Toys R Us ran by f'ing morons!!!

[Bodhesatva]

superchunk said:

Bodhesatva said:

Ahhhhhh!

I work at Toys R Us, as many know. I have zero loyalty to the company; what I'm about to say isn't motivated by love of my corporate mother. I'm just a low level guy earning money while in college.

But seriously, there is exactly one type of customer I hate, and it's the ones who think that its our fault when games don't arrive on time or we don't have enough of them or something. The girl was absolutely correct to assume the game would be there when it is supposed to arrive. She is absolutely correct that the game is likely to sell out. The only problem here was DHL, and Toys R Us has no control over that. It isn't their fault: you're just blaming them because they happen to be the people standing in front of you when you found out.

I would have done precisely the same thing as that girl/manager, by the way. There's absolutely no way to know that a shipment is going to be delayed by DHL. Should we have told you to come at 2, when the new shipment arrives? I can tell you this: if that had been my store, you wouldn't have gotten a copy, as we were already sold out at 1 PM. That would have made you even more pissed, I can assure you of that. They can't win.

And most people don't get upset, they just say "no problem" and move on, and come back later.

Sorry Bod, it was the girls fault.

As most customers, I did not notice the smaller print that said by 5pm. So I didn't know that the product was due to arrive on Tuesday, I thought, as always happened when I worked for Circuit City, it had already arrived the prior day and would be available on Tuesday.

She should have said it wasn't in the store yet and should arrive sometime the next day before 5pm. Then I, as well as the other people she talked too, would not have showed up at opening. Instead I would have called throughout the day to see if the shipment had arrived.

I was not upset that because dhl was late, I was upset because a Toy R Us representative failed to inform the customer, me, correctly. In doing that, the customer had false expectations and was setup to be disgrutled.

So again, she was a moron and failed at her job. She is the front line person answer tons of different calls, and on that day many were the same. She should have already known that the correct answer is the game will come in some time tomorrow before 5pm. It is best to just call back tomorrow to see if we have recieved our stock. Instead she said that it will be in high demand come at opening. No mention that it was not in stock. No mention that dhl may be late. nada. zip. zero.

No, this is entirely the fault of DHL and you, I'm sorry to say, unless you just aren't communicating this properly.

There is no way she could know that DHL would be late. If she had told you to come later, and it showed up on time, you would have been out of luck, and you would have been ever more pissed if that were the case.

It's unfortunate there are customers like you. I certainly have had this problem before -- about 2 or 3 times in a year-- but most of the customers say: "No problem, I'll come back later." It's not her fault, and as you yourself noted, a warning was put on the sale you read, and should be common sense anyway. That common sense warning reads like this: "Warning: there is a tiny chance that something could go wrong and a product won't be here when we want it to be."

 

Again, it really sounds like you're the one who was inappropriate here, unless there's something I'm missing. You know those customers that blow up unnecessarily when something goes wrong, that the workers complain about once they're gone? You sound like one of those people right now.

 

Look at Soup's story -- THAT is poor customer service. Your situation looks a lot more like a DHL mistake that shouldn't be a big deal. Again, there is a gigantic, painful chain of events that delivers a game from the production facility to the store front that is actually selling it: in this case, it goes from Nintendo to DHL/Fed Ex to a Toys R Us warehouse (where products that are waiting for release are held) to DHL again, and finally to the specific store in question. If any part of that chain is disrupted, the product arrives late -- and yet, many people assume that it's the person standing in front of them that is to blame, simply because that person happens to be standing in front of them. 

That really does seem like what you've done here. Did they apologize to you for the problem? Did they offer to rectify the issue by holding/reserving a copy for you? Because those are the only errors I can see that they may have made. Again, I've run in to similar problems many times, and almost every customer says: "No big deal, I'll be back later."