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I'm amused by being amused by amusements.

Oh snap.

I will keep updating this thread with my progress.

Excellent. It sounds like you got a bad call center goon though. The one I dealt with about not actually having Flamethrowers in my Kasrkin boxes was pretty damned good.

Just wish I had realized that the call center is the one based in the UK, not the US. Whoops.

I am glad that you have decided to take this further, too many people are happy to bitch about bad service or rude staff but fall short of informing anyone who can actualy do something about it. Good one.

For the most part my experience with GW customer service has always been pretty good, the odd bone question here and there but otherwise they have always made good. Its a shame you were in such a hurry for the book as I have a feeling they may have sent you one for free following a complaint.

As for the "mate" thing, I am guilty of this, although I tend not to be that informal when speaking to someone for the first time, especialy if delivering bad news. I would imagine that this would have grated a lot less had the poorly trained monkey on the end of the phone been a bit more helpful.

The new Warhammer fantasy stuff certainly looks enticing but given the levels of unpainted Orks I have lurking about the house I am sadly going to have to give it a miss for now, even though the gaming accesories (range finder and templates) they have released are damn sexy.

I don't know about anyone else but when I have had the dubious pleasure of calling GW UK its has been a rarity to speak to someone who is both friendly and professional.


If GW respond to complaint with anything but a stock response I'll send MGS a mini.

One thing customers hate being called is mate, I work for a large company here in the UK and have heard all types of calls go wrong. When a agent says "mate", the customer usualy says "I aint your fething mate, get your manager NOW!!" and so on. Especaily when dealing with a complaint is best to always stay away from talking like your the callers best friend.

To add my own little story with GW. The local GW had a run of different managers. One day/evening I wondered in looking for my next project to make. The manager comes over(1st meeting with him, never seen him before), says the usual stuff and I respond in a friendly manner as you do, just looking for my next conversion project. Get into conversation of sorts what I did for a living(call centre in customer service), invites me to a vets gaming night, and I mention that I'm more of a hobbist and dont really play that often. To which he took massive offence and had a full blowen go at me, saying that "I should and I think I'm to good for playing the game with all us little freaks, is that it..well". He wasnt just talking it was quite agressive.

Least to say I stood there in complete shock, and I mean it was like did that actualy happen?? I looked at the long term staff member and he just looked back. At which point I took my leave as any longer I would of had to extend my arm to connect my fist up side his fething head. Now I'll mention at this point I was 24 years of age. So wasnt being pissing with him, I'm not at all immature, so was all friendly converstaion till that point.

Next day I went back in with my missus to get the stuff I looked out, (always run it by the missus especaily when you just dropped £100 the fortnight before). Anyways, went in and the manager was there, he comes over as says looking for anything. I say yeah, he walks off sits back down at the store modeling/painting table and strikes up a conversation with the regulars about call centres (knowing full well I work in one) and makes a loud enough remark say that all people that work in a call centre are scum and deserve to die. With rage hitting me instantly like a ton of bricks and not wanting to spend the night in the slammer I exited the shop, got back to my house and tried to let it go. Thought F**k it I aint being treated like that by no muther fether. Called the GW HQ up on customer number and proceeded to clamly make the complaint. Next day the regional manager called me at home and disscussed the matter.
Now this wasnt my entention or goal, but that manager who spoke to me like I was somthing he stepped in wasnt at the store for much longer. Went in there 3 days after speaking with the higher manager and he was as nice as pie(wonder why) 2-4 days later he was gone. And good fething riddance.

I do that kinda thing at my job and I'm gone.... instantly. Rant over.

Like said in another post here, never let it go. Make that complaint, as its the only way somthing is going to happen. Its how companies grow, customer service side of things anyways. It did actualy stop me buying from GW directly for 1-2 years, got from the FLGS instead. I buy the odd thing from the local GW but the staff there are awesome and good customer service will make (in most cases) a customer buy directly from the company. Especaiy if you just cant wait to get a shiny new fire prism.

