Worst Customer Service Experiences of 2008

1. By a WIDE margin, our worst experience of 2008 was trying to use Singapore's vPost.

GHASTLY!
ATROCIOUS!
HORRENDOUS!

After $130 and about 15 emails and calls to Singapore Post, we finally received 2 of the 5 items we ordered, and never got the others which we had paid for online.

At every step of the way, Singapore Post was argumentative rather than helpful, defending their policies and not trying to help us get our items.

The worst shopping experience of our lifetimes (and we've done a lot of shopping!)


2. Air Asia baggage check

Budget carrier Air Asia has a low baggage and weight limit to go along with their low prices. But when you purchase tickets, they also sell additional baggage allowance.

When we bought family tickets to Thailand, I purchased an additional baggage check for each of us. When we showed up at the airport, the first words the attendant greeted us with were, "You're going to be overweight." Hello to you, too.

It turns out that the additional bags allow you to spread the 15kg among multiple bags, but do not entitle you to extra weight. Come again? Have you ever heard of a more deceptive sale?

When I got upset, the attendant told me that a lot of customers don't understand the policy. But he also said "please don't get upset at me, I'm just doing my job."

Well, not only is this a deceptive practice, but his job is to please the customers and be helpful, not defend his own feelings. He needs to get in a different line of work. And Air Asia needs to change the way they sale extra baggage allowance.


3. GV Cinemas Gift Certificates

I checked online to learn about purchasing gift certificates for GV Cinemas. They gave the information on the vouchers and directed people to purchase them at GV Box Offices.

I went to a box office near me, and was given a form to fill out and told it would take three business days to get my gift certificates.

What?! What kind of screening is necessary to buy a gift certificate? It's not like I am applying for a permit at "Speaker's Corner!" The GV personnel gave me the standard Singapore response, "Those are the rules." I first learned how this works at Delifrance in 2000, when I tried to pay to upgrade my set meal hot tea to an iced tea. I could not do it because, "Rules is rules."

Sheesh!

Real Hate Crimes

After California's Proposition 8 passed in November, an organization called "Californians Against Hate" has been publicly revealing financial contributors for and against the proposition.

The result has been vehement protests against some of the supporters of the proposition, as shown in this LA Times article, and quoted below. (I applaud the writer, an opponent of Prop 8, for denouncing the violence against Prop 8 supporters!)

While homosexual activists like to claim any position against promotion of a homosexual lifestyle is motivated by hate, their response demonstrates a real deep seated negative emotion against anyone who disagrees with them.

I have witnessed this many times in person, and can say that I have rarely seen emotions that rival the hatred of homosexuals towards those who claim their lifestyle is immoral. In fact, the other cases that rival their hatred were also by people promoting a practice that others considered immoral.

Margie Christoffersen didn't make it very far into our conversation before she cracked. Chest heaving, tears streaming, she reached for her husband Wayne's hand and then mine, squeezing as if she'd never let go.

"I've almost had a nervous breakdown. It's been the worst thing that's ever happened to me," she sobbed as curious patrons at a Farmers Market coffee shop looked on, wondering what calamity had visited this poor woman who's an honest 6 feet tall, with hair as blond as the sun.

Well, Christoffersen was a manager at El Coyote, the Beverly Boulevard landmark restaurant that's always had throngs of customers waiting to get inside. Many of them were gay, and Christoffersen, a devout Mormon, donated $100 in support of Proposition 8, the successful November ballot initiative that banned gay marriage.

She never advertised her politics or religion in the restaurant, but last month her donation showed up on lists of "for" and "against" donors. And El Coyote became a target.

A boycott was organized on the Internet, with activists trashing El Coyote on restaurant review sites. Then came throngs of protesters, some of them shouting "shame on you" at customers. The police arrived in riot gear one night to quell the angry mob.

The mob left, but so did the customers.

Sections of the restaurant have been closed, a manager told me Friday during a very quiet lunch hour. Some of the 89 employees, many of them gay, have had their hours cut, and layoffs are looming. And Christoffersen, who has taken a voluntary leave of absence, is wondering whether she'll ever again be able to work at the restaurant, which opened in 1931 (at 1st and La Brea) and is owned by her 92-year-old mother.

"It's been so hard," she said, breaking down again.

Memorable quotes are in the ear of the beholder

How did this guy get appointed as chooser of the year's most memorable quotes? I suspect it is because his taste closely reflects the taste of most journalists. The statements they enjoyed most were slip-ups by conservative politicians like John McCain and Sarah Palin. Similar statements by Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton were deemed unimportant.

When conservatives make dumb statements, liberal journalists believe they reveal something important about the politicians: that their suspicions about the politicians' true colors and character are correct - they really are foolish and evil - while dumb statements by liberal politicians are overlooked as being excusable because they do not reflect the politicians' true intelligence or intentions.

President-elect Barack Obama didn't make the list, not even for his much-criticized remark in which he said some small-town Americans "cling to guns or religion."

"To me it didn't seem like a very remarkable or very foolish quote," said Shapiro, who describes himself as a liberal Democrat.