in this case, it was deserved. Out of a group of 12 on an expensive meal, my wife recommended we only give 10 pesos for the terrible service (I recommended not to give anything at all). As we were walking out of the restaurant and had gotten outside, the crappy waiter had the nerve to then come outside and try to convince the Chileans that they hadn't given him enough tip. That one has never happened to me in my life, and is totally classless (especially in a nice restaurant in Recoleta). On top of it, these Chilean women nearly caved in and gave him more, if my wife had not barged in and told him to bug off. Needless to say we never returned to that restaurant.

 

[Gringoboy]

I bought a couple of books in Martinez, handed over my card (when I used those), but the machine wouldn't work and I didn't have enough cash.
The owner said don't worry, keep the books and to come back the next day, which I did.
On another occasion, we were coming back from the coast and had spent almost our last centavo cash on fuel as none of the stations took cards. Later we had to leave the motorway and spend our last few pesos on fuel which left us with no money cash at all. The ATM's were out of order and we had to get back on the motorway but didn't have the $2 for the toll.
We explained our problem to the bloke at the till and he opened the cash register, gave us $5 and wished us luck.
This happens more often than I realise.

 

[Vagrant Violet]

I know that I had previously posted on this thread that it'd be better for me to go to McDonalds for my next anniversary dinner than a "fancy" restaurant like before, bur I evidently spoke too soon...

I'm at Alto Palermo Shopping Mall at the moment. It is lunchtime, and all I want is a 6 peso vanilla ice cream cone (not only because I like it, but I cannot bring myself to pay about 20 pesos for the same amount at the Freddo here).

The individual ice cream kiosk here is currently occupied by an employee, but who won't/can't serve at the moment due to a "cerrado" sign (although I asked just in case). I waited for a while in a disorganized line at the McDonalds restaurant in the food court to order (by the way, thought it'd be worth mentioning that they are advertising a Cadbury chocolate McFlurry for 15 pesos on a sign by the register, but the menu above advertises the exact same product for 17 pesos).

FINALLY it was my turn, YES! I asked for my vanilla ice cream cone. I could practically taste that cold treat, I was so close! "We don't have any ice cream," the cashier told me with no further explanation (of course).

By this time, I was getting royally pissed off. By the way, it's worth mentioning that a pregnant woman is never only a *little* hungry or just a *little" impatient.

But wait! Of course, there's another McDonalds on the Ground floor near Starbucks. I arrived and saw a loooooooong line at the main counter, but there was only one customer getting ice cream at the ice cream stand at the front of the restaurant. I took out a ten peso bill in anticipation of finally indulging in my creamy ice dream craving. Before I could get a word out, the worker told me, "No, you have to go to the main counter to pay and come back with the receipt."

That did it, that seriously did it. But all I wanted was a stupid vanilla ice cream cone that not a single open McDonald's could figure out how to get me. Waiting in yet another mile long line was the last thing I wanted to do yet again. There was not even a sign to indicate that I had to order at the main counter.

Maybe I'm over analyzing the situation, maybe I've reached my breaking point for super low customer service expectations. Maybe all the pregnancy hormones have finally gotten to me (or quite possibly all three). Anyways, it brought me to the point of doing something that is not at all in my nature.

I gave her a look that could split a rock in two and screamed English, "JESUS CHRIST! What is WRONG with you people?!?!?" and stormed off upset and somewhat surprised at my outburst.

I'm flying home next week to Ohio for a few weeks to be with my family. It looks like I will be doing sone major and unhealthy emotional overeating due to stress... I don't care! As long as I can finally eat my comfort food in angst in peace wearing my stretchy maternity sweatpants. I. Do. Not. Care.

That is all.

 

[DerAchtundzwanzig]

As for McDonalds, there's a sucursal in Florida where they've got a promotion, if they don't complete your McMenu order within 60 seconds you get a free quarter pounder (something done within 60 seconds in Argentina? Good idea for a promotion). Go there and try it out, trust me, you'll have the time of your life. I thoroughly enjoyed the 15 minute wait for the free burger.

Which Florida sucursal is this? I'm so going to enjoy my free quarter pounder