Being american, it would have been cool for a dude to call me mate.

That's silly. Haven't you heard of google? I'm sure you could order from somewhere other than GW.

Samus_aran115 wrote:

That's silly. Haven't you heard of google? I'm sure you could order from somewhere other than GW.

It may terrify and amaze you to learn I took a look online prior to looking at GWs site. The discount places order it in from GW, it's no longer in stock... they don't have it. There are some ebay stores with it, slightly more expensive than the amazon store I ended up buying it from.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:

Samus_aran115 wrote:

That's silly. Haven't you heard of google? I'm sure you could order from somewhere other than GW.

It may terrify and amaze you to learn I took a look online prior to looking at GWs site. The discount places order it in from GW, it's no longer in stock... they don't have it. There are some ebay stores with it, slightly more expensive than the amazon store I ended up buying it from.

Huh. That's wierd. Google has never failed before..how can this be? LOL

See i dont call customers mate at work {tho thats my choice} but i am allowed to swear at them ..

I must live right. A few years ago, I was looking for some of the GW Griffon decals for my marines. I knew it was a long shot and started by calling British GW customer service. I was told no dice, that the decals were long OOP.
I the called U.S. GW and the guy I talked with personally went out to look for some. I called back a few minutes later and he had about 50 sheets of the buggers that he sent out to me that day.
As far as customer service goes, I can say I've never had a bad time with U.S. GW

@Eberious - How did you not mallet that idiot? I admire your restraint. I wouldn't have been able to stop myself from leathering him. That goes beyond 'bad customer service'.

Relapses story is a good one indeed.

Still extending Huggz to MGS- keep your style rockin brother.

Albatross wrote:@Eberious - How did you not mallet that idiot? I admire your restraint. I wouldn't have been able to stop myself from leathering him. That goes beyond 'bad customer service'.

I think it was mostly shock the first time around then it hit me on the way home, the second time on the following day was take 10 seconds to think it thru, smack him up side the head+enjoyment=police = fine and jail. Lol. I took option b and avoided some time behind bars and crim record and got the muther fudger fired. Win win for me.

But It did take some restraint as I tend to have a really short fuse before I explode. Just gutted I didnt get a free model that GW are keen to send out, lol.

UPDATE:

Here is a list of the email communications:

Sent from me, 11/08/2010

Dear sir/madam

I am writing to express my great disappointment with your company, after many years custom.

Two weeks ago, following talking with friends, we were considering returning to playing Fantasy Battle, after the release of the 8th edition. I had an interest to start an Empire army and so looked online for a book, Uniforms and Heraldry of the Empire. To my surprise, given how close we were to the release of 8th ed, I learnt that this book was 'no longer available'. I telephoned my local GW store, spoke to a guy there who assured me he could obtain a copy with no difficulties as a 'managers meeting' was due to take place in the next couple of weeks and he'd put out the request right away and let me know if there were any difficulties.

Nothing happened, I waited and after the two weeks, walked into the store, yesterday, to ask what was happening. I spoke to **** who had no idea what I was talking about and had not been made aware of any order (I'm not sure of who I initially spoke to but it wasn't ****), he confirmed this 'managers meeting' had taken place and no book had arrived. He then said he'd take a look for the book online for me and asked me to wait whilst he dealt with other customers (something I was happy to do). Whilst dealing with others, he was unable to get the system for tracking local stock to work, the search facility not able to even look for 'empire' correctly. He was obviously busy and so, after about half an hour of him trying to multitask my search along with dealing with a store full of other folks, I told him it was ok and I'd telephone your mail order folks (he was doing his best given the number of people there due to school holidays).

