Trouble with a Tom Thumb-bought gift card
This was embarrassing.
Loyal readers of these pages know we are pretty loyal to the south-side Tom Thumb for our weekly shopping. The other day my wife was buying groceries there, and she added a Blockbuster gift card to her cart. We thought that would be a good gift to thank our neighbors for pet-sitting.
At the check-out stand, the clerk rings up the Blockbuster gift card and gives my wife a receipt that shows it's been activated. We give the gift card to our neighbors. A day later, they go to the Blockbuster in the same shopping center (FM2499/FM3040) and try to use it. It doesn't work. The clerk at Blockbuster says it's *not* been activated. Our friends are very nice. They go ahead and pay for their movie rentals with their own money. Later, they quietly let us know the card didn't work for them. Ugh -- that's no good.
My wife calls the Tom Thumb store on the phone, but they say to call the Blockbuster store. My wife calls the Blockbuster store, but they refer her to the Blockbuster website. After searching Blockbuster's website, she finds no mention of help for her specific situation.
My wife goes back to Tom Thumb with the card and the activation receipt and tells two customer service representatives what happened. They tell her they cannot help her, and that all sales are final when it comes to gift cards. They say she can wait until the next day to visit with the store manager. Alternatively, they tell her to go to Blockbuster, which she does. After some computer wrangling the Blockbuster clerk is able to get the card to work. They also give our neighbors a free rental for their inconvenience. We'll give the neighbors the working card, which they can enjoy on their next visit.
I realize gift cards are a tricky proposition for a reseller like Tom Thumb, since it may be difficult for them to track how a gift card is used after they sell it. But for them to tell my wife that they won't help her with a purchase she made at their store is unfortunate. And for a store that's spent big bucks on a makeover, and is putting new energy into customer service, this is not a good sign.
I'll e-mail this to Tom Thumb and post any reply right here. I realize this is small potatoes compared to the real problems of this world, but this site is a garden of small potatoes.
posted by Chip Mahaney @ 9:40 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Gosh what a pain that must have been!
Well I'll add my 3 tales of poor service at this particular Tom Thumb to yours:
1. As I was checking out one day the clerk thanked me using a name different from mine. Turns out she keyed in the wrong reward card number. I asked her to fix it and she said I would have to call someone at the corporate office. Fooey!
2. During the grand opening, the clerk sacked my purchases then walked off to leave me to load them in my basket. Happened again recently.
3. I mistakenly wrote a check for $10.00 over the amount of the purchase. Clerk said I hadn't written at least ten checks there so couldn't get cash back & had to write a new check. I said I most definitely had written more than ten checks and could she get a manager to override - alas said manager proclaimed it was a "corporate" policy and no she couldn't help. (Apologies to the poor folks in line behind me who had to wait.)
I shop at that store because it is on my way home and I really detest Albertson's. I can also do my banking there. I'm having a hard time trying to justify the higher prices because the better service doesn't seem to be there.
LindaJ
I'm just worried because I have purchased plenty of gift cards there over the years. Hummm....I wonder if any of them had the same problem. Unlike your situation, I doubt the people I gave them to would've come and told me they didn't work!
"Customer service" has become a foreign concept to many businesses in America. That's why they farm out "customer service" call centers to India. The companies care so little about your satisfaction that they don't care if you have to struggle to understand the guy on the other end of the phone while also dealing with some other problem with their business. That attitude has filtered down to the people you meet face to face in these stores.
In a case like this, clearly Tom Thumb should have a procedure in place to make the customer happy. Instead they have a finger pointing procedure. It's not their fault, it's Blockbuster's fault.
Blockbuster didn't care enough to try to help initially, they just wanted your wife to go to their website to be done with the problem. Finally she found a real human being at Blockbuster who did help.
Over the past few years I've only found one chain of stores that have uniformly good customer service: Wal-Mart and Sams Club.
I know many people think Wal-Mart is the root of all evil in the world, but I couldn't disagree more.
In the past week, we've had to get a refund at Sams and return something to Wal-Mart. In both cases the store employees and managers went out of their way to help us. We left as satisfied customers.
Other stores could compete for more of my business if they offered better customer service. Hopefully stores like Tom Thumb will eventually learn that good customer service = more money on the bottom line.
Wow, does this blog.news organization know of anything else to beat on besides Tom Thumb? I got poor customer service there, complained and won't be back. It was a very strange story, that would take too long to write about...
My not returning to the store speaks enough, and should be the end of it.
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