Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
Discussion - Member to Member Sales - Research Center
'I feel I was not treated well by staff at your Omaha store at 125 and Center last week. I had a small copy order, was waived over to self service then when that machine jammed they acted like I'd broken it. This was a simple job, copying a dozen standard size pages to slightly larger paper. The manager told me they 'couldn't do it'. He told me to take my order to Kinko's. When I called next day to speak to the manager I got someone sounding like a kid who offered no help, he did not even take my name or #. The guys working in your copy center are collecting a paycheck, not putting any effort into customer service. '
I was trying to copy fro standard size paper to blank Scott album pages. How hard can that be? There were two guys just standing around on duty. They could put up a couple of cardboard cutouts and save the money.
I've had a run of bad luck doing this lately. Some places just do not want to be bothered with small jobs like this. Really poor..
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The people in the Office Depot that I go to are wonderful. Nothing is too small, and if a customer doesn't want to use self-service, they'll gladly do it for you. Using the APS benefit rate of just 2.5 cents per copy is also great!
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Michael,
How does the APS benefit rate thing work?
David
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If you are a member of the APS, you get a special Office Depot store purchasing card that gives you discounts on many items purchased. Of course you don't earn rewards from Office Depot if you use the APS card, but sometimes the savings outweigh what you'll earn in rewards, especially with copy and print services.
When I go to Office Depot, I'll have them total up my purchase and see how much I save using the APS purchase card. If there isn't a discount, or not much of a difference, I'll forego the APS savings and take the rewards instead. VIP level in Office Depot rewards is quite good too.
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I think each location is different, with its own culture. This one used to be OK, I've noticed annoying things there for the past few years. Not like this time however. One of these guys was actually blocking me access to the printer I'd been using. I'd wanted to go back and be sure the job I'd started was closed on their system, since I'd swiped my credit card. He said'we'll take care of it'. Almost always when I walk in some eager young kid accosts me wanting to 'help' and follows me around until I ask them to find something else to do. Wonder if it's really due to shoplifters.
What I really need to do is find a small copy shop, some mom and pop thing. Hourly staff at these franchise outlets really and truly often don't care. They're paid by the hour whether they stand around staring into space or assist people.
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We used to have 4 Office Depots in our area. Two got closed down and consolidated with their nearest counterpart. The store closest to me was closed. I didn't cry over that. I once found a nice monitor on a clearance table. It was priced at 75% off. On top of that, I had a $40 off coupon.
The manager was at the register, and at first refused to sell it to me. He said the he wanted to buy it. I told him I was buying it, and not him. After a short discussion, he rang up the sale. I then gave him the coupon. He refused to take it saying that the item was on sale and he wasn't going to lose any more money on it. I told him that the coupon had no exclusions other than the price of the item had to be $75 or more. After a short discussion, he took the coupon. I reported the incident to corporate. I never saw that manager again, but the attitude of the staff was, and continued to be terrible.
Having been a corporate store manager, I firmly believe that the employees of a store directly reflect the attitude of the manager. If the manager doesn't care, neither does the staff. I turned my store in 60 days from a failing store that corporate was getting ready to close to one that turned a profit. My area manager told me at the end of that first quarter that the store produced the first bonuses for management in several years.
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"...What I really need to do is find a small copy shop, some mom and pop thing..."
I went into a Best Buy years ago to purchase the highest end computer they had in stock (it was for a company who needed it for a graphics workstation). Standing there, a young Best Buy associate came over asked if he could help me. Pointing to the highest priced floor model I said, “I’ll take one of these please’. The kid looks at me and says, ‘Yeah right, dude’, turns, and walks away. Not exactly salesperson of the year.
But as a previous owner of a ‘mom and pop’ retail store, my perspective is a bit different.
I am as guilty as everyone else in supporting places that ‘save me money’. Most consumers care more about getting the cheapest price than getting quality customer service. In every town and city across America, big box stores ran millions of small ‘mom and pop’ stores out of business based solely upon being cheaper. So we get what we deserve, we gave up competent help because we wanted stuff cheaper. Instead of experienced customer assistance, we have a minimum wage, pimply-faced teen who is too busy on his phone to be bothered to even come help a customer.
We no longer have ‘mom and pop’ butcher shops or corner grocery stores but this is not due to poor management. It is due to us, we are the ones who stopped supporting retailers who provided service and added-value. We are the ones who flock to the big box retailers.