I returned home and telephoned your mail order store in the early evening. I waited for 20 minutes on the phone (your hold music has deteriorated to the state of static by the way), eventually my call was answered.
The guy answering my call couldn't have been LESS helpful if he tried. I explained that the book was listed as no longer available, I explained the lack of action with the shop, I explained the inability to locate this book via a local store stock finder.
The guy on the other end DID NOT listen, simply typing in the name of the product after all that and then saying 'naw mate, no longer available'... It was like 'computer says no' from Little Britain!! I KNOW it's no longer available as a stocked item, I was asking if it could be located, if anyone could ask anyone. I asked again, 'so you have no way of finding one, I thought perhaps the store managers could be asked? An email request note or something?' at which the guy on the other end sounded somewhat incredulous and said 'we'd have to telephone every store in the country to do that'...

This was followed by a pause and then I broke the silence and said 'so there's really nothing you can do to locate one, at all?'... to which I was answered 'no mate, sorry'. I rang off at this stage, got on amazon and ordered one from a private stockist, paying over the GW cost for it.

On discussing this the following day, it was pointed out to me that GW USA still lists it as in stock...

After the initial failure to follow up on a request by whoever it was in the local store I spoke to, to then have the frustration of the technical failure in the store and then this frankly woeful attitude and failure to engage over the phone by the mail order guy. This has been a very annoying experience and I am very shocked after the previous great customer services I've had from GW. My faith in your company is greatly diminished.

Despondently
Meangreenstompa

PS - Whilst it wasn't the seat of my annoyance with the call, I would strongly suggest someone in your call centre gets your call handlers to stop referring to customers as 'mate', especially if their being so bloody unhelpful!


Received from GW 12/08/2010

Dear meangreenstompa

Thank you for your e-mail which has been forwarded to me for investigation.

I would like to apologise on behalf of Games Workshop for the difficulties you have encountered in obtaining the Uniforms & Heraldy 8th edition. We pride ourselves on providing outstanding customer service at Games Workshop and to hear that you have not received this is obviously highly disappointing.
I have spoken to the Customer Services Manager who is going to investigate the nature of the service you received by the ‘Mail Order ‘ / Customer Services department.
Could you please provide me with details of the telephone number you made the call from, (and the date and approx time if possible) and we can then look into the matter further.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention and I can assure you that the relevant course of action will be taken.
If you have any further problems please do not hesitate to contact me, and I look forward to receiving your contact details as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely

********
Customer Services

Sent from me 12/08/2010

Dear *****,

Thank you for your email, I made the telephone call on the 10th of this month, in the early evening and from my mobile number, which is: *******

Sincerely
Meangreenstompa

Received from GW 13/08/2010:

Thank you for the information, I have passed it on accordingly for investigation.

Regards
******



and then a wait... and wait... so I prod them:


Sent from me 08/09/2010:

Hello *****,

It has now been 4 weeks since my complaint, other than the communication I received from yourself, I have heard nothing else, could you tell me when a response is likely? This seems a long time to go without any feedback?

Sincerely
Meangreenstompa


And eventually this morning get this;

Received from GW 13/09/2010:

Hi Meangreenstompa

Thank you for providing the information, it has enabled the Customer Service Manager to investigate the call accordingly.

Some additional retraining has been instigated, and the reminder of the importance of providing outrageous customer service has been emphasised. The service levels provided are and will continue to be monitored.

Thank you again for making us aware of the situation.

Please do not hesitate to contact me should you have any issues in the future

Regards

******



Can't say I'm overwhelmed at this. Whilst I'm critical of GW's price structure and relationship with fansites/IP issues, I have always maintained that the customer service from hq was good. I've always considered the instant willingness to replace items and deal quickly and generously was a point in their favour.

My opinion of the company just dived yet again.

At least they bothered to reply I suppose. The 'additional training' chestnut is trotted out by most companies now whenever a customer points out a flaw in their customer service.

Not sure what else you expected from GW though? I admit, it would have been nice for them to refund the price difference of the book you sourced from Amazon but in the same way that the UK government does not negotiate with terrorists, it seems GW do not negotiate with customers...

