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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Voting with my feet

There have been many reports in the news recently of the poor performance in the retail industry. Australian consumers are either more savings conscious now or are turning to online retailers to buy their goods. Given this bleak outlook for the retailers with major retailers like David Jones and Harvey Norman downgrading their forecast profit earnings, one would think that the retailers and their staff will work harder on their customer service to increase and retain sales. In the last 6 months, we have seen the closure of Borders, Angus and Robertson, Colorado, Just Jeans and Portmans stores. The outlook is bad indeed. So what am I ranting about? Poor customer service!

I popped into the pharmacy at my local shopping centre to buy my medication for hypertension. I did not have a script with me as I forgot to visit the doctor for a new script. In the past, the chemist has been helpful to sell you the medication on the proviso that you bring the new script to show them within a week or two. Well...when I explained to the pharmacist (have never met her before, so I assume she is new) my situation, she immediately got annoyed and said that she could not sell me the medication, because it is too much paperwork for her to complete if she gave me the medication now. Hence, she told me to visit my doc and return with the script. WTF! You can imagine my mood....

When I arrived home, I mentioned my experience to my Mum and she also had a bad experience with the said stupid cow (not Mum's exact words). Apparently Mum had also visited the pharmacy to buy some vitamins and the stupid cow was absolutely unfriendly. Now I know that this is the only pharmacy at this particular shopping centre, since the other pharmacy (which was our usual) closed down recently due to poor performance. But there is no reason to be an absolute bitch to your customers. So I am voting with my feet, I have banned my family from visiting this pharmacy. We will find another to buy our medication. There are a number of pharmacies in our neighbourhood where we can take out business to.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

3 comments:

  1. some people can be a pain and you, have a choice. I experienced similiar service from the chinese medicine hall at Pavilion, hubs barred me from the outlet ever since and I'm not allowed to step in to their other outlets too. Hubs said.. 'you got money,scared cannot buy meh?' !!!

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  2. Elaine: your hubby is right.. we consumers have the power of money. Why put up with poor service.

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  3. Goodness Charmaine, I can sense and obviously read your anger with this woman. So sorry you had to go through such poor customer service. You are right, the only way to have a say is to not give that pharmacy any more business.

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