I don't know what it is but when something goes wrong at the Richmond-upon-Thames branch of Waitrose, who happens to be there? Yes, your very own Stephen Gold (see
http://www.breakinglaw.co.uk/2018/04/lifting-and-speeding-at-waitrose.html). Do see my latest exchange of emails with the long suffering customer service team at Waitrose. I'll leave it to you to judge whether the store will be getting rid of the self-serve tills. Personally, I'm not holding my breath.
From: STEPHEN GOLD Sent: 15/04/2018 13:35
Subject: POWER FAILURE AT RICHMOND-UPON-THAMES
I was in your revamped Richmond-upon-Thames branch yesterday afternoon when there was a series of electrical power failures in rapid succession which threw the premises into near darkness. Happily, I was not travelling in one of your lifts (up or down!) at the time and I positively did not avail myself of the opportunity to make off with a packet of smoked salmon without tendering payment. However, the failures did put your battery of self-service tills out of action, obliging the customers who were in the course of patronising them to abort and join one of the cashiers’ queues. I have to confess to a feeling of satisfaction at the fate of the self-service tills for I abhor them. They put human beings out of work; the operation of them intimidate and confound many customers; and they deny customers the experience of engaging with other customers in a queue and communicating a smile or word of sympathy (depending on how charming or severe is their manner) with a human cashier. In view of yesterday’s experience, might management remove and destroy the battery of self-service tills and return to the world which we formerly enjoyed when we were not ruled by blasted technology?
Yours sincerely
Stephen Gold
From:customerserviceteam@waitrose.co.uk
To Stephen Gold
Sent 17 April 2018 at 16.22
Thanks for getting in touch Stephen.
I'm sorry to hear of the power failures that you experienced in our Richmond-upon-Thames, I appreciate the inconvenience caused by this. Whilst our self service tills are proving very popular with our customers, I understand that many of our customers prefer our main line checkouts and I also prefer to interact with Partners and other customers.
We want to bring you the highest quality products and the best possible service, so we welcome and value feedback from our customers. I'm very grateful to you for your comments and have discussed them with the management at Richmond, who will consider them at their next review.
Thanks again for telling us about this. Please don't hesitate to contact us again if you have any more questions, comments or concerns.
We're passionate about continually improving the service we offer our customers. If you'd like to feed back on the service I've given you, please click on the link below to take part in our quick survey. As a thank you, we’ll also enter you into our monthly prize draw where you could win £500 in gift cards.
Kind regards
Robert
Waitrose Customer Care
Case Reference: 04730775