Seems an issue here is that they don't have stock at different shops being monitored and centrally recorded. With bookshops they are usually able to tell you if another store has a copy of a needed book and how many are available. If GW aren't capable of doing this it's no wonder they have problems with theft and you get stories where staff have stolen thousands of pounds worth of stuff across several months without being picked up.

A few years ago I wrote a letter to GW complaining that my full credit card details were printed on my receipt. Almost no one does this any more, so it surprised me that GW was still doing it even then. Apart from issuing me with a receipt that has my details which I can't afford to lose, they are of course recorded in full by the till and the receipt the store keeps. It's not secure. But I sent this off to GW and didn't hear anything for ages and forgot all about it until an email arrived personally from one of their senior financial staff to apologise for any concern caused and to assure me that they were in the process replacing their credit card machines (issued by the bank). Which in fairness they appear to have done.

MGS, I am sorry to hear about the lack of service you were provided. I had worked in customer service jobs in the past, and what you received is definitely sub par. Not to further anger you, however I agree with your feelings. Your issue when approached by games-workshop prompted them to write you back. They state that your incident instigated more training however, they did nothing to make amends for the lack of service you received in my opinion.

While you were looking for this service to improve, you were also looking for some sort of compensation. You could clearly state that, another letter outlining your distaste for their lack of effort may yield the response you want if worded correctly. Something along the lines of, "It does please me that actions to prevent this from happening in the future, although it does nothing to restore my faith in the service you provide. No effort on your side has been made to make amends for the poor service I was provided. " Kind of the direction I would go. It appears if you do not outline what would fix this, they are not going to approach it. Not much customer service in my opinion at all.

Another sentence or two telling them directly what you would expect as some sort of compensation would make your intentions clear, and force them to respond with a "yes we can do that" or a "you are SoL, we promise it will be better next time, keep giving us money". I tend not to think much of a company that offers better service next time only, they are asking that yo put faith in them again when clearly they are already losing ground with you.

My response is kind of long winded, but I expect a lot from customer service from my previous experience in the field. I have had to do my fair share of fixing, and complaining to fix things in the past.

Some additional retraining has been instigated, and the reminder of the importance of providing outrageous customer service has been emphasised. The service levels provided are and will continue to be monitored.

the importance of providing outrageous customer service has been emphasised.

outrageous customer service

I would really like to emphasise outrageous customer service some more.

Dear lord, I hope this is GW's written response and MGS hasnt messed around with it.

filbert wrote:
Not sure what else you expected from GW though? I admit, it would have been nice for them to refund the price difference of the book you sourced from Amazon but in the same way that the UK government does not negotiate with terrorists, it seems GW do not negotiate with customers...

I'm not sure either, but I get the impression what I got was nothing at all.

Howard A Treesong wrote:Seems an issue here is that they don't have stock at different shops being monitored and centrally recorded. With bookshops they are usually able to tell you if another store has a copy of a needed book and how many are available.

Their stock tracing system, as employed by the guy I spoke to in the shop, was a distinctly crappy thing, being used by someone not competent with it.

J-Roc77 wrote:
My response is kind of long winded, but I expect a lot from customer service from my previous experience in the field. I have had to do my fair share of fixing, and complaining to fix things in the past.

No man, your response is good, I was going to just drop this but I may go back with some of your suggested wording.

Mr. Burning wrote:
I would really like to emphasise outrageous customer service some more.
Dear lord, I hope this is GW's written response and MGS hasnt messed around with it.

Other than removing names and phone numbers, this is all /cut/pasted from my email inbox. I also raised a brow at that choice of word, but then the person dealing with me has obviously been sent that response and forwarded it to me as their own. It made me cringe tbh.

Sorry it went that bad, dude ...

More seriously, I hate "begging" for things to a customer service or whatever, but I agree that their answer was poor, and even weird - c'mon, who would really say "outrageous customer service"? Even for a non-British Native speaker, that seems not only rude, but more importantly irrelevant!!!

