Bad customer service

Yesterday, before we went to the Night Safari, we did some shopping at the AMK Hub. I was so cheesed off by the general customer service that I did not buy as many things as I wanted to. The only top I bought was from this shop called "The Box".

After that, we were walking along and saw Pepper Plus (my current favourite shop) and walked in there to see. I had seen and tried some clothes at Wisma that I was contemplating buying but could not make up my mind and wanted to ask my friend. I was at one end of the shop while my friend was at another. I was holding on to the dress and the salesgirl was in between us. Obviously I had to make sure the salesgirl was out of the way before I 'shouted' to my friend.

The salesgirl sussed me up and down before asking me, "Want to try?" and then looking at another rack of clothes, she asked me, "s, m or l?"

How RUDE!! First of all, she sussed me out from head to toe as if I was a secondary school child who did not have the ability to buy any thing. Next, I just felt that she was so rude in not making any eye contact when asking a question. I think a robot would have done a better job. Even if a robot DID NOT look at me, I would have felt better.

I was polite enough to reply that I was just looking and proceeded to tell my friend not too softly that the dress I was holding was the one I tried at Wisma's outlet the day before.

What followed after that was also plain rude as the salesgirl (probably in her 40's) proceeded to look from one of my friend to another (two friends were with me at that time). We left the shop shortly and my friend asked me, "Does that person has a problem somewhere?" Obviously, I wasn't the only one cheesed off.

The next shop that we stopped to ask questions was a mobile phone shop. The lady gave straightforward answers but did not seem warm or friendly.

The 'finale' came when we walked into the Little Match Girl boutique. I saw some pants that I liked and had wanted to try some. I took my size and was standing behind this lady who was standing right in front of the fitting rooms. I was not sure whether she was customer or part of the sales team.

Whatever it is, the two obvious sales persons were busy chit-chatting away and did not even bother asking what I wanted even though I was standing there for a good 3 minutes at least. The lady in front of me had left her position right in front of the queue.

It was only after I complained rather loudly to my friend about why it was taking whoever was inside so long to try clothes that the salesgirl casually pointed to a very black and inconspicuous signage that said that something like everything is on sale and there was no trying.

No trying????!!!! How ridiculous! If it was no trying of tops I would have been a little more confident but these were pants I'm talking about. There are different cuts and this being an local brand, the cutting is bound to be smaller than what I am used to (European cut). What would be worse if they put the clause that there would be no exchange for sale items. That would be a real disaster for me! It would be money wasted.

Oh yes, since I could not try, I hung one of the two pants on the rack to try to wrap the other around my neck to try for size. Almost before I can finish saying "Hey presto!", another salesgirl was going to remove the pants that I had hung from the rack.

I do not know why, but I glared at her and said, "I still want this". I would not have done so before as I would have been too polite. I even replaced all the apparel that I did not want and then whispered into my friend's ear," let's go. The service here is very lousy."

When I turned around to look at the salesperson, she was giving me her world's biggest smile but it was too late.

Part of me could not help but wonder whether it is because of the way we spoke that made them think that we were from that certain huge country (with the world's largest population) that they were treating us this way (especially the last shop). After all, I do speak with THAT type of accent when I speak with my friends from there. It just comes naturally.

Then again, if the sales persons think that the money of the people from this big country is not worth earning, then they are plain dumb and stupid. Four to five years ago, when I went to Hong Kong, the sales persons there have already recognised that their neighbouring fellow citizens DO have the spending power and went to all means to meet their every needs.

Well, I would rather think that it is not racism (for the lack of a better word at the moment) that is causing this type of attitude. I would rather think that it is the people who are in Ang Mo Kio that are generally like that: not so refined :P

Hmm...I think I would still stick to shopping at Toa Payoh in the near future. The sales persons there are generally nicer.