Hey, Brenda

[Catseye3]

What do you hear from Mr. Store Director about your missing carton?

[brenda]

@catseye3

Heard nada from the store director. Got an email a few days later from the store manager, who is the boss of the director. Yikes. Don't know what that says about the director.

I'm feeling sorry for this group. I think they are overwhelmed and in trouble. I decided to just let the whole thing go, it's less than $20 bucks, then the store manager emailed me. That was Saturday. Yes, really, the store manager is doing these kinds of emails on a Saturday. That just reeks of trouble for their group.

This is no mom-and-pop place. This is a multi-state chain that has huge stores with pharmacies, gas stations, liquor stores, restuarants, bakeries, catering, florists, and restaurants as part of their business model. They have layers and layers of management, and I'm guessing the store manager probably doesn't usually do these emails.

My reply was brief, just to let him know the chain of communication, and lack of replies, and to acknowledge that his job must be quite a challenge right now. He wants to send a reimbursement. Okay. How this paltry bit of money became his issue to handle must be quite the story.

Life has to be a bit difficult there. I should make them some cookies.

[Mik]

I was overcharged $4 on an item from Kroger the other day, so I called their customer service line, not connected to the individual store. I did not even have to talk to an individual and the automated menus gave me a $5 credit. In the past I have had to talk to an agent. Very smart on their part. Kroger is light years ahead of the pack for online groceries. I guess they saw Amazon coming.

[Horace]

I ordered three dry aged prime porterhouse steaks from a company called CrowdCow a few weeks ago. They subcontract from individual farms. This is what I received from a farm called Meyer Natural Prime Beef:

So I emailed Crowdcow and let them know I received one porterhouse, one barely-T-bone, and one bone-in strip. They took many days to finally get back to me, but did ultimately offer me a full refund on the two substandard steaks, I accepted and I ended up getting them for free, and which were in fact fine beef. But I was pretty shocked at the quality control of Meyer Natural Prime Beef that they would ship those two steaks as porterhouse. Then again the consumers of high priced beef might not largely know the difference. Maybe people like me are the cost of doing business.

[Mik]

@horace those are pathetic for Crowd Cow. They usually do better according to my BBQ forum.

[brenda]

@mik That's the fast and effective way to keep customers happy. Just think how much staff time it would have saved for our local store, and thus the chain.

[brenda]

I think grocery retailers trying to offer drive-up service and mail delivery are getting so swamped.

[Mik]

Around there they are quite efficient.

[brenda]

@mik It doesn't seem like many of the grocery stores here offer online shopping and curbside pickup. That means the stores that do are seeing a big increase in business. They're doing it, but they're still growing into it, getting a bit better.

Often, they run out of even basic things, or have to sub with other brands. The shelves must be quite empty sometimes, and that's hard to picture for this store. It's more of an upscale grocery, with very deep selection options.

[Mik]

Yeah, I seldom get everything I ordered and I usually don't allow substitutions. But it's still better than going into the store.

[brenda]

@mik said in Hey, Brenda:

Yeah, I seldom get everything I ordered and I usually don't allow substitutions. But it's still better than going into the store.

Exactly. If our local store offered it, I would be using theirs. Instead, they don't seem to have a problem with all the folks who won't wear masks, sometimes including their own staff. I wonder how much business that has cost them.