Now that I have your attention, I want to describe three observations I made while waiting in line to purchase our favorite prepaid product.
This turd lambasted the customer service rep for not knowing how to process his prepaid product.
- Strike One
CSR said it was cash only. He goes on his tirade of saying he’s done it before, I’ve seen corporate policy blah blah blah.
- Strike Two
CSR calls the manager over for approval of the credit transaction. The tool had some nerve to say he’s been to ABC location doing XYZ and he should be allowed to do it at this particular location.
- Strike Three
Whoever he is, he needs to be banned from Manufactured Spending… for life. That’s your deal killer out there. Not the bloggers. (Except maybe the Staples gift cards, we, MS’ers, pretty much killed it when word got out)
Without any help whatsoever, he brought himself into a fiery death crashing and burning. Don’t be like that. It makes us all look bad. Remember what Marathon Man said? Be a good steward of manufactured spending.
I am absolutely pissed that this happened. This is one of my go to, must visit every day store. Increasingly, the store has fewer and fewer cards on the rack and incidents like this will just lead to “this is too much to make it worthwhile.”
This is exhibit #1 why I am increasingly detached from this hobby. Jackasses can’t help but ruin it for the rest of us. I love this hobby but find it harder everyday to be dedicated to it.
Agreed – which leads me to my preferred method, doing most things at home with the least human interaction as possible
Quick suggestion: you should offer tips on how the person should have alternatively behaved in the situation so that other people don’t make the same mistake.
Hmm, how about please and thank you………How about ” Oh, I didnt realize that I couldn’t use a cc for this transaction…thanks anyway” (Thinking to myself as I leave the store ” I’ll just come back at 830 tonight when the young kid is working the register”) This works for me……………………………..just sayin……….
I’m just trying to be constructive here. My point is that assuming everyone automatically knows good strategy by default is faulty. I think if we’re going to criticize behavior, it’s important to offer up what behavior we expected in its place. The reason for this is because people are generally behaving rationally from their own perspective, and so merely telling them their “doing it wrong” without any alternative isn’t always going to persuade them, because ultimately they had justification for their actions according to their world view.
If instead you acknowledge the need they were meeting when they behaved in the fashion you didn’t like, and give them so alternate way to satisfy that need, then you may actually convince that person and actually help to change their behavior. Berating them is not enough, because it ignores the basic need they were trying to meet.
In this case, the person felt justified in pointing out corporate policy and trying to persuade the manager because he didn’t realize that the long term benefits might outweigh the short term gains here. Through deduction, I can conclude chasingthepoints was trying to say this; he was trying to communicate that putting the value of any one transaction ahead of the whole game is ultimately self defeating. But unless you actually acknowledge that it’s also somewhat reasonable to make this mistake…take less of a hardline stance on the issue, then you’re going to just piss people off.
I think you’ll convince more people to behave better by encouraging good habits, and explaining them clearly.
Josh, this is a great, well thought out response! I love it
First rule…
Ah, was hoping I could slip an image in there…
There was an article on the news about a guy buying 1M miles through MS. Loophole closed! F-tards.
You are not alone.
To me, people who have not realize a long line behind them still swiping like 20 $50 GCs at WM with only one CSR is just plain naive and create unnecessary attention. And it is sad that I’ve seen it happened more frequently.
You are right about sit home MS.
That bothers me as well, wastes a lot of time waiting for the 20+ cards to finish, which is why I never took advantage of the $100 Staples + Cashback, it was too much trouble for what it was worth
I 99% agree with you, but I don’t like that you’re washing your hands of this. The bloggers are the ones spreading word about this hobby far and wide. So in all likelihood, I wouldn’t be surprised if this “loser” got started thanks to one of the bloggers.
And I’m sure you’re thinking “oh, I never encourage anyone to be so socially unaware and stupid.” Well, no, maybe you didn’t. But this is the backlash to having a wide audience, you don’t get to exercise discretion. You don’t get to block imbeciles from reading your blogs.
Look. Run your blog, I don’t care. But since we have to deal with people like this now, let’s start calling them out. I don’t know why most MSers out in the wild are so secretive and withdrawn. If you see someone being stupid, tell them so instead of passive aggressively writing a blog post on it.
Thanks for the feedback David – you raise a good point. Instead of calling him out on a blog, he should be told what he did wrong. I took a class today about giving and receiving feedback and will take your comment + Josh’s and put it into another post.