Keep It Local II

A couple of month ago I posted about the appalling lack of customer service I experienced while doing my shopping in two shops in the nearby town. If you want to refresh your memory, the post is here. I told you how I had emailed both shops and was waiting on response. They both did.

Shop A apologised profusely, gave me the whole "this shouldn't happen" and apologised again. What baffled me the most was the statement that this issue had been brought to their attention before and that they were "putting measures into place to deal with it". So I wasn't the only one to find myself leaving the shop feeling as if I was an inconvenience to their staff. I was surprised that they admitted to there having been more than one complaint about their staff. Surprised, but at the same time a little bit glad.

Shop B gave me the standard apology letter, assuring me this wouldn't happen again and wished I would continue to shop with them and that all their staff was trained to a high standard in order to provide excellent customer service. They told me that should I go back to their shop I would find my shopping experience only delightful.

After driving to the further away town once a week for my shopping for a month or so, I decided to give my local town another chance. Mainly because I needed to go to the bank and the beauty salon and didn't fancy driving to the other town for my food shop after my lovely, relaxing massage. So in I ventured to shop A.

Full of Christmas cheer and sweets, christmas puddings and fairy lights. The shop was, not me. Maybe the Christmas cheer had infected the staff as well, but I did think I was seeing an awful lot of smiles around. And the service was excellent. Had a nice chat with the man at the till, smiles all around and a big "Thank You" at the end. I spotted the woman who had served me the last time and prompted me to email the shop. She was serving another customer at the express counter and she was smiling! 

Shop B was an equally positive experience. No pushing of the shopping into the trolley to get customers out of the way; no broken bags of cat litter; no rush and no hurry. There was an item that they used to stock, but I was unable to find it this time. I was told they had stopped stocking it because of low sales in this branch but would be able to get it in for me from another branch if I wanted to do so. And all this done without sighing or rolling of the eyes.

After these to experiences I decided to bring my pennies back to my local town. I also emailed both shops to let them know I had seen a marked improvement in their level of customer service and that they had succeeded in convincing me they were indeed dedicated to improving their services. I feel that if I took the time to complain about bad customer service, I should take equal amount of time to thank them for good customer service. And seeing as I didn't name and shame these shops in my first post, I shall leave them anonymous in this one, too.

Best Laid Plans...

I should've known better than to plan a whole Christmas party outfit without as much as visiting a shop. I had it all planned, didn't I? The dress, the shoes, the accessories. And a cunning plan to hit the shops in carefully planned order to maximise my haul in record time. All of that went out the window when we got to the first scheduled stop, Marks & Spencer where I had planned to get the dress. The dress that I had drooled over and fantasised about for a number of days. Though titties to me, they didn't have it.

So there was very little point in going for the cute ankle boots to go with the non-existent dress. Plan B: drag myself and Teresa into every possible shop in Galway city trying to find a nice dress. And shoes. And accessories. Hi-Ho!

Tried on a  John Rocha dress at Debenhams, it was very unusual and could've been dressed up nicely with some purple tights and boots, but it was really more summery than christmassy. New Look had a nice black playsuit but it was way too short for me to enjoy the evening without being very conscious of my legs. While in New Look I had a quick peek at the shoes and quickly noticed the boots I had spotted online weren't there, either. So much for that part of my brilliant plan. Onwards and upwards!


Penneys came up trumps. Again. I found two dresses, coming to a grand total of €41. Two dresses. For €41! Brilliant. One is a dark blue embellished collared, ruffled, sleeveless dress. The other one is super-cute, wool blend, check pattern, A-line dress. Dorothy Perkins supplied boots to go with both. Unfortunately, after getting home I realised the grey ones aren't a pair. One is size 5 and another one is a size 6. I rang them today and they told me they were really sorry about the mistake and went to make sure they had the boot there for pick up. I explained to the very helpful Rebecca that I don't live just around the corner, that it is in fact over an hour's drive away for me to get there and to do so just to pick up a single boot seemed a bit too much. She was very understanding when I suggested that they could send out a courier to deliver the right boot in exchange for the one I got given by mistake. She told me she'd get back to me. She rang me back in about half an hour to ask me if it would be possible for me to pick the boot up from Oughterard (that's about half an hour away from where I live). One of her staff lives there and was offering to drop the boot off at the petrol station and arrange for me to drop mine off there for her to collect. Random but helpful. Courier would've been a feasible option had it not been a week before Christmas. They would've gotten out here sometime next week. When I'm in Finland.