Tuesday, December 30, 2008

The Customer is Always Right..NOT

..the case for RED BOX AT THE GARDENS!!

9 of us, 7 of whom are AUDITORS went for a Karaoke Session at Red Box on the 29th night.

I spent the whole morning practising my **ahem** singing skills..learning a new song recommended by B.....to just be well prepared for a fun night out of karaoke with my usual 'k' buddies (with the exception of yellowChimp, whois now in Shanghai and bragging to me via sms on a daily basis his Xian adventures and 5 star Radisson hotel and 'Shanghai xiao loong bao' feasts)



Fish Leong's 'Belong'

We thought we had a fun filled night out....

Until the bill came and we were being charged for 10 instead of 9...NO IT'S NOT AN UNINVITED GUEST and not those spooky 'thing'.....

Just that this oh so ugly and fat waiter in white uniform (yes, this is how disgruntled bloggers with limited vocab describe people when they forget to get the waiter's name) who insisted that he came into our room 71 and confirmed with us the headcount and accusingly pointed at LinLin and insisted she confirmed 1o people - which got her so mad that she had to put 3 fingers up and swear she said no such thing! I remember someone asking him , 'Which eye you use to see 10 people here!!!'


He insisted that it is REDBOX's policy that once he confirmed the no of pax with us, it is keyed into the system and the system cannot be reversed or even able to issue us any vouchers or credit notes. I insisted then that I only confirmed 6 at time of booking!

But LOGICALLY speaking, if everyone is in the midst of singing, drinking and enjoying themselves and some dumb-ass waiter comes in and asks...are there 10 people confirmed, who the hell would actually pay attention and start counting. AND HE DID NOT INFORM US THAT HE WAS GOING TO BILL US FOR 10 and told us to look at the 'chit' given to us upon registering that there was indeed a clause that stated there that we can only add additonal headcount and not reduce upon confirmation. So I showed him that our chit then DID INDEED STATE THAT WE ONLT HAVE 6 (as per my original booking - so should I be paying for 6), if so how would the 10 people surface? The whole point of his argument was he did indeed ask us if there were 10 of us and 'someone' said YES.

I then asked him a very simple question,' So if you came in and confirmed that I have 10 people and after which another 5 people came in, how would you be able to confirm and charge me accordingly'. Oh his so BRILLIANT answer was 'Our staff will come in and check and before we give you the bill, we will confirm again.' THERE EXACTLY MY POINT - so why did HE NOT CONFIRM WITH US BEFORE THE BILL WAS PRINTED. Oh even a more amazing answer, 'Because I already confirm with you that you have 10 people just now.' Are some people just genuinely stupid or pure ignorant.

I think Mel, got really frustrated at this point and stressed that this was really stupid policy and he was arguing with 7 AUDITORS -bad move. Joanna motioned to him to call his Manager to resolve this issue with us. His answer, 'My manager is really busy. He is doing other things.' OK WE WOULD WAIT..THIS GUY SHOULD REALLY GET THE WORST SERVICE OF THE YEAR AWARD. So much for the principle - the customer is always right - and he totally ignored my statement. Oh well, maybe some people are just not England powderful - I mean considering Red Box is after all a 'ah lian' and 'ah beng' hangout!!

Anyway, Mr HORRID SERVICE WAITER finally got his manager to speak to us..here's a little bit of the commotion I managed to capture on my camera which I thought was pretty hilarious.....



I reiterated to David (the manager in the above clip) a phrase said by Andy Lau in on of those Hong Kong ads before, "In today's world such kind of customer service is unacceptable" which he quickly agreed that their service level was not up to par yet. Good, then do something about it.


The outcome, Redbox will compensate us the next round we patronize them and reduce 1 headcount for us. And we each had to pay about RM7 bucks more for the so called additional person, which was not a lot but it's just the way the whole thing was handled by redbox is disappointing. Aiya, I think if we were lawyers and not auditor's this china-man pek company would not be let off so easily.


......but we did have a great time last night...to give them credit:- rooms were clean and new, toilets were surprisngly not 'puke' filled and buffet's selection was surprisingly good!

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