Complaining Can Be a Good Thing

Hello, everybody. It has been almost two months since my last blog post.

This is blog post number three. Today, I come to you about complaining. Everybody does it. Sometimes, it’s good to complain.

Recently, I went to the local Rite Aid to purchase printer ink that had been advertised in their flyer, and a Hallmark card. When you can save over $15 on printer ink, you want your discount. After filling out a form to get the store’s discount card so I could save some money, I was told by the cashier the ink I wanted to buy wasn’t on sale. This didn’t make me happy. The flyer mentioned some specific brands, and said others were also on sale. I mentioned this fact about the other inks to the cashier, but she didn’t know anything about it, so she called over the manager. At the time, the person she called over didn’t look like a manager. He didn’t have a name tag stating he was one, and he sure wasn’t dressed like one. He had the same uniform on as the cashier. I’ve worked many places, and have been a manager at some of them. Managers are usually dressed differently from the other employees and if they aren’t, then they still have a name tag stating they are a manager.

He came over and seemed indifferent. He didn’t know which ink the flyer was referring to and didn’t even offer to try to find out. I was so aggravated I almost decided to leave not only the ink on the counter, but the card as well. I didn’t do that. I bought the card, then left the store.

I was still steamed because of the indifference of the manager and for the time I wasted filling out the form to get a discount card that I wasn’t able to use. I decided to look up the corporate phone number online and called. Since it was a Sunday, no one was working at the corporate office. I decided to email them instead.

I did get a response from the corporate office, and they had the manager call me as well. He apologized and I was able to get my printer ink for $15.99. There’s some truth to the saying that the squeaky wheel gets the oil. It does pay to complain at times, and an unhappy customer experience turned into a pleasant one after all.