To think that customers / members of the public have become increasingly rude post Covid?

I’m guessing the public are ruder. I’m always friendly and polite to staff.

I do get frustrated when on rare occasions staff are combative.

Had a situation today where I returned an item that I had paid for on Apple Pay on my phone. The staff asked to verify the card number to refund to. Unfortunately, my card was reported stolen so I couldn’t show them the card number on Apple Pay so they could refund to the same card.

The staff were so ‘computer says no’. I had to get increasingly more assertive and demand a refund today, as today was the last day (the 30th day) that the shop would issue a refund. It just made it all so stressful unnecessarily.

Slightly YABU but only because I believe its a society thing in general so probably exists on both sides of the argument.

I'm slightly peeved today though as I got accused of being a liar in a cafe today when I said I didn't order a ham & cheese salad for my the vegetarian in our party today.

SAP is the work of the devil.

@LostGhost agree with you with the sorting office hours. Pre Covid -SO was open 7am-1pm and twice a week till 6pm.

Now it’s 8-10am!

Fortunately there’s a post office about half a mile’s drive from work with car parking (SO has zero parking). So if a parcel is due to arrive on my days in at work, I arrange on app to collect from PO

‘Do you not think maybe I HAVE checked and it didn't answer my question? I'm not choosing to spend 45+ minutes on the phone just for fun.’

People always say this but I speak to a an awful lot of people who’ve probably heard this message as well but their query can very clearly be found online.

I think it's a combination of people generally becoming more entitled, thinking that they are the only one that matters,and service from shops/businesses still using covid as an excuse for poor service.

This is a really weird post. You admit your service is poor. Of course customers are going to be hacked off about that. Why wouldn't they have a disrespectful tone about an organisation as a whole that is providing a poor service?

This is a different situation to when a customer is rude to an agent who is trying to fix a problem that was unforeseen. The customer is still entitled to be aggrieved but polite people understand that these things happen sometimes and it's just bad luck. In your case poor service is the status quo. You need to look to your company, not the people receiving poor service.

One of the things that grinds my gears is the assumption that i'm an idiot. The amount of forced switchboards you have to sit through just to TRY and speak to a human being and some of them are set up to just hang up on you with the repeated message that I can find the answer if I just checked online.

Trying to call Royal Mail about a missing parcel;
"For a query about a delivery press 1"
Presses 1
"Did you know you can track the status of your parcel online? Just go to Royal Mail.com and enter your tracking. Goodbye"

Do you not think maybe I HAVE checked online and it didn't answer my question? I'm not choosing to spend 45+ minutes on the phone just for fun.

You end up pressing a random number and going entirely to the wrong person and by the time you've got through the automated maze and been transferred about four times tempers are a bit short at that point. There should be a "To speak to a human press 4" option for everything. It's not the person who answered the phones fault and I always try and remember that but it is incredibly frustrating after being passed from pillar to post for a simple question.

And on the topic of Royal Mail...who on earth decided their delivery office collection hours? Ours is open 8am-10am Monday to Friday. At that point why are you even bothering? That's another issue for another day

Had a customer say to me "is it ok to keep the turkey in your store and pick it up on Xmas Day?"

Erm no.

Training has reduced dramatically.

A call centre where I used to work, there was 5 weeks of training. Now its 2.

When I started work, we had to watch a DVD of various things then get a manager to see if you are doing this correctly. Now its a 2 min clip on the intranet and get no-one to check if its alright.

badbunny I'm sorry to read about your husband's experience, as you said the NHS can be appallingly bad at talking to different departments and this leads to disjointed care.

It's not that we don't make an effort (this is like explaining to a customer who says it's disgusting all over again)
We only have so many hours in the day
If the plumber can do 10 jobs, we can't fit jobs 11 and over in
This is stuff that could have been booked well in advance, not an emergency, the equivalent of knowing you need a gas boiler check and not booking until a week before then complaining it's busy

Regular or repeat customers don't get priority but generally know to book well in advance and never have issues

Are they regular/repeat/past customers?

As I said, fair enough for random customers, but an organisation really needs to make a bit of an effort for repeat/regular customers.

@Badbadbunny none of them are anything that couldn't be done somewhere else, they aren't tied to us in any way shape or form
The work can be done by anyone

@Topofthemountain

From a service provider pov I think a lot of the time it can come across that no-one knows what they are doing. Staff also don't like saying No (people get cross and shouty) so kick the can down the road for someone else to deal with.

