Service Is Not What It Used To Be Is it just me or has service in general gotten a lot worse? One of the first things I can’t help but notice is the fact all the minor things I used to have to do at a place before I can accomplish my goal now take longer. Take the example of trying to change a medical appointment date or correct an error. The first thing you have to do after “dialing” the phone number is listen to a long message. It usually tells you about the parent company that many doctors seem to be connected to nowadays. The next thing might be for you to choose what language you want and then you have to choose the department. Now you usually made it to someone with a computer who may answer right away or let the phone ring for a while. Sometimes after they answer they put you on hold and in a few cases forget you are there and you have to go through everything again. Even when you are finally being helped you are relying on the fact they will type in the correct information to get your record. A few times I have been told I had no record only to find out they put in the wrong birthday or typed my name wrong. I am not picking on the medical profession there are plenty of other places where the service has degraded. Take one restaurant chain I frequent. You are now supposed to pick your order on a tablet which is on each table. You can’t ask a tablet about the particulars of what you want to order like substituting one vegetable for another in your meal or leaving out certain things in some cases like gravy, or onions or something else. As a matter of fact, my server was telling me how much he hated this new way of ordering. It also seems, but I could be wrong, there are less waiters and waitresses since these tablets were installed. Some of these huge hardware chains seem to have a problem. I don’t know how many of you have used them, but I am sure it is a fair amount. It used to be easy to buy something and bring it home and you were done. The problem I have had with one store in particular is I buy something in a sealed box and when I get it home, parts are missing. Apparently, what is happening is people buy the item, take some of the parts to repair one they already own and bring back the item for a refund and no one checks to see if everything is there. I have talked to quite a few people this has happened to. I don’t know if this is a bad policy or some employees are too lazy to check the item before putting it back on the shelf. Another problem with some of these stores is the size. They are so huge even the employees don’t seem to know where everything is. I was in one a couple of months ago and asked a question where a certain department was and was sent to the other side of the building and when I got there, I was told they no longer had that department. I understand there is a problem with the supply chain and supermarkets are in a bind, but this is no excuse for delivering an order to your home and charging you for items which were left off your order. I have a service I pay a fee for and lately there have been too many problems with leaving things out and charging me for them or giving me the wrong items. Where I seem to have the biggest problem is if I order two of something I only get one but get charged for the two. Now I have to call and they are very nice, but I have the hassle of having to wait on the phone and do without all the items I wanted. One package of meat I got recently had two different labels on it, one stated one kind of meat and the other a different kind. It was not what I ordered even though one label said it was. Most of us use that famous buying service which also has movies and shows. In the last four orders I had with them, one was the wrong item and another had the wrong description. I ordered a cylinder for a storm door. You would think this was simple enough. Guess what arrived? It was a fish tank filter. One has to wonder how that could happen. Another item was described as flashlights with batteries. Nineteen flashlights and 57 batteries. The batteries was the reason I purchased the flashlights. When the package arrived, it had no batteries. More phone calls. About a month before I ordered pillow cases and received a dozen bath towels. I do have to admit these problems were solved immediately after I was able to get an agent. It is just the hassle of it all that is annoying. One of the really annoying things which has happened lately concerns being able to call companies to fix a problem. Some of the websites no longer list a telephone number and sometimes it is hard to even find their email address. There are also those who use a virtual assistant which forces you to pick from a list of problems before they will connect you and many times these problems do not fit your situation. Even when you get through it shoves you off to a database of problems for you to read through and if you are lucky enough to find your problem, the database sometimes sends you to the community to solve the problem instead of having a tech guy or woman for help.
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