Customers deserve better service from businesses
By Letter to the Editor on June 4, 2021.
Editor: When we buy something – from food and clothing to cars and homes – we expect dealers to take responsibility for the products they sell.
If the product is spoiled, damaged of defective, we take it back to the dealer to fix the problem, either by repair or replacement.
That is an old and fair custom.
I discovered with a shock that some dealers have exchanged this time-proven policy for one where they only sell products without helping clients with problematic products bought from them.
For that, the client must go to a far-off third party, do the shipping, and live without the product for weeks until a replacement arrives.
For this inept service, the client paid a few hundred dollars – a so-called service-contract.
The problem could have been solved locally within a day or two.
This is not only a matter of a dissatisfied customer but a violation of an age-old dealer-customer relationship. Many readers may have had this unpleasant experience.
It will serve prospective buyers well if they enquire about service policy before they buy.
By supporting dealers who take responsibility for their products, and shunning those who do not, the public not only exercises their right of free choice but may also motivate dealers to improve their policies from user-unfriendly to user-friendly.
The answering-machine services of some businesses are plain and helpful, but some are so complicated and confusing that even after listening several times to the fast-speaking voice one does not know which button to press.
Are dealers afraid they may catch the virus over the phone?
Having been sent from machine to machine I eventually reached a person, who talked so softly and with an accent that I could not get clear guidance about what to do with my complaint.
COVID-19 has made life hard enough for all of us. Why do some dealers make our lives even more miserable with user-unfriendly policies?
Jacob Van Zyl
Lethbridge
-1
Big problem for the dealers is the poor quality products they have to buy. Nothing is made to last, and you can’t send it back to China if it breaks. Let’s start buying Canadian made products instead.
we are so deep into china it is pathetic. a human rights disaster of place – worse even, than the usa. does not matter that they have kidnapped 2 cdns and put each through one of their patented kangaroo courts; does not matter that china is committing crimes against humanity on a daily basis – hey, who cares about people if they are “only” uyghurs, right? who cares if china has an ongoing and long standing practice of killing minorities and harvesting their organs. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/china-forcefully-harvests-organs-detainees-tribunal-concludes-n1018646 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-harvesting-organs-of-uighur-muslims-china-tribunal-tells-un-2019-9?op=1
does not matter, it seems, that simply in economic terms, we are now utterly dependent on china; and worse: we have helped turn an autocratic, totalitarian state with no regard for human rights, or animal rights – into the most powerful military and economic juggernaut in the world today. all for the love of money above all.
I agree wholeheartedly with the author that most Canadian businesses these days give poor shoddy and subpar service and products. Good luck even finding any “Canadian” manufactured products these days. The usual business enticement is to obtain dirt cheap labor from China to manufacture product to be sold in Canada. Labor costs, Canadian government levels of erroneous and monumental approval processes and over reaching government ridiculous regulations all make it not worth the hill to die on for any Canadian company to bother to manufacture anything in Canada. We have destroyed our own made in Canada industry with ridiculous over reaching government legislation and government approval processes that are nothing short of dismal failures. Good luck ever having anything made in Canada in our lifetime other than what is government subsidized. And if it has to be government subsidized more than likely it is not worth buying in the first place. As well, getting any better service from Canadian businesses or manufacturers is almost impossible. The first part of any recording when I phone any business to enquire about a product I get the message, “due to the covid pandemic, we are unable to”…. pretty much you can fill in the blanks with we are using the pandemic to give substandard, shoddy and lousy, lazy service and customer dissatisfaction all because of “covid”. Covid pretty much has given all businesses an excuse to give crappy service and or supply substandard and shoddy products and to ignore any legitimate customer inquiries about their products or service purchased. If you are lucky enough to actually reach and talk to anyone with a pulse about your concern or consumer complaint about their product you are given the preverbal voice recording runaround in circles. Buyer beware. Covid has certainly given businesses an excuse and opportunity to provide garbage products and services and get away with it.