Buyers Beware.I've been having a streak of bad luck,
With a handful of my purchases.
First it was the Amazon book,
Which had staple holes for the first 50 pages.
(I am a perfectionist for all things I pay for.)
They promised to send a replacement,
But it went to LX's place in Canada instead.
I told LX he can help me sell it then,
But he has decided he will sell it and keep the dough,
Since I sold the camera he dumped on me the last time.
(I reminded him that he gave the broken camera to me,
Saying that he wouldn't want it nor use it,
The only reason why I sold it,
Was because I didn't want a broken camera
- don't ask me why the buyer wanted it -
But he didn't seem to remember that.)
However, as Amazon was nice enough to send a replacement,
I give them 4 out of 5 stars for service.
Sennheiser gave me a very shitty impression.
The earphones I bought for more than $50 from Challenger,
Had their black wire tubings splitting down the middle,
Exposing the bare copper wires inside.
Since I bought them only last August,
And I haven't been doing anything rough with them,
I think there is just something crap about their quality.
When I rang up their service centre,
The male customer service officer (CSO) who picked up the phone,
Behaved like a total wanker instead of a professional.
"Alamak, you don't have receipt? Then guarantee card leh?"
"I don't remember having one. "
"Sure the person who sold you would tell you to keep right?"
"Well apparently that didn't happen."
"Then I cannot help you lah, too bad lah."
The most annoying thing,
Is that I went back to the shops to check,
And this model of earphones (OMX 50 VC Street),
Do NOT come with warranty cards.
What an asshole!
The next incident with
Samsung.
My mobile phone kept hanging,
So I brought it down to their Plaza Singapore service centre last Saturday.
There were more than 10 people in line,
But only two people to serve.
With no Samsung employee in sight.
(There were also around 5 to 6 empty customer service stations,
But I later learnt from an employee,
That a maximum of 3 CSOs serve the customers at a single time)
I spent one hour waiting for the queue to jump by 3 numbers.
Since I was another 10 numbers away I decided to go off,
To come back 1.5 hours later.
Unfortunately when I came back,
The queue numbers jumped so fast that I just missed my turn.
So I had to take another queue number,
About another 12 numbers away.
I really fell asleep waiting for my turn,
Which came almost two hours later.
The lady who serviced me was rather efficient,
Although I noticed she had to keep walking in and out of a backroom,
Just to collect printed paper and photocopy documents.
Bad office planning, I say.
I left my phone with them to send to their engineers.
A lady from the service headquarters rang me up,
To tell me that I would have to pay $180+,
For my mobile that was still under warranty.
The reason was because the parts were corroded.
I said it was ridiculous cos I never dropped it into water,
And the lady said that corrosion due to rainfall or sweat,
Would also be not covered by the warranty.
Obviously this is infuriating.
I said I would need to think about this,
Because the price is unbelievably high,
And also because I don't believe I should be paying for bad quality.
The lady proceeded to ask me,
"May I know what is the problem?"
(as in why I have to think about it)
Can you believe that??
I don't know if she was being polite or what,
But I couldn't help but tell her,
"The problem is that I don't think I should be paying for this!"
Why are consumers the victims of badly made products?
Why do we have to pay for shitty things?
The down side of a bull economy,
Is that all these sales/customer service people,
Start behaving like idiots,
Because they take their good business for granted.
I think service charge in Singapore,
Is compulsory not because Singaporeans are stingy,
But because good service that deserves tipping,
Is so rare on this piece of soil.
On the other hand,
Mom rang up the National Environment Agency,
As we were given a notice for them to check our house,
For the breeding of Aedes mosquitoes.
Bolded on the notice were the following words :
"Any person who obstructs or hinders the Director-General
or authorised officer.... in the performance or execution of his duty...
shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction to a fine...
or to imprisonment..."
Along with many other words in CAPS.
The letter stated that they will visit our place,
On a specific date between 9am to 1pm
And since we had one day's notice,
Mom had to take urgent leave to stay at home.
(Doesn't the government know that it is better to come on Saturday,
Since there are people whose whole family has to work,
Just to keep ourselves afloat in this booming economy?)
When Mom called up NEA to ask about the timings,
If we could have something more specific or arrange another time,
Mr NEA-Hotline told her that he doesn't know anything.
Any attempts to ask questions by Mom,
Were all answered with "I don't know, don't ask me."
(It is safe to assume he is just working to wait for his fat pension)
Mom got pretty pissed off (naturally),
And said that his attitude was bad.
Mr NEA-Hotline said,
"This is the way we do things,
It is not for you to like it or not.
You don't have a choice, too bad."
If anyone says the words "too bad" again,
I think am going to kick their asses.
Labels: rant