In an interesting twist, now the big box retailers are being crushed in their own game. Consumers are now buying online, saving more money at the expense of additional customer service.
So when I think about who I should blame about bad customer service, I go look in the mirror.
Don
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I have no experience with Office Depot, they all closed in my area. My experience is with Staples. And I've found that while they advertise they can do all business printing, they are really just skimming off the easy stuff that would keep a real commercial printer afloat, using their inexperienced minimum wage labor.
Try getting business printing done! They fail miserably!
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"We no longer have ‘mom and pop’ butcher shops or corner grocery stores"
Don, do you have little grocery stores in small strip malls? we have them. They are run by Koreans, Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, and others. I go to them all the time, and some even have butcher shops in them. I went to an Indian grocery store tonight to get a steak to cook on my new BBQ grill. The butcher fresh cut the meat right off the hunk of beef from the cooler. It was a 1 1/4 pound Porterhouse Steak. Got it for just $5.95 per pound (regular price). It was great!
You might be surprised that the prices are so low. Remember that these little stores don't advertise, and they don't have large instances of shoplifting. They are run by families, so employee expenses and overall costs to run the business are very low. Those lower costs are passed along to their customers. Check them out. The Korean and Chinese grocery stores can be very interesting too!
Mom and Pop stores are still very much alive. It's just that a certain group of people have given up trying. Others have come to this country to fill that void, and are doing quite nicely.
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Hi Michael,
As a small business owner, my experience is personal so perhaps I am biased. And while I have never been wrong, I do at least admit to the capacity to err. 
(LOL, am just kidding of course).
I left the retail industry 30 years ago (although my wife remained) to start a technology company and I have been active with various SBA events and conferences over the years. This afforded me exposure to many other small business owners, their concerns, and their challenges.
But more importantly, the metrics in US do not support your observations regarding small businesses. There are plenty of studies, data, and reports which document the decline of startup small businesses, the dominance of retail giants, and the negative impact of online commence at the expense of local businesses. A typical example are the sales numbers for ‘Small Business Saturday’ (falling between the much more recognizable ‘Black Friday’ and ‘Cyber Monday’) which continues to fall year after year. According to US census data, the number of companies less than a year old has declined as a share of all businesses by nearly 44 percent between 1978 and 2012.
But folks who are interested can do an online search for themselves for data on the decline of small US businesses. I certainly wish this were not true but am guilty of the shopping behaviors which are contributing to the declines.
As the OP (Snick1946) posted, his first choice was to shop at a big box store. And as you pointed out, some folks might be swayed to shop at Office Depot for the APS discount. APS is not incentivizing shopping with small businesses, they are supporting big box stores. I think a big part of the decline in small businesses is our shopping mentality that 'small business will charge more' and 'I know if I buy this at Walmart/Amazon/Office Depot that I will be getting it at a good price'. This shopping mentality is now firmly ingrained in our shopping behaviors.
Don
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Interesting discussion,thanks to all.
I did have my APS discount card with me, intended to shop for some paper and a cartridge which I did not do as I felt I was being shown the door. Their corporate office on their site promises a rely to complaints in 24 hours, it'now been three days.
I have noticed OD sends out coupon offers that look really great, until you read all the limitations in fine print. I may let the APS know, just for kicks.
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I guess in my area the economy is more vibrant. There are small businesses all over the place, and most have been in business for many years.
Personally, I have always (since I was growing up) liked shopping the smaller businesses as I like the friendlier atmosphere. I have run across a few small businesses where the owners were poses. I don't return to those places, the same as for larger businesses where the customer service sucks too.
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Some retailer shop owners are their own worst enemies. There was a miniatures store named the ‘Doll House’ a few doors down from one of our shops in a strip mall. It was an incredible store, almost equal to a museum for miniatures. They had all kinds of nice inventory include salesman’s samples and other miniature furniture which rivalled the value of the full size antique furniture in my living room. The doll houses they displayed were big bucks, most 100 years old or older.
But on the front door, they had a big sign. In big letters across the top it said, DO NOT COME IN THIS SHOP IF… and then a list if ‘do’s and don’ts’ for just entering the shop. The older couple who owned it were a very nice couple but talk about retailer burn out. After being in retail business for several decades, they had had enough of the moronic customers and inconsiderate fools who you deal with in a retail business.
