Shopping Malls take us for a ride

people flock in huge groups and not enough staff to handle the crowds at checkout.Big Bazaar in chennai is a huge retailer, expanding its network in a number of cities. It also comes out with a number of offers and schemes over a period of time which entices a large number of people to come to their stores. I had a recent experience in a store which was pretty shocking, and showed me the level of customer service that the store managers were showing to their shoppers. Now, when we have to do some shopping in Big Bazaar, we hesitate and wonder whether we really need to go there for the stuff that we need. This was a recent exchange offer that had come out for a period of 15-20 days where people could get their old stuff to the store, get coupons for the exchange, and then exercise those coupons against stuff. Here were some matters that really bit hard to consumers:
- The coupons after exchange were valid for a period of only 10-15 days. So, you give your old stuff, and then realize after reading the fine print on the coupons that they are only valid for a short time. This was not mentioned in all the advertisements.
- The staff was not totally aware. So, you had somebody buying stuff over there after talking to the salesman, and then the clerk at the billing refused to accept the coupons for some of the items because it was not in his system. This naturally angered the customer.
- There were a total of around 12 billing counters, but for several hours, there were only 3 of those counters manned. As a result, the queues were very long, and yet even when people were shouting for more counters to be open, there was no reaction from the store. It took each person as much as 20-30 minutes at the billing counter.