Eshin Direct

Being the lazy ass that I am, I get quite familiar with home delivery services in Hong Kong. One of my favourite shenanigan, which I’ve already ranted about in the past here, is the no-change trick. Today’s performance by Park’NShop beggars belief though. Purchased amount was HKD 473 and it was specified that it would be a Cash-on-Delivery transaction.

Delivery Guy (DG): Sorry, no change.

Eshin: Okay, I don’t have anything else than 1000.

DG : Sorry, no change. It’s hot isn’t it?

(Guy smiles to complete sympathy fishing exercise but fails miserably. Does he really expect a HKD 600+ tip?)

Eshin: Can I write you a cheque then?

DG: Sorry, no cheque.

Eshin: Okay, so how do you expect me to pay? I wrote that it was COD.

(Guy continues smiling like an idiot. In the end, I ask my cleaner, who happens to be there, if she has 500 bucks. I hand over 500 bucks.)

DG: Sorry, no change.

Eshin: You what?! Not even for 500 for 473 dollar purchase? You’re having a laugh mate.

DG: Sorry, no change.

I scrape together HKD475 from my cleaner’s change. Lucky him got to keep two dollars for a tip, which was thankfully insultingly small but more importantly if he’d shown his face at my place again, I would have smacked the guy. What was incredible was that there were four other deliveries on his route that had COD as the payment method.

A phone call to Park’NShop customer service rep tell me that it’s sometimes hard to judge the change requirements for a delivery route. Sure, it must be hard to have any change when you hit the first person on the delivery list.

Then it became my problem. Next time could I maybe have the correct change? Riiiiiight. Don’t offer a COD facility if you don’t intend to be able to service it, my dear. I explained to her next time, if there is a next time, that if they don’t have the correct change, I’ll cancel the order there and then. She thanked me for my advice.

And there we have it, ladies and gentlemen, HK customer service in a nutshell. Problem found, unhappy customer. Classic three stage CS response:

1. Blame someone else – usually find an excuse.
2. Blame the customer stupidity – educate the customer.
3. Get out of nasty situation as quickly as possible – usually by apologising profusely with no real intent on actually making sure that customer remains a customer.

Customer lip-service rather than customer retention.