My wife, who is the nicest person on earth and as much a Type B personality as a person can be, has the patience of a saint. She had no problems with the parents who dropped the kids off in our shop while they moved on the grocery shop. (For me, I did not mind if the parents were customers, but many were not.) I also bristled at investing hours in helping customers only to see them later in the day walking out of WalMart with all the supplies they could have purchased in my shop. I mean, if I had quoted them and they shopped it around, no problem. But once we had the reputation offering great help, people would just come in to get free information about the hobby and not even ask about a quote or make a small purchase.
And finally one day a customer spit in my wife’s face when she told him she could not special order a product we did not carry. He then sat out in the parking lot watching my wife (who was by herself). She called the police and they said they would come out in 45 minutes. She called me in tears at work and I raced down there. When I got there, the jerk was still sitting in his car, I pulled him out through his car window so we could 'discuss' the situation. When the police finally arrived, he was on the ground waiting for them. They arrested him for assault and he was convicted. I was not willing to have my wife be alone in the shop after that so she closed it.
So I understand and can sympathize with retailers who ‘burn out’. But I also understand the frustration of little to no customer service that is exhibited by some stores/sellers.
Don
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If your wife didn't, when she called the police she should have told them that she was assaulted by the jerk sitting in the car, and was afraid for her safety that he'd come back into the store. The act was an assault against her.
I agree with you about the moron shop owners who pout themselves out of business with their attitudes.
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Well it got better. Office Depot ran a charge through on my debit card for self service copying. Just $6.87 but still I only got one page out of the deal. As narrated the moron working there prevented me from touching anything on the copy machine after it jammed. I spent several minutes entering an online dispute so hopefully they will credit that back.
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As said each store has a personality and often determined by the manager.
My biggest gripe on brick and mortar stores is long lines at checkout. Some stores are smart enough to have cashiers to call for help to assist in checkouts.
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My bank gave me back the funds. It took less than ten minutes from the time I sent the claim. I get the feeling that poor customer service with accompanying complaints is now a 'thing' with Office Depot. I never heard back on my online complaint to their website and know I never will. We may see them close even more locations in the future.
The comment about checkout lines brought back memories of many years ago; we were doing our weekly grocery shopping at a nearby supermarket that utilized almost exclusively High schoolkids as checkers, it meant long waits getting a legal adult over to ring up a beer or alcohol purchase, sometimes several minutes. I complained several times to the store manager and was promised correction of the problem, they never did. We took our business elsewhere.
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How do I acquire a 'special Office Depot purchasing card' , being an APS member??
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"Some retailer shop owners are their own worst enemies. "
Absolutely! Hobby shops are an endangered species, a lot of their failure was due to eccentric or clueless owners who really had no business being in business.
Right here in Exton Pennsylvania...
There was (note I said was) a model train shop in town. They had abbreviated hours and I finally was passing while they were open. I went to see what they had. As a model car builder, railroad G scale is nearly the scale I build, so I was looking for accessories, buildings and diorama type supplies. I do a lot of weathering and use model rail road paints and such. I easily spend $50-100 at such a shop.
I walked in and there was a single older guy behind the counter. I said hello and wanted to look around. He scurried around the counter to confront me. He interrogated me about my wants. I explained myself as in the last paragraph. He tensed up and said he had nothing I'd be interested in. I then asked to "just look around" and he wouldn't let me pass, motioning me to the door. As in "what's wrong with this guy chasing away customers?"
About six months later he was gone, and there was a big dumpster out front for renovations to a new business. Good for him!
In New Jersey there is a fairly well equipped hobby shop where I have bought supplies. One of the owners is known for military models. I approached the counter with about $50 worth of Evergreen plastic building supplies. They guy was smiling and asked, "Whatcha building?" I told him of my current project of a 1970s Ford pickup truck. His face fell, "Oh, cars.." He looked down and solemnly completed the transaction without conversation. Heck, if I'm running a store, ANY project a customer described would be the BEST PROJECT in the world during that conversation!
There is a coin shop here in town that I went into ONCE. As I entered I was immediately surrounded by the haze and stink of cigarette smoke. Two old guys behind the counter both were actively smoking and had a big nasty ashtray full of butts on the main counter. To compliment this they nodded hello to me, but they were fully absorbed in a conversation between themselves, pretty much using the F word as punctuation. I don't think either of them could complete a sentence with out it!
