Banana Monarchy

BR: We are sorry, but our website is a juggernaut of destruction that, once set in motion, cannot be stopped until all mankind is ground to dust beneath it.

BR:Can we help you with anything else?

Banana Brains. Their customer service representatives apparently need some attention as well.

There is actually an area to enter your Promo code - I've used it myself. Goto Checkout your "Shopping Bag" and select "No, I don't have any saved information" and it'll prompt you for your details. There's a wee box at the bottom that says "Would you like to use a special promotion code or redeem a GiftCard or Online Gift Certificate?" - I'm guessing you click "Yes" and you can enter the code.

Not intuitive - but still more functional than most.

Still doesn't excuse the snotty patronising attitude of the sales rep....

Gee, I don't know why online shopping isn't doing as well as people expected. Could it be bad ordering design and crappy customer service? What happened to the days when the salesperson would bend over backwards to make the customer happy? Now it's "You interrupted me with your stupid call. Let me fain interest in keeping you as a customer of this crappy company that pays me minimum wage to give a damn and could lay me off any second."

That was the funniest thing I've heard in a very long time. Todd, you just made my day...

Unfortunately, most phone operators are un-able to think for themselves and follow the rules to a ridiculous extent.

My sister ordered me an XMas present from Eddie Bauer. Their website didn't mention, nor did the phone operator when she called, that sending to me in Berlin would incur import duty of 70%. I forked over about $50 when I got the suprise gift in the mail.

I knew my sister had bought tons of stuff from EB, so I called to complain and asked them to at least pay for half of the money I had had to pay for my gift. I was polite until the third person I talked to balked and started this little "conflict resolution script" ("well, perhaps you should take your anger out on the German government, sir.")

I sat down and wrote an email to the closest thing to a Head of Marketing or Head of Customer Experience I could find. I mentioned things like "customer aqcuisition costs", "lifetime value", and "customer satisfaction." They sent me $100.

Oooh, I hate to say this, but that lacking-in-ability to stop an order really isn’ that uncommon. The problem lies with merging the web systems with the legacy infrastructure of the inventory and warehouse systems. It’s unfortunately very difficult, time consuming, and really expensive to merge those systems when you have an operation of such scale. Retailers, if they have any customer focus at all, will admit it’s a problem and hopefully, they’re working to solve it — but the reality is that it’s going to be a while before it’s fixed and your average phone monkey (let alone compnay president) has no idea why it works that way, let alone how to fix it. :(

Simple answer? Stop purchasing products at these places.

if u really want to know what those telephone operators' lives are like, u should read 'eight minutes idle' by Matt Thorne

Why is your permalink icon so fucking small?

(Oops, sorry-- I get like that after reading Oblivio. But why? I'm just trying to link to your blog from my own...)

Hmm, I ordered a book from bol.co.uk a while ago. Later the same day I get an emailer from them with a money-off voucher on books. So I call to try and cancel my book order, or make the voucher work on it. Even though I hadn't been billed yet, and the book hasn't shipped, it's still impossible to change the order. But the operator, sensibly, tells me to just buy another one with the voucher and send the first one back when I get it; I'll get a refund. It worked. But isn't it things like this that'll bankrupt e-tailers? Sure I'm happy, but what did this cost them? And all because of their internal processes preventing a simple change to a transaction.