Whining

[pyoor_excuse]

Recurring theme:

Why are Maplin and Halfords so crap these days? I remember when you could go in and ask for a splined widget to attach to your kanarkle and they'd pause and say "lungified or unlungified? We have both in stock if you're not sure".

Maplin staff are generally lacking in clue, but the award today went to Halfords. I admit it was hopeful but I went into their miniscule motorbike section to look for a switch for the 'zed. The 'zed has a standard moped brake light switch. Not seeing one (but seeing other more obscure bike bits) I thought I'd ask.

I collared one of the staff who was carefully avoiding looking at any of the customers and queried whether they sold one. He looked clueless for a second and then took me back to the motorcycle 'section', looked around ineffectually and said 'hrm, if it's not here, then no, they probably don't sell them'.

Well, ta.

A few minutes later I thought 'hrm, I might be able to revive mine with a few squirts of contact cleaner'. So I thought I'd ask about contact cleaner.

"Uh...What's it for".
"Cleaning electrical contacts on well, cars, bikes, anything"
"Um. Is it a liquid or a paste or....?"
"It's a spray, normally"
"Um... I don't think so, I'll ask"
*wanders off to little gang of 'staff'*
Conversation ensues and then he wanders back
"Um, we don't stock it, unless it's over in these sprays here..."
*points at shelf full of a variety of sprays and looks very ineffectually at them*
*I pick up can cunningly described by marking it 'Electrical Contact Cleaner', a Halfords own brand product*
"You do stock it then, it's here".
*Wanders off shaking her head*

I don't expect everyone in the store to know everything, that's fine. But jeeze, between the 4 of them *one* of them might have had a fricking clue. It's a parts shop, ostensibly, so they ought to know at least a little bit about parts.

But I guess it's all about "Sheep in Wolf's Clothing" these days. As long as it's covered in stick on plastic and got a big spoiler it can run like a bag of spanners but they don't care.

More rants coming, incidentally, on the wrongness of the scrappage scheme (and how to fix it) and how Nikki's (and Electric Dreams - the book she suggested I might enjoy has) bloody broken my view of petrol engines.

Comments

[shadesofmauve]

Are they big chains? When I had to work for a big-box clothing company here one summer, I was appalled by how little training we were given. Unless I'd had to clean that specific area, I had NO IDEA what we had. I hated it, customers hated it, presumably the store has so much turnover they don't give a shit.

Granted, I was a bit better at the whole 'customer service' thing than you describe...but I wouldn't be surprised if it's less a problem with people only interested in surface stuff as a problem with large-scale retail in general.

To counter-act this, I had a really marvelous mechanic experience recently! Pulling into a shop (with a very minor light problem) to find out they do motorcycles, not cars, and the guy came out anyway, took a look, and showed me exactly what I needed to do fix it. Some places still rock. (I'm car-inept, by the way).

[pyoor_excuse]

Yeah, they're both big chains. Years ago Maplin used to be staffed by geeks - but now they're staffed by any old sod who fancies a job. Part of it comes down to the UK's somewhat more relaxed version of customer service - which here boils down to if the customer asks for something you may deign to speak to them, briefly.

It is great when people go beyond what's required - it's the sort of thing that makes you recommend them. I ++ recommend the place I got the clutch shoes for the DAF done because their services was excellent...

[aminorjourney.livejournal.com]

Being a helpfull soul that I am, perhaps I can point you to this wonderful group of people:

http://www.veva.bc.ca/home/index.php

They're in Vancouver, don't ya know.

And they could help you build your very own EV...

[pyoor_excuse]

Shush you.