I looked around a bit. I saw they had the nice Whitman premium coin albums, but realized anything I bought there would be saturated with cigarette stink. So I quietly left. I don't think they even noticed!
It's amazing the people in business. And when they fail, they'll blame Hobby Lobby, the Internet or state sales tax... never looking at themselves!
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I did hear from Office Depot re my complaint to them. They wanted to know what store this was. Heck, I gave them the darn address in my original email. Not looking for much to happen.
I sometimes see people on here and other such forums complaining about bad stamp dealers- justified in some cases. The more I see of what folks in other hobbies have to put up with the better off I think we are.
I know of one local stamp club with a president who owns a shop dealing mostly in sports cards. Nothing wrong with that I guess. It's just strange.
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One last update, I heard from the manager of the store- he called and emailed me; it sounded that he wanted to get more details; fine, but he also mentioned 'us all sitting down together'. (!)
Yeah sure. I'm gonna go back in and meet with him and these two nasty bozos. That's his idea of management? I emailed back, told him he knows who these guys are and that I felt nothing would be accomplished by having some 'Kumbaya' moment. I bet they gave him Sensitivity Training.
If anybody has Office depot stock as part of your investment portfolio, I'd suggest dumping it. I have been through this sort of thing before. When a company you've been patronizing stops treating their customers like a valuable asset, they're going down.
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Snick, if you're too busy or if the distance is burden that's one thing but I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss the manager on this. Sounds like he'd like to use this a teachable moment. Of course, you're not on their payroll and share no responsibility for training his staff but since you seem to feel so strongly about it, you might consider meeting up with them to calmly and rationally discuss how they could have done better. At the conclusion of the meeting I would ask for a credit voucher for your time and I bet, moving forward, you'd get red carpet service! Just a thought.
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Corporations like the "Dollar" store types purposely put their stores in low income neighborhoods. That's their demographics. Low income ppl are pretty much forced to shop in their stores because they can undercut the competition by a few cents and budget-minded consumers have to shop that way. (Disclaimer:: this is just an observation and an opinion only) 
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Here's the text of a compliant message I just sent to Office Depot this morning:
'I feel I was not treated well by staff at your Omaha store at 125 and Center last week. I had a small copy order, was waived over to self service then when that machine jammed they acted like I'd broken it. This was a simple job, copying a dozen standard size pages to slightly larger paper. The manager told me they 'couldn't do it'. He told me to take my order to Kinko's. When I called next day to speak to the manager I got someone sounding like a kid who offered no help, he did not even take my name or #. The guys working in your copy center are collecting a paycheck, not putting any effort into customer service. '
I was trying to copy fro standard size paper to blank Scott album pages. How hard can that be? There were two guys just standing around on duty. They could put up a couple of cardboard cutouts and save the money.
I've had a run of bad luck doing this lately. Some places just do not want to be bothered with small jobs like this. Really poor..
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
The people in the Office Depot that I go to are wonderful. Nothing is too small, and if a customer doesn't want to use self-service, they'll gladly do it for you. Using the APS benefit rate of just 2.5 cents per copy is also great!
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
Michael,
How does the APS benefit rate thing work?
David
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
If you are a member of the APS, you get a special Office Depot store purchasing card that gives you discounts on many items purchased. Of course you don't earn rewards from Office Depot if you use the APS card, but sometimes the savings outweigh what you'll earn in rewards, especially with copy and print services.
When I go to Office Depot, I'll have them total up my purchase and see how much I save using the APS purchase card. If there isn't a discount, or not much of a difference, I'll forego the APS savings and take the rewards instead. VIP level in Office Depot rewards is quite good too.
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
I think each location is different, with its own culture. This one used to be OK, I've noticed annoying things there for the past few years. Not like this time however. One of these guys was actually blocking me access to the printer I'd been using. I'd wanted to go back and be sure the job I'd started was closed on their system, since I'd swiped my credit card. He said'we'll take care of it'. Almost always when I walk in some eager young kid accosts me wanting to 'help' and follows me around until I ask them to find something else to do. Wonder if it's really due to shoplifters.
What I really need to do is find a small copy shop, some mom and pop thing. Hourly staff at these franchise outlets really and truly often don't care. They're paid by the hour whether they stand around staring into space or assist people.
