You ever give your business to a company mostly because it’s convenient and they’re close by? Well sure your do. Nothing wrong here.
Butt…you ever give your business to a company because it’s convenient and close AND because they continually disappoint you at best…and screw you at worst?
Of course not. But that’s what I did. Not once…but a couple of times. I know, I know. Someone as smart and exceedingly handsome as yours truly evidently didn’t get the memo:
Fool me once: Shame on you. Fool me twice…
Not the smoothest of moves.
Sometime back, I went in to get my car washed at The Cobblestone Auto Spa (‘Spa’…really?) in the greater Phoenix metro area. Next thing I know some slick-talking young guy named Trevor in front of the car wash ‘thingy’ talks me into some extra car wash bonuses (you know ‘tire shine’, ‘molding repair goo’ (what is that?), ‘shine engine gleam’, ‘clean my wheels with Q-tips’ etc…)
I grudgingly agreed.
You would’ve thought I’d have backed out of the deal when my car wash went from seven bucks to $32. You would also think that after he addressed me as ‘boss’ I’d have known better. But no. And by the way, don’t call people ‘boss’…EVER, unless he/she/it/the pronoun of your choice this year is ACTUALLY YOUR BOSS.
but I digress…
So after that debacle of an upsell (steering wheel spit shine and hot onion chili upholstery treatment) from the valley of the sun (during hell…aka, summer), I noticed something quite frustrating: I kept getting billed every month for the same amount for Trevor’s upsell.
After two months of bitching and complaining and calling all manner of numbers, I finally got a cooperative lady with Cobblestone corporate who ended Trev’s billing fiasco and gave me a refund.
Fast-forward to yesterday, I took my car in to guess where?
Yeah. Kick me now…it’s ok.
I went to the same car wash: I had bought a ‘buy 5 car washes and get two free (and one Q-tip ashtray cleaning)’ coupon book.
Yes, I know, I should’ve learned my lesson, right? I bet you can guess what happened next…
I go to the car wash, scan one of my coupons and it had ‘expired’ according to the attendant.
I then got five different answers from the Cobblestone ‘associate’: They’re not expired. They’re expired. The machine’s broken. Come back later. Don’t come back later. I finally just paid for the car wash…got it over with and scampered off with my tail between my legs….
(sidenote: I looked for Trevor to see if he was still there so I could plead my case to him, but he had since moved on to sell timeshares in Guam according to Cobblestone’s towel-boy)
What’s puzzling is their actual car washes are pretty darn good. There’s no need for customer shenanigans, confusing upsells and hot sauce wheel glaze when you didn’t ask for it….IF you actually have a good service offering.
But, this is the world we now live in. My advice out the there in the customer service wars is: Don’t give any business a second chance when they give you the vaseline shuffle. They’ll do it again (and won’t even buy you a drink).