I guess you should follow J-roc77's advice on asking for a compensation, maybe stating what you said, plainly.

Something in the way of "I clearly stated I was disappointed by your customer service, had to buy a more expensive product, and lost confidence in your firm. You could at least have offered me to refund the difference - a penny in a jar for you, but a priceless gain in trust for one of your once-faithful customers".

[Quote removed. Please don't quote entire multi-page posts]

Wow. Had I known that the Heraldry book meant so much to you, I would have sold you mine for a decent price and saved you from writing a small novella of complaint that ironically probably has more words in it then the actual book.

My question is, what exactly do you want from them? Do you actually want free product because a guy on the phone called you "mate"? How exactly would you have wanted the responses to have been worded? What do they owe you? You got more response from GW then I ever got from any corporation I ever dealt with.

I don't get it.

No you don't, thanks for the troll though.

Are you sure that the Heraldry book was ever out of stock or discontinued? Because I never heard of that and it is readily available from GW UK at the moment:
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440344a&prodId=prod2120005

I'm still kind of puzzled about why their response upsets you, personally.

They've retrained their people, and not just at GW even!

When I called Forge World the other day to get a replacement set of legs for my DA Venerable Dread to replace the ones that got broken beyond repair during transit...Tristram didn't answer with his customary "Good morning mate, thank you kindly for calling Forge World how can I help you?".

What precisely did you hope this would accomplish, at least within 4 weeks?
They can't overhaul their entire stock tracking system in that short of time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kroothawk wrote:Are you sure that the Heraldry book was ever out of stock or discontinued? Because I never heard of that and it is readily available from GW UK at the moment:
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440344a&prodId=prod2120005

It truly was out of stock when he was looking for it. I was looking for it also, ended up snagging a copy through the former owner of a FLGS who still has some excess stock laying in a warehouse.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:No you don't, thanks for the troll though.

Not trying to troll, mate, just genuinely curious what you expected out of this other then validation on a internet forum.

Public libraries > GW

NELS1031 wrote:

MeanGreenStompa wrote:No you don't, thanks for the troll though.

Not trying to troll, mate, just genuinely curious what you expected out of this other then validation on a internet forum.

Most amusing... How is Baltimore btw? Must be feeling it with the GW HQ moving to Memphis...

What I expected was recompense for the time wasted, the gakky customer service and the extra cost incurred by me in obtaining this book from another source. At my company, we have someone have a bad customer service experience, we send them vouchers and a half decent bottle of booze. It takes the sting out.

Here's how I'd do it:

"Dear Meangreenstompa,
I've now reviewed this case.
Firstly, I'm very sorry that you experienced so much difficulty in obtaining the Uniforms and Heraldry of the Empire book and then received poor customer service during your call to the service centre. Please rest assured that we have implemented retraining as a result of your complaint and improvements are being made.
Secondly, I'm also really glad to hear you've decided to return to playing fantasy and to help you on your way to that Empire army you're building, we at Games Workshop are sending you a box of State Troops as a thank you for your continued custom with us.
I hope this apology is sufficient and please do continue to provide us with feedback, as our customer, your experience is vital to us and we want it to be the best possible!

If there is anything else, don't hesitate to contact me personally.

Sincerely
********
GW Customer Support Personage..."

Personal involvement, actual physical recompense, recompense is tailored to the complainant indicating attention to detail and extra customer care.
Lastly a personal follow up invitation, 'contact me personally', establishing a link and sense of elevated service (whether true or not...).

MGS, I totally agree, that's what *should* happen and indeed it is a pleasant surprise when one receives recompense from a company due to their screw up. However, as a consumer, I seem to be accustomed to the fact that 99% of companies will simply dole out platitudes if I complain. GW seem to be no different in that regard. It's pretty symptomatic of the general regard they hold for their clientèle really - they display the same disdain in many aspects of their business.

someone at GW wrote:and the reminder of the importance of providing outrageous customer service has been emphasised.

You know, if GW needs English lessons I am available.