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
We used to have 4 Office Depots in our area. Two got closed down and consolidated with their nearest counterpart. The store closest to me was closed. I didn't cry over that. I once found a nice monitor on a clearance table. It was priced at 75% off. On top of that, I had a $40 off coupon.
The manager was at the register, and at first refused to sell it to me. He said the he wanted to buy it. I told him I was buying it, and not him. After a short discussion, he rang up the sale. I then gave him the coupon. He refused to take it saying that the item was on sale and he wasn't going to lose any more money on it. I told him that the coupon had no exclusions other than the price of the item had to be $75 or more. After a short discussion, he took the coupon. I reported the incident to corporate. I never saw that manager again, but the attitude of the staff was, and continued to be terrible.
Having been a corporate store manager, I firmly believe that the employees of a store directly reflect the attitude of the manager. If the manager doesn't care, neither does the staff. I turned my store in 60 days from a failing store that corporate was getting ready to close to one that turned a profit. My area manager told me at the end of that first quarter that the store produced the first bonuses for management in several years.
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
"...What I really need to do is find a small copy shop, some mom and pop thing..."
I went into a Best Buy years ago to purchase the highest end computer they had in stock (it was for a company who needed it for a graphics workstation). Standing there, a young Best Buy associate came over asked if he could help me. Pointing to the highest priced floor model I said, “I’ll take one of these please’. The kid looks at me and says, ‘Yeah right, dude’, turns, and walks away. Not exactly salesperson of the year.
But as a previous owner of a ‘mom and pop’ retail store, my perspective is a bit different.
I am as guilty as everyone else in supporting places that ‘save me money’. Most consumers care more about getting the cheapest price than getting quality customer service. In every town and city across America, big box stores ran millions of small ‘mom and pop’ stores out of business based solely upon being cheaper. So we get what we deserve, we gave up competent help because we wanted stuff cheaper. Instead of experienced customer assistance, we have a minimum wage, pimply-faced teen who is too busy on his phone to be bothered to even come help a customer.
We no longer have ‘mom and pop’ butcher shops or corner grocery stores but this is not due to poor management. It is due to us, we are the ones who stopped supporting retailers who provided service and added-value. We are the ones who flock to the big box retailers.
In an interesting twist, now the big box retailers are being crushed in their own game. Consumers are now buying online, saving more money at the expense of additional customer service.
So when I think about who I should blame about bad customer service, I go look in the mirror.
Don
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
I have no experience with Office Depot, they all closed in my area. My experience is with Staples. And I've found that while they advertise they can do all business printing, they are really just skimming off the easy stuff that would keep a real commercial printer afloat, using their inexperienced minimum wage labor.
Try getting business printing done! They fail miserably!
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
"We no longer have ‘mom and pop’ butcher shops or corner grocery stores"
Don, do you have little grocery stores in small strip malls? we have them. They are run by Koreans, Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, and others. I go to them all the time, and some even have butcher shops in them. I went to an Indian grocery store tonight to get a steak to cook on my new BBQ grill. The butcher fresh cut the meat right off the hunk of beef from the cooler. It was a 1 1/4 pound Porterhouse Steak. Got it for just $5.95 per pound (regular price). It was great!
You might be surprised that the prices are so low. Remember that these little stores don't advertise, and they don't have large instances of shoplifting. They are run by families, so employee expenses and overall costs to run the business are very low. Those lower costs are passed along to their customers. Check them out. The Korean and Chinese grocery stores can be very interesting too!
Mom and Pop stores are still very much alive. It's just that a certain group of people have given up trying. Others have come to this country to fill that void, and are doing quite nicely.
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
Hi Michael,
As a small business owner, my experience is personal so perhaps I am biased. And while I have never been wrong, I do at least admit to the capacity to err. (LOL, am just kidding of course).
I left the retail industry 30 years ago (although my wife remained) to start a technology company and I have been active with various SBA events and conferences over the years. This afforded me exposure to many other small business owners, their concerns, and their challenges.
But more importantly, the metrics in US do not support your observations regarding small businesses. There are plenty of studies, data, and reports which document the decline of startup small businesses, the dominance of retail giants, and the negative impact of online commence at the expense of local businesses. A typical example are the sales numbers for ‘Small Business Saturday’ (falling between the much more recognizable ‘Black Friday’ and ‘Cyber Monday’) which continues to fall year after year. According to US census data, the number of companies less than a year old has declined as a share of all businesses by nearly 44 percent between 1978 and 2012.
