I’m silently assessing the business I’m visiting. Take today for example, a hairdresser. The second time I’ve been to this hairdresser and I felt myself observing how everything is run and I’ve got to say it was very smooth. There were about 6-7 staff working and nearly every chair was taken up by a customer. A happy customer too.

I took my turn on the waiting lounge and even had the man next to me prop a cushion behind my back (another blog post perhaps about that one…). After waiting a few minutes I’m taken over to the ‘colouring area’ and asked if I wanted a tea or coffee. Now at this point I should mention that I had my 4 year old daughter with me as I couldn’t get a babysitter for her. She has a preschool disco tonight so I thought it would be cute for her to get a hair cut and some curls and sparkles.

So I take my seat and tell my daughter she can sit in the chair next to me. One of the only vacant ones. We sit and wait. I eye my hairdresser working on someone else’s hair. After a short while she comes over and we talk colour. She mixes it up and then a new girl who didn’t even introduce herself comes over and starts putting her gloves on and applying the colour to my hair. Okay then. I guess I need to assume that my hairdresser isn’t going to be colouring my hair and Miss No Name is. That’s okay, I’m watching her every step of the way.

My daughter keeps asking “when is it my turn Mummy”. “I don’t know sweetheart” I say. Truth is I have no idea because no one has told me!

Another short while passes and a young hairdresser comes over and starts talking to me about my daughter’s hair and what I’d like her to. She’s lovely, tells me she’ll do some of the cut and then bring my daughter over so I can check it before she does anymore.

I listen as my 4 year old holds her own conversations with her hairdresser and then they come over to check the length etc. Wonderful I say and back they go for some curling and sparkles.

I watch out of the corner of my eye as my daughter’s hairdresser leaves her station to answer the phone. She comes back after a minute and says to my daughter “sorry about that”. Isn’t that just lovely? Apologising to a 4 year old? My daughter is finished and she of course looks beautiful. She’s very excited about her curls and sparkles.

Throughout the next couple of hours, my daughter sits in a vacant chair only to be asked to move – to my lap it seems or in the way of the trolleys and cords. My hairdresser comes over and asks me to move to the sink for the rinse. I can’t believe my hairdresser is finally doing my hair!

Everything else goes smoothly and I’m very happy with the job done on the colour, cut and style.

The whole time I was there, the owner of the salon was directing her staff to different people. The lady next to me had about 2-3 different hair dressers at some point colouring her hair. It’s quite frustrating when you ring up and book an appointment with a specific person only to have different people work on your hair. Does it matter that someone else coloured my hair and my hairdresser cut and styled it? My hairdresser mixed the colour, so atleast I was confident in that part. I just had to hope the girl who did my hair colour got every single strand.

This salon is very focused on community from what I can see. It has a Facebook page, I received an SMS yesterday to confirm my appointment. Everyone is very friendly and they are flat out busy.

I didn’t go in there looking for negative things, but I would have liked them to be a bit more accommodating of my daughter. Perhaps giving her a stool or something to sit on rather than my lap. I’m sure it was distracting for them to do my hair with a child on my lap.

I would have also liked to have been told that my hairdresser couldn’t colour my hair, but “let me introduce you to so and so who will be colouring. I’ll be back to cut and style”. Just a bit more communication on their part and I would be happy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy now. I mean come on, if this is the only problem then it’s easily fixed.

There just the little things I guess that they may not have thought about. The owner is so busy directing staff, she may not realise the people sitting in her chairs want to be kept informed about what’s going on.

When my husband and I bought a new Plasma some months ago we received a free Blu Ray player as part of the promotion. Along with this bonus we also received a 6 month subscription to a popular online DVD rental service.

You know the ones, you log in and choose which movies you’d like to hire and add them to your list. Depending on the plan you’re on you then get a couple of DVD’s sent in the mail.

The provider we were with has a very good setup. We can add movies to our queue from our iphones, we get email notifications when we return movies and when new movies have been dispatched. The turnaround time is also very quick.

Overall the service was excellent.

Until I decided I wanted to cancel my subscription (after the free 6 month subscription, we were moved across to the basic package at $14.95 per month).

I logged into my account and clicked on the cancel subscription button. Here I read that I can’t cancel online, I must phone their customer support team. So I dialled the number and was placed on hold for over 20 minutes. Rather than waste my time being on hold and a slave to my phone, I hung up and emailed the company.

I specifically wrote that I wanted to cancel my subscription and knew I had to do this by phone and would they please phone me on my mobile to do so. I explained I had been on hold for some time and did not wish to continue on hold for an unknown period of time.

2 days later I received an email from them.

“Please call our Member Care team on xxxx xxx xxx to cancel your account as we do not accept cancellations via email or notes sent back with DVDs.”

Okay then. The Member Care team obviously saw the word cancel and copy and pasted me a standard response. That’s fine, I’m all for efficiency. What I’m annoyed about is that this person did not read my email. Did not read the part where I said “I know I can’t cancel via email, so please phone me”.

I replied with what my original email stated and asked them once again to phone me.

Shortly after I received this email:

“Unfortunately we do not do outbound calls so you will have to contact us at your convenience.”

You’re kidding right? Member Care who are supposed to care for its members won’t make outbound calls? Is this because I want to cancel my service I wonder? Or does the same rule apply if I were someone wanting to join up and wanted a call back to avoid waiting on hold?

What’s even more laughable is that at the bottom of their email signature is this:

“Member Care are here to assist you between the hours of 9am and 5pm AEST Monday to Friday (excluding public holidays)”.

Perhaps they need to add: “…here to assist you between the hours of 9am and 5pm….but only if you call us.

As much as I’m wanting to name and shame this company, I won’t because I consider myself to be a professional.

I am however going to flag this blog post with them via Twitter and will wait and see what happens.

Have you ever had a similar experience with ’so called customer service’? I’d love to hear your comments.