My OH experiences this every month with the NHS. He needs monthly chemotherapy drugs, and the oncology dept won't issue them without blood and other tests. His blood test must be within a certain number of days of the drug issue date, not too soon, not too late, so basically a two day window, and it's always a struggle for him to get an appointment with the oncology dept for the blood test (and BP check, temperature etc) on the right day. He tells them the day he needs, and they just say "no, we're full" and they offer a day the week before or the week after. He then has to politely explain why it has to be the day he's asked for (or the day before/after depending on the week), and they always start making other stupid suggestions, arguing back at him that the dates don't have to be so exact, telling him to go to his GP surgery for the tests etc. He has to be very assertive to get them to understand and accept that he knows what he's doing as he's had to go through this every month for five years! Eventually, they usually manage to "find" an appointment slot, but it's a real trial every sodding month.

Sometimes he gets the receptionist from hell who just won't listen and insists on a different day and that it will be absolutely fine, so he has no choice but to go along with it. Only for the day of the drug issue to come, he turns up at the ward to collect his drugs, only to be told there wasn't a valid blood test (blaming him for having it too soon/too late) and he has to go away and make a new appointment for a blood test which means the chemo drug issue will be a week late and he'll have had two wasted hospital journeys/appointments.

The same happens with other things he needs, such as the occasional full body x-ray or MRI scan or bone marrow sample. The consultant tells him what she needs, but when actually liaising with the relevant department, they'll often try to do the wrong thing, i.e. MRI scan with dye when consultant told OH it had to be without, and he just gets the runaround as the staff in different depts won't talk to eachother directly meaning OH is always some kind of piggy in the middle passing messages between staff and having to be very assertive to get them to believe and understand he actually knows what he's talking about and to just do what the hell he's asking them to do rather than them being arrogant know it alls who want to do something different. It's exhausting.

That's fair enough for random customers, but it's not acceptable for customers who are under warranty or a service plan. Provision should be made for the latter group of customers who deserve to receive what they're entitled to and not have to wait a ridiculous amount of time, nor have to pay (again) to get someone else to repair something that is your firm's responsibility!

From a service provider pov I think a lot of the time it can come across that no-one knows what they are doing. Staff also don't like saying No (people get cross and shouty) so kick the can down the road for someone else to deal with.

So I go along and say "No, you can't have a helicopter pad in your back garden." To which I get "But I was told to speak to you to get it sorted." They are led to believe that I will sort it, they are now cross and shouty not because they have been told No but because they were lied to / seriously misinformed. I then have to 'argue' that I know helicopter pad regulations better than the train driver.

Obviously my job is not as exciting as helicopters, but speaking to different staff and getting wildly different answers is never good.

I’ve experienced both extremes in the last few days..
In Boots I asked a group of three sales assistants having a chat where a certain perfume was. They waved me in a general direction. I looked around, couldn’t see it and with a smile said “sorry where did you say” to be given another wave as they went back to their conversation.
On other side of spectrum, rang Virgin and spoke to someone who was friendly ( without asking me about weekend plans), proactive, answered all my questions, gave clear, succinct advice. It was AMAZING!
There is definitely a difference between being rude but being frustrated/assertive

Imo accuracy is very low and has been for years.
But people are dealing now with more error than correct. And the feeling of not again , - get one thing correct.
But also yes customer service is poor. We didnt get dc school place the LA never answered the phone or emails. Only about 40people didnt get the place they wanted and so they werent exactly flooded.
Population is a lot more old er or elderly and they can be more argumentative - my own relatives taking legal action. Also richer people very entitled
More graduates so think they know everything.

I'm always polite but service levels are often so bad these days.. everything is a trial.

Customer service is lacking. Whenever I call a company regarding utilities/ bills I am usually hit with incompetence and it’s frustrating, complaints are never taken seriously and no one can every action anything. The other day my energy supplier called me out of the blue regarding yet again having a smart meter…I’ve just had an op and didn’t feel up to taking the call so I told this to the caller and instead of accepting that and hanging up they said can I ask what the operation was for?

Fair enough. If it's a new customer, tough. If they've been with you a long time, they're going to be pissed off. But if it's something like Homeserve where you pay a subscription for service, then I think you're entitled to expect an appointment within a reasonable time.

I find it ironic that we're supposed to worship senior managers of large companies as they're "wealth creators" and "create jobs", and therefore worth being paid several hundred times as much as an ordinary person. Yet it seems for most their performance bonuses are mainly linked to losing jobs - replacing jobs by AI, creating worse conditions (limited hours contracts, unpaid lunchbreaks) and overworking staff to be able to carry the same operation with fewer staff.

Productivity effectively = output/employees. Rather than increasing output, all effort seems to be decreasing employees instead.

@MereDintofPandiculation probably the equivalent of ringing a plumber and them saying no we are full
But rather than ringing one of the 100 other plumbers we get an earful about how awful our service is
If we are booked up, we are booked up

There was a company selling gifts/toys which always had a prominent advert in its catalogue "This year, Christmas Day falls on 25th Secember" with a note underneath saying "we 're just reminding you because every year there are some customers to whom Christmas comes as a big surprise".