But folks who are interested can do an online search for themselves for data on the decline of small US businesses. I certainly wish this were not true but am guilty of the shopping behaviors which are contributing to the declines.
As the OP (Snick1946) posted, his first choice was to shop at a big box store. And as you pointed out, some folks might be swayed to shop at Office Depot for the APS discount. APS is not incentivizing shopping with small businesses, they are supporting big box stores. I think a big part of the decline in small businesses is our shopping mentality that 'small business will charge more' and 'I know if I buy this at Walmart/Amazon/Office Depot that I will be getting it at a good price'. This shopping mentality is now firmly ingrained in our shopping behaviors.
Don
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
Interesting discussion,thanks to all.
I did have my APS discount card with me, intended to shop for some paper and a cartridge which I did not do as I felt I was being shown the door. Their corporate office on their site promises a rely to complaints in 24 hours, it'now been three days.
I have noticed OD sends out coupon offers that look really great, until you read all the limitations in fine print. I may let the APS know, just for kicks.
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
I guess in my area the economy is more vibrant. There are small businesses all over the place, and most have been in business for many years.
Personally, I have always (since I was growing up) liked shopping the smaller businesses as I like the friendlier atmosphere. I have run across a few small businesses where the owners were poses. I don't return to those places, the same as for larger businesses where the customer service sucks too.
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
Some retailer shop owners are their own worst enemies. There was a miniatures store named the ‘Doll House’ a few doors down from one of our shops in a strip mall. It was an incredible store, almost equal to a museum for miniatures. They had all kinds of nice inventory include salesman’s samples and other miniature furniture which rivalled the value of the full size antique furniture in my living room. The doll houses they displayed were big bucks, most 100 years old or older.
But on the front door, they had a big sign. In big letters across the top it said, DO NOT COME IN THIS SHOP IF… and then a list if ‘do’s and don’ts’ for just entering the shop. The older couple who owned it were a very nice couple but talk about retailer burn out. After being in retail business for several decades, they had had enough of the moronic customers and inconsiderate fools who you deal with in a retail business.
My wife, who is the nicest person on earth and as much a Type B personality as a person can be, has the patience of a saint. She had no problems with the parents who dropped the kids off in our shop while they moved on the grocery shop. (For me, I did not mind if the parents were customers, but many were not.) I also bristled at investing hours in helping customers only to see them later in the day walking out of WalMart with all the supplies they could have purchased in my shop. I mean, if I had quoted them and they shopped it around, no problem. But once we had the reputation offering great help, people would just come in to get free information about the hobby and not even ask about a quote or make a small purchase.
And finally one day a customer spit in my wife’s face when she told him she could not special order a product we did not carry. He then sat out in the parking lot watching my wife (who was by herself). She called the police and they said they would come out in 45 minutes. She called me in tears at work and I raced down there. When I got there, the jerk was still sitting in his car, I pulled him out through his car window so we could 'discuss' the situation. When the police finally arrived, he was on the ground waiting for them. They arrested him for assault and he was convicted. I was not willing to have my wife be alone in the shop after that so she closed it.
So I understand and can sympathize with retailers who ‘burn out’. But I also understand the frustration of little to no customer service that is exhibited by some stores/sellers.
Don
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
If your wife didn't, when she called the police she should have told them that she was assaulted by the jerk sitting in the car, and was afraid for her safety that he'd come back into the store. The act was an assault against her.
I agree with you about the moron shop owners who pout themselves out of business with their attitudes.
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
Well it got better. Office Depot ran a charge through on my debit card for self service copying. Just $6.87 but still I only got one page out of the deal. As narrated the moron working there prevented me from touching anything on the copy machine after it jammed. I spent several minutes entering an online dispute so hopefully they will credit that back.
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
As said each store has a personality and often determined by the manager.
My biggest gripe on brick and mortar stores is long lines at checkout. Some stores are smart enough to have cashiers to call for help to assist in checkouts.
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
My bank gave me back the funds. It took less than ten minutes from the time I sent the claim. I get the feeling that poor customer service with accompanying complaints is now a 'thing' with Office Depot. I never heard back on my online complaint to their website and know I never will. We may see them close even more locations in the future.
