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The Customer From Hell


StuartO

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Most of us will be capable of making a purchase or agreeing some contingency or compromise arrangement with a supplier when necessary but there are a few who go about things in an unnecessarily challenging and belligerent way, or if not that hold demanding expectations when a more reasonable person would expect to give a bit as well as take.

 

Years ago I was chatting amiably with a salesman at a show and somehow we got on to the subject of difficult customers and I asked him how he could spot trouble looming. His idea of a warning signs of a customer from hell would be when a bearded teacher in his thirties approached with a copy of the Guardian tucked under his arm and an expression which was more of a scowl than a friendly smile. This type of customer would see buying a motorhome, or even a low-cost accessory, as an adversarial encounter with an exploitive capitalist tradesman.

 

At one brief stage in my own career I was trying to sell things into a market of fellow professionals and I learned that while many of my colleagues were reasonable to deal with and respected the likelihood that I, as a sales rep, knew more about the product than they did and would therefore be worth listening to. But some were pompous and arrogant, even dismissive which, viewed as a fellow professional, was really disappointing, indeed shameful. I remember working as a bus conductor in the summer holidays when I was a student and learning that working for the public could be a pleasure or a real pain in the arse because some of the public were far from nice people.

 

Sometimes you see on forums like this a would-be contributer wanting to damage a trade supplier in a vengeful and seemingly unreasonable way, because they didn't get the perfect result or because they feel they had to take too much trouble to get it. I'm always conscious that we're only getting one side of a story when I see this type of post and more often than not there will be hints in the story that at least part of the problem is down to the behaviour of a Customer From Hell. Warning signs are often there if you take the trouble to look for them; it's a new contributor who is posting purely because he's on a mission, the story reveals high or even absolute expectations and unwillingness to compromise and so on. Even the best of suppliers can have bad luck or a bad day and do they really deserve a serious hatchet job on the internet when they have already tried to resolve the issue in a reasonable way? I'm particularly suspicious if the complainer wants to name and shame but also to remain anonymous himself.

 

It will rarely make good commercial sense for a supplier to take issue on the internet, even if revealing the facts of the case would add balance or show the complainer to have been unreasonable. It's generally better just to roll with it. Of course the identity of the unreasonable complainer will probably be known to the supplier anyway and the trade grapevine may well pass a warning word. The world of motorhome suppliers is a relatively small one and people who show themselves to be Customers from Hell may find themselves struggling to get much cooperation in future - or even blacklisted altogether.

 

 

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I think i take a fairly relaxed view on problems( gf says I'm a push over), however I've rarely found a MH salesman that knows (generally) more than me, the latest was a German salesman at NEC who said "our mh's are made in deflefs factory" when I replied that my Globecar was also made in the Deflefs factory he told me it hadn't been as he regulary visits and he knew they never made Globecar vans, when i told him i have a Defleffs CoC he insisted I didn't.
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StuartO - 2019-11-02 12:27 PM

 

Most of us will be capable of making a purchase or agreeing some contingency or compromise arrangement with a supplier when necessary but there are a few who go about things in an unnecessarily challenging and belligerent way, or if not that hold demanding expectations when a more reasonable person would expect to give a bit as well as take.

 

Years ago I was chatting amiably with a salesman at a show and somehow we got on to the subject of difficult customers and I asked him how he could spot trouble looming. His idea of a warning signs of a customer from hell would be when a bearded teacher in his thirties approached with a copy of the Guardian tucked under his arm and an expression which was more of a scowl than a friendly smile. This type of customer would see buying a motorhome, or even a low-cost accessory, as an adversarial encounter with an exploitive capitalist tradesman.

 

At one brief stage in my own career I was trying to sell things into a market of fellow professionals and I learned that while many of my colleagues were reasonable to deal with and respected the likelihood that I, as a sales rep, knew more about the product than they did and would therefore be worth listening to. But some were pompous and arrogant, even dismissive which, viewed as a fellow professional, was really disappointing, indeed shameful. I remember working as a bus conductor in the summer holidays when I was a student and learning that working for the public could be a pleasure or a real pain in the arse because some of the public were far from nice people.

 

Sometimes you see on forums like this a would-be contributer wanting to damage a trade supplier in a vengeful and seemingly unreasonable way, because they didn't get the perfect result or because they feel they had to take too much trouble to get it. I'm always conscious that we're only getting one side of a story when I see this type of post and more often than not there will be hints in the story that at least part of the problem is down to the behaviour of a Customer From Hell. Warning signs are often there if you take the trouble to look for them; it's a new contributor who is posting purely because he's on a mission, the story reveals high or even absolute expectations and unwillingness to compromise and so on. Even the best of suppliers can have bad luck or a bad day and do they really deserve a serious hatchet job on the internet when they have already tried to resolve the issue in a reasonable way? I'm particularly suspicious if the complainer wants to name and shame but also to remain anonymous himself.

