Friday, August 18, 2006

JC Penney Customer Service

Caveat Emptor. Buyer Beware.

Have I mentioned how disappointed I am with JC Penney right now? Firstly, you know that the dining room table arrived cracked, and the chairs have scratches. I planned on overlooking the scratches but the table can't even be assembled and used... so that obviously needs to be taken care of. So Monday night I called customer service. Today is Friday. On Monday, I was told I would hear within 1-2 days. Wednesday night. Hadn't heard anything. So I called back. Got the SAME customer service guy, was told that they are "working on it" and that I would hear back in another 1-2 days. Um. Yeah. That doesn't seem to make me feel confident.

So yesterday, I decided to call another number that I found on their website to talk about a previous order, and get a lady who told me that I needed to package the chairs and table back up so that UPS could pick them up. Then I had to go through the whole thing with her about how we have already spent time assembling, how the chairs are okay, how we just need a table, and then she says how she can "see that I told the customer service representative that the chairs were fine and we only needed a table" and I am thinking so WHY did you tell me to pack everything up and send it back? Was she just TRYING to piss me off? I explained that we have spent hours assembling the chairs and that we don't plan on spending more hours to unassemble them. She said "UPS won't pick them up assembled" and I told her that what was going on is the problem of JC Penney, and it is their responsibility to resolve the issue, not mine. And she said that the only way to get my money back was to pack them up and ship them all back.

I was trying to explain to her that I don't WANT my money back, I had asked for a new table, and that I was told they are working on it. She then told me that they are "out" of the tables. I said "last night I was told that they had checked one warehouse and there were none, and they were checking another warehouse and would be getting back to me. Now you are telling me they are out. Does this mean that they already checked the second warehouse and that they failed to contact me to tell me that they are out?" And she said "they have already checked the other warehouse and they are out." and so I asked if this means that my only option is to disassemble the chairs, repackage them in their torn box, and have UPS pick them up. She said "Well, you can take the assembled furniture to the catalog desk at your local store and they can accept the return unassembled." Now please tell me why in the HELL she didn't tell me that in the beginning of our conversation?

So I asked if I could please speak to a manager. I want to talk to the PEOPLE WHO ARE LOOKING FOR THE TABLE. Is that so difficult to understand? Is it? I don't think so. So she tells me "you can speak to a manager but they are going to tell you the exact same things that I am." All I could think was "perhaps they would be less bitchy?"

SOOOOO today I decided to call AGAIN and ask for a manager right away. Instead I ended up talking to the customer service person, who told me that they had checked two distribution centers and couldn't find the table. They are still checking distribution centers. I explained that I will be leaving on vacation and that I want the issue resolved before I leave, etc etc and was told that I would get a call back before next Friday the 25th letting me know if they had found a table. WHY does this have to take so long! Jeez! How hard is it for you to send an email or make a phone call to your distribution centers and have someone check their stock and call back? I swear if that were me it would take 2 days, tops. Jeez.

Patience is not a virtue of mine but apparently Customer Service is also not a virtue of JC Penney.

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1 comment:

Bianca said...

I work in customer service, and so I probably have more patience than many when it comes to mistakes, but I can absolutely see why this situation has frustrated you. I've had a couple of really bad customer service experiences in the last 6 months, and I'm considering adding a section to my blog where I can write about these specifically, hoping that maybe it will warn future consumers from giving business to the offending companies.

Sometimes word of mouth is all that we can do to fight.

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