The comment about checkout lines brought back memories of many years ago; we were doing our weekly grocery shopping at a nearby supermarket that utilized almost exclusively High schoolkids as checkers, it meant long waits getting a legal adult over to ring up a beer or alcohol purchase, sometimes several minutes. I complained several times to the store manager and was promised correction of the problem, they never did. We took our business elsewhere.
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
How do I acquire a 'special Office Depot purchasing card' , being an APS member??
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
"Some retailer shop owners are their own worst enemies. "
Absolutely! Hobby shops are an endangered species, a lot of their failure was due to eccentric or clueless owners who really had no business being in business.
Right here in Exton Pennsylvania...
There was (note I said was) a model train shop in town. They had abbreviated hours and I finally was passing while they were open. I went to see what they had. As a model car builder, railroad G scale is nearly the scale I build, so I was looking for accessories, buildings and diorama type supplies. I do a lot of weathering and use model rail road paints and such. I easily spend $50-100 at such a shop.
I walked in and there was a single older guy behind the counter. I said hello and wanted to look around. He scurried around the counter to confront me. He interrogated me about my wants. I explained myself as in the last paragraph. He tensed up and said he had nothing I'd be interested in. I then asked to "just look around" and he wouldn't let me pass, motioning me to the door. As in "what's wrong with this guy chasing away customers?"
About six months later he was gone, and there was a big dumpster out front for renovations to a new business. Good for him!
In New Jersey there is a fairly well equipped hobby shop where I have bought supplies. One of the owners is known for military models. I approached the counter with about $50 worth of Evergreen plastic building supplies. They guy was smiling and asked, "Whatcha building?" I told him of my current project of a 1970s Ford pickup truck. His face fell, "Oh, cars.." He looked down and solemnly completed the transaction without conversation. Heck, if I'm running a store, ANY project a customer described would be the BEST PROJECT in the world during that conversation!
There is a coin shop here in town that I went into ONCE. As I entered I was immediately surrounded by the haze and stink of cigarette smoke. Two old guys behind the counter both were actively smoking and had a big nasty ashtray full of butts on the main counter. To compliment this they nodded hello to me, but they were fully absorbed in a conversation between themselves, pretty much using the F word as punctuation. I don't think either of them could complete a sentence with out it!
I looked around a bit. I saw they had the nice Whitman premium coin albums, but realized anything I bought there would be saturated with cigarette stink. So I quietly left. I don't think they even noticed!
It's amazing the people in business. And when they fail, they'll blame Hobby Lobby, the Internet or state sales tax... never looking at themselves!
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
I did hear from Office Depot re my complaint to them. They wanted to know what store this was. Heck, I gave them the darn address in my original email. Not looking for much to happen.
I sometimes see people on here and other such forums complaining about bad stamp dealers- justified in some cases. The more I see of what folks in other hobbies have to put up with the better off I think we are.
I know of one local stamp club with a president who owns a shop dealing mostly in sports cards. Nothing wrong with that I guess. It's just strange.
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One last update, I heard from the manager of the store- he called and emailed me; it sounded that he wanted to get more details; fine, but he also mentioned 'us all sitting down together'. (!)
Yeah sure. I'm gonna go back in and meet with him and these two nasty bozos. That's his idea of management? I emailed back, told him he knows who these guys are and that I felt nothing would be accomplished by having some 'Kumbaya' moment. I bet they gave him Sensitivity Training.
If anybody has Office depot stock as part of your investment portfolio, I'd suggest dumping it. I have been through this sort of thing before. When a company you've been patronizing stops treating their customers like a valuable asset, they're going down.
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
Snick, if you're too busy or if the distance is burden that's one thing but I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss the manager on this. Sounds like he'd like to use this a teachable moment. Of course, you're not on their payroll and share no responsibility for training his staff but since you seem to feel so strongly about it, you might consider meeting up with them to calmly and rationally discuss how they could have done better. At the conclusion of the meeting I would ask for a credit voucher for your time and I bet, moving forward, you'd get red carpet service! Just a thought.
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re: Adventures in Photocopying
Corporations like the "Dollar" store types purposely put their stores in low income neighborhoods. That's their demographics. Low income ppl are pretty much forced to shop in their stores because they can undercut the competition by a few cents and budget-minded consumers have to shop that way. (Disclaimer:: this is just an observation and an opinion only)
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