Argos? Naught

For those that don’t know Argos is a large British retail chain store. It sells everything you may ever need at budget prices. Your typical customer experience will go something like this:

Arrive at Argos
Look at a catalogue to find the product you want
Check to see if the product you want is in stock
Choose a more expensive version of the product you were originally looking for
Check to see if the product you don’t really want, but are going to buy instead of the product you want is in stock.
Fill out a form with the catalogue number
Pay at the fully staffed checkout counter
Get given a docket with three numbers; your customer no., your queue no. and your estimated delivery time (T + 10 minutes)
Ten minutes later get called to your queue, jam in beside the people already there
Wait
Twenty minutes later get half your order
Wait
Banter with the other folk about how shit the service is.
Wait
Product turns up
Leave, swearing that you’ll never shop in Argos again.

It’s a perfect model for Argos. Make sure the service is swift when you have to pay up front, and then remove all semblance of service completely, knowing that the customer won’t leave because he has paid. I should send a letter to their general manager.

“Dear Argus,

While dying of boredom in your shop today I composed this letter in my head. The Argos was the ship that Jason sailed to find the golden fleece in. The shipbuilder named the ship after himself, thus I presume your name is Argus. Atalanta sailed on the ship as well. Is she your wife? She is probably the manageress of Atlantic homecare.

But I digress.

You do many things correctly in your shop. You stock many quality products that are easy to find in your free catalogue. You make it easy to pay. You offer a 16 day, no fuss, money back guarantee if the product isn’t what I am looking for. You give Richard.E.Grant work. Yes, many good things, all at reasonable prices.

Alas, you do many, many bad things in your shop as well. Your customer service is shit. Your warehouse staff, are either untrained or lazy or both. Your warehouse manager should be horsewhipped. You should be made go to your own shop to buy something and realise what a truly miserable experience it is. While we’re at it, when you get your product home, you should be made build it. Some of the flat pack you sell must have been designed by Daedalus (your son?).

How do you fix this? How about this. The warehouse picking staff deliver all of your order at the same time. For every 5 minutes it is late €1 comes off the order. Stagger staff lunches. Hire competent warehouse managers, fire every single one currently in your employ (Ireland only). Hire floor managers. *Train them*. Stop your son from making furniture. Hire somebody to build the flat pack before you put it in your catalogue. Make anyone who buys a sovereign ring sign an offenders register.

Make all of these changes and consider me an Argonaut.
By the way, I am not a crank.

Yours etc.,"

For now, it’s back to looking at furniture before I buy it.