What The Hell Happened To Good Customer Service?

In line with the self reflection theme I’ve had going lately, here is another attribute about myself I would like to share with you. I am cheap. Very cheap. I’m by no means frugal, but I am always looking for a deal. Except with Apple products (Oh how I love thee). I must share with you an experience I had with the online camera store wilddigital.com. I was in the market to purchase a new standard lens for my Nikon and decided on the AF NIKKOR 50 mm f/1.4D. Now me being the cheap idiot I am, I somehow convinced myself that ordering through a third party site was better than purchasing through Nikon. Apparently I was going to save $200! Oh and the free shipping! Talk about cheapskate heaven! So I whip out my beautiful lil’ blue debit card and voila! my new lens is on its way…. Or so I think. This was last Friday. Yesterday at around 2:45 PM I receive an email that WildDigital.com needed to confirm my shipping address. I understand confirming the billing address, but have you ever heard of a company calling to verify a shipping address? Strange. Well I call and I wait and wait until finally a guy gets on the phone and asked me for my shipping address. Quick and simple, right? Wrong! After here is what ensued:

Me: I’m a little confused as to why you’re confirming this after the product should have been shipped two days ago.

Operator: Well we’re both located in New York so you should get it tomorrow or the next day.

Me: Ok…

Operator: Would you like any filters or accessories with that?

Me: No thank you.

Operator: Would you like to upgrade your purchase to the American lens?

Me: Ummm, come again…

Operator: You purchased the foreign lens for $245 but the American lens is $350. I’ll just go ahead and charge the difference and send you out your American lens. That is unless you can read Chinese.

Me: I don’t speak Chinese, why would I purchase that? Please tell me where on the product page it says that? I’m on your site now and nowhere does it says foreign.

Operator: I don’t have access to our website. Lady I have 17 other calls on hold; now just go ahead and confirm the “upgrade” and I’ll ship it out tonight.

Me: Wait a minute, this is not right, please let me speak with your supervisor.

Operator: Lady as far as your concerned I am the supervisor so either buy the lens or not.

Around this time is when I wanted to reach through the phone and beat the shit out of this guy. What a scam. Fellow New Yorker my ass! I was so livid I went ahead and told him to cancel the order. Which I’m not sure if he heard because the asshole had already hung up on me. Needless to say I will be monitoring my check card activity for the next few weeks. Talk about awful customer service!

After work I headed down to B&H and bought my much desired lens. Below are two pictures taken last night with the new equipment. The lighting in my apartment was very poor... Edward knows why.