Celeste and I moved our family to Winston-Salem from the Washington, D.C. suburbs in July of ’04.  After living here for about 15 months we’ve noticed that as a rule the clerks, waiters and other "customer-facing" people we deal with when we shop/dine out in Winston-Salem are a lot friendlier and more helpful than those we dealt with in D.C.  Of course there are always exceptions that prove the rule, and then there are the customer support people on a phone somewhere else in the world to which the rule doesn’t apply in the first place.  Unfortunately Celeste attracts these "exceptions" like bees to honey.

Example 1:  On September 9 Celeste stopped by the Kentucky Fried Chicken on Hanes Mall Blvd (actual address is 140 Hanes Square Circle, Winston Salem, NC 27103) to get two buckets of chicken for our son’s birthday party.  She placed her order around 4:30 and was told that there wasn’t enough chicken ready and she’d have to wait while they cooked it.  She said fine and plopped down at a seat in front of the counter to wait while sipping on a complimentary soda she was offered by one of the clerks.

Forty-five minutes passed and still no chicken.  By this time there had been a shift change and because the wait had been so long Celeste’s order had been knocked off the computer screen.  When she asked one of the new shift workers about the status of her order they couldn’t find it, of course.  So Celeste showed them her receipt and the young woman told her she’d get right on it, and then proceeded to fill a bunch of drive-through orders.

As another of the employees finally got working on the order Celeste talked to the manager and filled her in on the situation.  When Celeste asked if there was anything the manager could do (discount on the food, complimentary side item, or some other kind of gesture) the manager said (I’m paraphrasing), "So you don’t want your chicken?"  To which Celeste replied, "Yes I want my chicken that I’ve been waiting over 45 minutes for, but I was wondering if there was something you could do since I had to wait so long."  The manager said something like, "Maam if you’re getting your chicken then there’s nothing I can do.  I can refund your money if you don’t want your chicken, but that’s it."

Now there’s nothing in the law that says that this manager had to do anything for Celeste, but one of her company’s selling points is that the food is served relatively quickly.  I think any of us would understand a 20 minute delay in delivering two buckets of chicken, but by the time Celeste got the chicken it had been close to an hour.  That’s just unacceptable.  What’s even more unacceptable is that the manager didn’t even try to help Celeste, who was as much put off by the woman’s brusk manner as by the fact that she had to wait so long and watch plenty of other orders get delivered while she waited for hers.   So the least the woman could have done was say "I’m sorry" which she never did, and then maybe thrown in some side items as a good faith gesture.  As it is there’s no way we’re ever going back there and I can tell you that every friend and family member we have in town has heard, or will hear the story.

Example 2: Rooms-to-Go.  In July we purchased some living room furniture from Rooms-to-Go.  We like the furniture, it was delivered when promised and when we found a piece broken on our new coffee table they sent someone out to take care of it.  No problems so far.

Then Celeste paid the first monthly bill online.  Now let me preface this by saying that we got an 18-month, no interest, no minimum payment financing deal when we bought the furniture.  We do this all the time with purchases, and we just make sure we have everything paid off by the time it is due so the interest doesn’t kick in.  Celeste handles all our financial stuff, so she figures out how much we need to pay each month and then makes those payments religiously.

So, Celeste got on line and made the first installment via the Roooms-to-Go (actually GE Credit) website.  Unfortunately she put missed a digit in our account number when she typed it in and the account couldn’t be found by our bank when the creditor submitted the payment info (we didn’t know this until much later, read on for details).  That was on September 14.  On Friday, September 23 we got a letter saying that the creditor had the payment returned by the bank and they were charging us $29 and now our status had been changed to active and we had minimum payments and interest.

Yesterday (Monday, September 26) Celeste called the customer service number provided in the letter and spoke to a man in the customer service department.  He immediately created problems when Celeste told him the situation and his reply was, "Maam, I don’t know anything about website stuff."  Huh?

Then when Celeste got through to him that she had a confirmation number for the transaction he said, "I can’t do anything without a tracking number" and Celeste said, through clenched teeth, "Well, maybe my confirmation number is a tracking number, why don’t we try" and ‘lo and behold it worked.  At this point he started telling Celeste that it’s not their fault that the payment didn’t go through and that we need to talk to our bank, but unfortunately he wouldn’t tell Celeste what the problem with the transaction was.  She asked him several times if he could tell her what the information she had submitted was, but he wouldn’t tell her.

Eventually he told Celeste that he would waive the $29 fee but that’s all he could do.  We’d have to get the payment situation resolved with our bank, and he reiterated that it wasn’t their fault.  At this point Celeste couldn’t take any more and she ended the call.

We were sitting in my office while this whole thing was going on, and I heard it all.  I wasn’t happy that our payment status had been changed even though:

1. We weren’t required to make any payment at all until next September.
2. We’d made a payment, but due to some as yet unkown error, our payment hadn’t been accepted.

So I got on the phone and called them back.  I got through to another rep, a nice young woman named Tracy.  I explained the situation to her and asked her why our payment status had been changed.  She explained that their payment system had automatically changed our status when the payment was refused, and that she’d be happy to change it back to the "promotional" status.  Then she offered to help us figure out what went wrong.  She said, "I can’t give you any information but if you read me your bank account number then I can tell you if it matches what your wife entered."  I read the account number and she told me that Celeste had missed a number and which one it was.

We ended the call with me very thankful and bemused.  I was bemused because when it comes to customer service I always seem to get the competent, friendly folks and Celeste gets the ding-dongs.

Back to the original point.  Before we moved here I don’t think we would have noticed these issues, but we’ve become accustomed to the superior hospitality the people in Winston-Salem offer.  Now when we get these ding-dongs they stick out like a sore thumb, and I’m glad that we don’t have to deal with them too often.