tales of an ordinary girl

meet your perfect mate by fishing

I have absolutely no comment.

Ok, since I'm already ranting about customer service, let's add one more to the list. Applebees. We went to Applebees this weekend for lunch. Now I normally don't mind Applebees. Some of the food has gone downhill over the years (namely the meat and bland vegetables), but it's not bad.

So we went and Matt and I ordered an appetizer and our meal. And we waited, and waited. And then our meals came out. No appetizer. I stopped our waitress and asked her about our appetizer and her response was, "Oh, it hasn't come out yet?" You're our waitress. Shouldn't you know?

So she tells us it'll be 2 minutes and asks us if we still want it. Matt does, so we say yes. We eat our meals. I finish and Matt's just about finished when the appetizer comes out. Ok. Well, at least we got it, right?

Then when the waitress brings out our checks we notice that the appetizer isn't on the bill. So we thought, great, the waitress realized she made a mistake and didn't charge us for the appetizer. So we pay and the guys that are with us pay (on separate checks). We get back our receipts and we were both charged the exact same amount. Now when the bills came out they were two separate amounts, but sometime between when the waitress took our bills and came back their bill went up by about 6 or 7 dollars.

So they work that out with the waitress and she comes back and gives them the correct change. Then she produces a new bill for us and tells us that she forgot to charge us for the appetizer and that's why there was a bill mixup. Huh? So we had to tear up the bill we already paid and repay for the check with the appetizer. I'm pretty pissed and I let the waitress know it (she was snotty). Not because of the appetizer because ok, if you want to be technical we should pay for it and that's fine (but forget about a tip because the service was horrible), but her explanation made no sense. She obviously charged the same amount to both of us and it was a mistake. But instead of admitting she made a mistake she decided to charge us for the appetizer.

Anyway, the manager came by and to her credit she did try to make things up to us. But $10 off on the back of a card for a restaurant I don't want to go back to isn't much use to me or Matt.

Anyway, just so you think I'm never satisfied, here's a list of places that I think offer excellent customer service:

Amazon
Overstock.com
TigerDirect
J Alexander's
Adrian's Cafe

Ok, yes, it can get worse.

The SA locked himself out of his account. The girl that's supposed to run the bridge line did show up, but since my app is the only one still unresolved, she doesn't have anything to do. I feel bad for that. She drove all the way back in (I didn't realize she was not already working.. the manager always made it seem like they're a call center) to get on the call. I feel like a total bitch over that, but it wasn't my call to have her come back on. I just pointed out that I didn't know if there were any other apps outstanding.

Anyway, then the manager gets on and he's a pain in the ass. He micromanages everything I do. I'm working with people in Brazil via email because they don't want to dial into an international toll number (don't blame them) from home. He wants them to call in and has a big blow-up because I don't want to make them. Then the SA dials in and the manager goes away. Even though he's the one that asked him to dial in.

Now I'm just waiting on the database startup and then we're going to contact the app owner to dial-in and test out the box and get sign-off. Then I could go to bed if I wasn't so wound up and could sleep.

Tomorrow I'll laugh about this, I'm sure. But um.. now.. I just feel the need for a neck to wring.