Customer Service

I am beginning to notice a small trend here in Beit Shemesh, when you feel as a customer that you were wronged in a retail location, and you take your case to the management of the retail location, they actually listened.

Recently this happened to me a couple of times:

Went to the hardware store to buy 2 large ceiling fans, spent a couple of hours installing both of them (on my own I might add) and then after a couple days one of them starts to click. It is fairly annoying so I take the thing down, spray some WD40 on the motor and voila, the clicking returns! I learned a new lesson here in Israel that seems to work pretty well; in general Israeli's like to argue, so you need to kill their argument before it starts - I take out my cell phone and record a short video of what the problem is before going into the store. This worked when my power steering died and it also worked now. I filmed the fan on with the clicking sound, took the fan down and then went to the hardware store. I showed the video, and like magic they gave me a new fan. I was in complete shock, I was expecting a fight! But no, instead I got a new fan and left happy.

Next - I repaired a phone at Cellcom (I still hate the company, don't ask) and I am 95% certain that instead of repairing my phone, they just gave me a used one. I am fine with that, only problem was that they also gave me a dead battery when the phone I gave them had an almost new battery. After 6 months I finally got around to taking it into them, I wasn't expecting much, maybe a good deal on a new battery, in all fairness I did wait a long time to come back. The guy goes in his drawer and pulls out a new battery, no questions asked! I was in massive shock, so much so I called 5 people to tell them what happened.

Don't get me wrong, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done, like when a couple of months ago I tried to get Office Depot to take back a broken USB adaptor, I actually called the police to get the manager to listen to me. That was a little extreme, but it worked. Lesson learned there - return something at closing time and threaten not to leave until you get your way.