 

It will rarely make good commercial sense for a supplier to take issue on the internet, even if revealing the facts of the case would add balance or show the complainer to have been unreasonable. It's generally better just to roll with it. Of course the identity of the unreasonable complainer will probably be known to the supplier anyway and the trade grapevine may well pass a warning word. The world of motorhome suppliers is a relatively small one and people who show themselves to be Customers from Hell may find themselves struggling to get much cooperation in future - or even blacklisted altogether.

 

 

Can you please explain why I can’t expect a “ perfect result “ from a trade supplier ? My part of the bargain is to part with “ the perfect amount of money “ so quid pro quo I expect reciprocation.

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Adiebt - 2019-11-02 2:37 PM

Can you please explain why I can’t expect a “ perfect result “ from a trade supplier ? My part of the bargain is to part with “ the perfect amount of money “ so quid pro quo I expect reciprocation.

 

I bought a replacement key and a number of replacement lock barrels recently and they turned up (from Germany) reasonably quickly and they matched my existing keys and locks precisely, so the UK supplier I ordered from did a good job and delivered as he said he could. But things might not have gone so smoothly because the availability depended on the accuracy of the German stock-holder's computer system, which might not have been entirely accurate. The items might have been lost or damaged in the post and there might have been a mixup in supplying the correct matching keys or lock. These things can happen and if they had done I have no doubt the person I ordered from (and paid up front) would have done his best to sort the problem out and if it couldn't be sorted out I'm sure I would have been offered a full refund. I would have been grateful for those efforts rather than ranting or demanding and I wouldn't have expected to be compensated for my disappointment in not getting what I wanted. I've bought from this Uk supplier before and I know he is resourceful and diligent in trying to supply parts for my 13 year old MH so I take the trouble to say thank you.

 

The people you deal with when you use a service are usually employees rather than proprietors but even if they are proprietors, I think it always pays to treat them respectfully and politely, because they usually respond by trying to be helpful. Occasionaly of course you get let down in a culpable way and thta might be the time to be more assertive - but even then it will never help the situation to be impolite or unduly demanding. It's important to keep your cool.

 

The Customer From Hell I'm referring to would start shouting the odds and threatenning to sue the minute there was any hint of any sort of problem - and I would expect that he would thereby loose any prospect of helpfulness.

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To get a perfect result, there must be a common understanding of what is "perfect". To the customer perfect can mean the sky's the limit for beans; to the supplier, it can be whatever they can get away with for a king's ransom.

 

People's attitude reflects their upbringing and current environment (lifestyle). The Customer from Hell is either like that in life in which case the supplier won't win and he might as well tell the customer to go away and stop bothering him, or the supplier has created Hell for the customer in which case the supplier gets what he deserves. It's possible to switch a Customer from Hell to one from Heaven but I've never known it done through a forum or email; by post yes and face to face/phone, yes.

 

 

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Hans - 2019-11-02 5:04 PM

 

Whit all respect forum master. I think you miss the clue.

 

Which 'Forum master' are you referring to? StuartO or Spospe?

 

'Forum master' is merely a ranking depending on the number of posts a person has made, their Forum name is entirely different.

 

As an example you are 'Liking what I've found' with your 80 posts.

 

Keith.

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The ‘rank' awarded to a forum-member relates to the quantity of postings they have made and/or (apparently) the number of days since they first registered to be able to post to these forums. (I don’t know how the posts/days combination affects the rank awarded.)

 

In mid-2017 the list of ranks and the related number of posts/days was said to be as follows

 

Just joined - 0/0

Having a look around - 20/30

Liking what I've found - 40/30

Pops in from time to time - 75/60

Keeps coming back for more - 125/80

Gets involved - 200/100

A posting machine - 300/100

Has lots to offer - 400/100

Lives on the forums - 500/120

Pillar of the forums - 600/140

Treasured contributor - 800/160

Epic contributor - 1000/200

Forum master - 2000/240

Lord of the posts - 5000/240

Legendary contributor - 7500/360

The special one - 10000/360

Walks with the gods - 15000/360

 

If a forum-member dislikes having a rank on their postings, this can be suppressed through the Forum Control Panel by setting the "Hide your post count?” option to “Yes”.

 

A second forum feature awards a forum-member ’stars’ that show up on their postings and indicate how many tranches of postings they have accrued. The colour of the star and the number of postings it represents is

 

Green= 25

Purple = 100

Blue = 500

Red = 1000

Silver = 2000

Gold = 5000

 

(The ‘count’ is from 22 March 2006 when these forums went live.)

 

But the simplest way to identify how many postings someone has made is to click on the PROFILE box to the left of each posting.

 

 

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