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Showing 1 of 213 conversations about:
Chinese Knives
By
reswright
reswright
3850
Jun 5, 2019
I guess there's another reason I don't mind Chinese knives -- typically speaking, if I buy something and I don't like it or there's a problem with it, it's gotta be pricy before I am willing to spend significant time on customer service. Chinese knives aren’t pricy. So the fact that customer service has an ocean and a couple of languages between me and it really isn't a dealbreaker over here. If I say something snappy like 'time is money' it sounds like kinda Glengarry, but more to the point it's also false; I value time rather more than money. If you could gamble and win an extra hour in your day I might become a problem gambler. And dealing with customer service takes forever and it's soul deadening. It just enervates me. That matters to me as a customer. I’d much rather just fix the issue myself, if it’s fixable and I know how. That is problem solving which is enjoyable by comparison.
So I choose my vendors carefully. I make it a point to look for things that appear well made. And when I order a budget knife and it does come a little off, I'd rather just leave a fair review that lets other potential customers or collectors have an idea of what they might expect if they order the same thing, fix the issue myself, and move on. It’s less hassle than haggling over the cost of shipping the item and not for nothing, but reviews end up having a lot more impact on companies than anything you’ll ever say to one of their customer service representatives. (People think telling a person will have more impact, but it’s the opposite. Companies care a lot more about what prospective clients think than what a CSR has to hear.)
i might be different from a lot of folks on this. I don’t know. By way of making a point -- someone gets a bad knife in the mail and has to get on the phone or email and arrange a return and maybe pay for postage. They get a call from a CSR three weeks later saying it's going to be shipped that day and they're all very sorry. It takes two weeks more with the guy eventually checking the mailbox more times than he usually might, but it comes and the guy finally gets his knife. There’s a post it thanking him for being patient.
That guy? He might have just become a repeat customer because that's what he wishes there was more of in his life. Or he just thinks that's how it's done and he respects it. Or even he just really thinks that's the way the world works, people ship you bad crap and you have to pester them to get them to make it right. Either way, he went from a negative to a positive experience. His friends ask him about the company he goes 'They're cool, i had a problem and they took care of it right away'. And he means it.
For the CSR? They have to deal with people all day, many of whom are irate and have a very high opinion of their own importance over having bought some cheap thing or service. They're executing on a script and to metrics based on successfully resolving issues as cheaply as possible. They know that many people are mollified when they get a sense that the CSR is being genuine and wants to help them and is going out of his way, so they usually want to try that before they get into the things that cost money. But their true job is not to fix your issue so much as it is to convince you by the time it's all over that the experience has been a positive one, or at the least, NOT a negative one. That's what this internet rating economy is all about, you see. It puts scary power in the hands of anyone who can write a review, and they don't always use it responsibly, especially if they're people who feel like they're already being pushed around by life -- once they get that power to hit back some of them get downright nasty. That one star review never goes away. So e-tailers spend quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to manage reviews as a result and some people eat it up. For the CSR, this was all win: they didn’t have to expedite shipping, they didn’t have to hand out anything free. They didn’t have to listen to a lot of grief and they don’t have a bad metric. And they didn’t have to tell someone their knife was out of warranty. All gravy for the CSR.
For me? If it were me dealing with customer service?
The process never stops being negative, even though I recognize that the company is at least doing what it's supposed to do. That's the thing -- it's doing what it is supposed to do... once it screwed up. I didn’t come to it for that though, or for customer service. I wanted a knife, instead. Like a great many people on the internet, i am somewhat socially avoidant. I want to order my thing, have it shipped at a reasonable pace, have it arrive in one piece on time, and that's called meeting expectations. By definition if I have to talk to customer service, it's gone wrong, not because I'm some kinda big shot who needs special service or even just because I personally don’t like doing it. It is simply because that damned well wasn't the deal. I didn't get up that day and go 'I've been good all week, i deserve a reward - customer service here I come'.
That's a negative, Ghostrider. If I'm on the phone with customer service I don't want their sympathies or statements that they know how important this issue is or any of the other throwaway phrases they have to say a million times a day. I buy into very little of how any company's narrative represents things, because I know how that narrative gets written in real life. I also don't like flattery, it's just not what I want, it somehow manages to be boring and embarrassing at the same time. Frankly the only thing the customer service rep can do for me is just go 'no problem. we'll send that right out' and then do exactly that, and not screw up when they do. It’s not personal. It isn’t even judgmental. And it really has nothing at all to do with the CSR. They are just the poor bastards that have been ordered to get on the phones with pissed customers all day long. They’re basically there because some people will be at least partially satisfied by calling up the company and giving someone there a piece of their mind. You’re even meant to feel sorry for their plight. Customer service is a dark art in the modern workplace, don’t let anyone tell you differently.
To me the the issue hasn’t been complicated. It is wholly a matter of the vendor not honoring a deal and not living up to expectations. If a problem arises after they have my cash, and I don’t have my knife? it isn’t my problem. It is the vendor’s- and believe me they know it. They just would prefer that they talk you into allowing them to resolve the problem in some fashion that ultimately allows them to avoid paying to meet the full cost of their original obligation to you. Full stop. That’s what it’s all about. Whether or not you let them or even care about it is entirely up to you.
And when someone asks me what the experience was like, even if the knife I get a month later is ok, if someone asks me about the purchase I'm still going to go with 'They sent me a crap knife and I had to return it. Took forever to get a replacement.” And I'll mean it: that’s what would stand out for me. Whatever that makes me, I'll own it. I know what it’ll make my friend: forewarned. He won't be coming back three weeks later and being all 'Dude I tried one of those knives and it sucked and then I had to get my money back and I still haven't got it back yet'.
Some folks squirm a little at the thought of handling problems this way. I don’t. None of this is remotely unfair-it is how businesses treat each other. If you are dealing with an honest company they really shouldn’t have much of a concern with you doing any of this - for starters it won’t happen nearly often enough to be an issue. If you find that it does, and that you’re dealing with a company sliding by on shady practices backed up by a fat customer service expense account, you want to vote with your feet and find another market to frequent. And better sooner than later. Who knows, maybe one day they will see the light, but what matters more is protecting yourself as a consumer and also getting the word out, if you can do so in a trustworthy way, to like minded consumers. To me, that's how it should be working today, not how the world does it now. Life's too short to stay on hold while someone tries to soften your expectations about when you’ll get your knife back :)
(Edited)
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