Once upon a time, driving through the main street of an inland NSW country town, I hit a goat.
Yes, a goat.
Or more correctly, it charged me.
And trust me, this is pertinent to the longer story therein.
You see, I had the pleasure(?) of driving a hire care from the Gold Coast to Bathurst and back, to honour a contract to cover the annual Bathurst 1000 motor race and as I hated the Pacific Highway with a passion, decided to take the inland route, which I believe is shorter anyway.
Driving through the centre of one of the towns en route – which shall remain nameless – and opposite the Ampol servo there at that time, I collided with said goat.
30 seconds before, it was minding its own business in the front garden of a house, when suddenly, it decided it didn’t like the look of the car I was driving, leapt the front fence, vaulted the median strip and charged the Toyota Corolla, striking it head on, literally, into the front left headlight before somersaulting over the car, heavily denting the roof in transit.
It all happened so fast that all I can recollect, apart from a blur of hooves and horns, was the sight of the goat sitting in the middle of the road behind me, with what looked like cartoon bluebirds and stars circling its head.
Before upping and galloping away into the distance.
It turned out the hire car company, with it being the Bathurst long weekend and a country town an’ all, had no spare cars, so I had to limp this thing on to Bathurst and then back home to the Gold Coast again.
The excess was quite substantial as I recall, so I contacted the local gendarmes in the aforementioned NSW country town to see if they could assist identifying said goat’s owner in order for me to try and get some money back.
About three weeks later, the local sergeant rang me back and asked if I could once again visit their fair town and view a line up of local goats to try and identify the perp.
Ha ha. Very funny.
A few weeks later, my business partner on a trip to Canberra managed to roll his hire car, avoiding a kangaroo, he says. You guessed it. Same hire car company. More excess to pay.
You’d think I’d learn but no; a few weeks after that, I had to get a hire car in Sydney, which was dutifully returned to their base in Mascot, utterly unharmed.
When I gave the keys back to the attendant in the office, he looked up my record, and then asked me “if the car was parked in a bay or was it necessary to go and shovel it up somewhere“?”
Hilarious. Slapping my thighs in raucous merriment I was.
And no, I have never used that particular hire car company ever again.
Which brings me onto “service”.
Maybe it is just me, but although this example of what I consider a breach of what decent service should be about (as against making fun of misfortune at the client’s expense), it seems that service in the old-fashioned definition of the word seems to be somewhat lacking of late?
Once you have bought something, or paid for a service, the common situation appears to be “now you’re on your own mate”.
Whether it be the white goods store where you bought a new $2000 fridge 3 months ago that has stopped working, and you are told you have to contact the manufacturer, or the internet provider support department that doesn’t work after 5pm (Sydney time) and definitely not on weekends, service seems to be of secondary importance – well from their point of view anyway.
Three weeks ago, I ordered a power supply for a camera as the original had stopped working and was out of warranty. I couldn’t go through the distributor as they have a strict non retail sales policy – I have no issue with that – so needed to order through a dealer, which happened to have a franchisee in my town. But I was assured it was in stock and would be despatched direct to me that day, on receiving the order from the dealer.
I contacted the dealer, stressed the importance due to an upcoming job, paid the express delivery fee and under normal circumstances, should have waited for delivery 3 days or 4 at max if a weekend was involved.
Three weeks later it has still not arrived, despite me knowing it has sat in the warehouse of the dealer in Melbourne for at least 14 days. Of course, everyone outside the vendor, who has proof of this, denies it, and blames the distie, couriers, Australia Post and anyone else they can for their sloppiness.
I asked for a refund of the express delivery fee at least, but even that cannot be done until the owner, who is away, “returns”!
So, I keep waiting, after a few moments ago, receiving notification from Australia Post it is on its way by parcel post and will take 10 days.
Just fabulous.
And today I came across someone at a company who had obviously watched “The IT Crowd”, as their RECORDED response to a $16,000 purchase that stopped working after a week was “Turn it off and back on again. If that doesn’t work call back”.
Rightio then. But how?
The best advertising you can get is from an existing company, but the opposite also applies which many businesses tend to forget.
It is far easier to keep a happy customer, and costs far less, than to find a new one.
I am pretty sure many out there in consumer land will have come across this. It’s a shame that many, many vendors and retailers don’t seem, to understand it.
Naming no names of course, but you know who you are.