Customer Service (written July 11 2010)

Usually when I am out shopping I don’t care much to chit-chat with the workers. I am more interested in buying my goods and getting home. I would love to spend hours shopping but because of two good reasons I can’t, kids and lack of money. If I can’t find something I am looking for I rarely ask anyone for help. I guess I would rather leave a store dissatisfied than bother to ask anyone. I have decided that I am going to change this. I realize that as I spend Brian’s hard earned money that I shouldn’t leave any store unhappy and I should never be unhappy with my purchases. This weekend I got to experience some customer service and make those workers work for our money. We decided to buy a new camera. Our camera is still working but it gets “stuck” often. It has served us well and I have taken 1000’s of pictures with it. I don’t know much about cameras except for the price that we were able to afford. I looked in flyers and on-line all week long hoping to find some good deals. I knew that some stores will price-match their competitors prices but there were so many cameras advertised and the model numbers were not all listed. This was definitely going to be a much harder job than I thought. We started looking on Friday evening. London Drugs had a ton of cameras in their flyers so we decided to check them out. A guy greets us at the photo counter. Hmmmmm where do I recognize this guy? I guess being the DJ at the Voodoo Lounge means you have to have a day job too. He is so friendly and seems like he knows a ton about cameras. I am pretty impressed. Great customer service! We leave and decide to do some more research on cameras. I have not yet received one of my Friday’s papers and am eager to check out what some of the other stores are offering. Saturday morning we wake up early and head out and find a camera I like. I have done a bit of research and I have seen a camera that I really like. It is advertised on sale in Zeller’s flyer. At London Drugs the night before I saw that it was on sale for $40 more. We head out to Courtenay and stop at Zellers so that I can check out the model number for the camera. I ask the lady what colours they come in and she has no clue. As she fiddles around with the price scanner I realize that this lady is probably working in the wrong department. I dare not ask her any questions about the camera I am looking at; it is not worth my time and she is struggling to use the scanner to scan the price code. I tell her it’s okay and write down the model number before we leave. We arrive at Future Shop with the Zellers flyer in hand. I walk over to the photo section and notice a couple looking at cameras. The worker in the photo section is helping them pick out a camera. As I eavesdrop on their conversation I notice the lady has a London Drugs flyer in her hand. They are there to bargain with the worker and get a great deal too. The invite me into their conversation and soon we are all talking about the type of camera we are interested in. I tell them I just want something of a little better quality and a better zoom. The lady is interested in something that will take good pictures of her needle-point. I see the camera I am interested in and notice that the model number is a little different than the one in the Zellers flyer. I show the salesman the flyer and he comments that they do not carry that particular model. Darn! I thought I would be getting myself a good bargain. The other couple have decided on a model that they like and have bartered and gotten themselves a better deal. The salesman offers me the same deal on the camera that the other couple has selected. I am still pretty set on the Panasonic camera that I have chosen so I ask the salesman what the difference is between the FH20 model and the FH22 model. He tells me that the only difference is that the FH22 (the higher priced model at Future Shop) has a touch screen. I am not a fan of touch screen so the decision to buy the camera advertised in the Zellers flyer is now an easy one. I let the salesman ramble on a bit about different cameras only because I feel a little bad. He has been a great salesman and has given me so much excellent information that the lady at Zellers was not able to. I don’t know why I even bothered to look online at camera reviews; this guy was fantastic! We leave and decide to go back to the Driftwood Mall and check out the camera at London Drugs. We get to London Drugs and at the photo counter is the electronics/photo manager. Great! She should be great to talk to and she should be able to hook me up with a great deal. Was I ever wrong. After I showed the lady the camera in the flyer from Zellers she tried numerous times to sell me other cameras at much higher prices. She was not a very good listener. I asked her if they did price match and she said they could give me the camera at the same price. I told her that Future Shop would also beat the price by 10% on the same model. She told me that she could go lower by a few dollars. We decide that her customer service skills were lacking and we left quickly. We head off to Zellers and hope that they have the camera in stock. I ask the lady at the counter if any of the cameras are in stock. She struggles once again to use the scanner and then tells me that it shows 2 in stock but sometimes it is wrong. She then tells me that she will have to go to the back and check and that we will have to wait until someone comes up to watch the counter. This lady is definitely not a good salesperson. I almost feel guilty because the salesman at London Drugs the night before and the man from Future Shop were really good and gave me such great information. I feel bad that I could not give them a sale and instead this lady who is clueless is making a sale. Oh well, I am just glad that I got the camera I wanted for a good price.